News-Letter

Thanksgiving is a treasured American tradition, a holiday we Americans have celebrated for decades, a time when family from all over the nation comes together to celebrate... what?

Nobody knows. People sit down at their tables and don't realize that they are celebrating the Pilgrims' 1621 harvest, which they shared with their savage brethren (whom they later dispatched, but that's another story all together). So when I pressed people for the origin of Thanksgiving, most looked at me like I had asked them for the origin of Secretary's Day, then collected themselves and offered their stock opinion of the modern interpretation of Thanksgiving.

"It's when we gather together as a family to enjoy and remember all of our blessings."

Okay, sure. That explanation encapsulates the intended spirit of the holiday. But do we really sit around and think about how blessed we are on Thanksgiving? About as much as we think about environmentalism on Arbor Day.

The truth is that Thanksgiving is the sneakiest of all major holidays in making its true intentions known. We all get together and celebrate it out of habit, while the letter and spirit of its meaning are meaningless. The true nature of Thanksgiving's carefully orchestrated plot appears the next day, sometimes as early as 5:30 a.m.

That is when Black Friday's starting gun is fired, releasing tens of thousands of caged animals into the aisles of our nation's fine retailers. Estimates put last year's Black Friday national sales total at $7.2 billion. Of this total, $1.52 billion came from Wal-Mart alone. I guess people don't have time to consider the Pilgrims' copious blessings when every billboard and newspaper says that Tickle-Me Furby is available for $29.98.

We really need to look at what has been going on for years already and see how all of our holidays, not even just the obvious ones, have been co-opted by consumerism and advertising. I'm sure no one really believes that we just get two days off to be with our families when most of us are going to just do it again less than a month later. We need to see our holidays for what they are: well-oiled entrepreneurial machines, some so powerful that even the resistant have fallen.

Europe won't fall into our commercial holiday trap, right? This year the UK spent 100 million GBP on Halloween, a holiday that was once explicitly celebrated by America. The grossly profitable industry of American tourism has brought about this cultural and commercial piggy-back ride. Said Sarah Howden of the Edinburgh Evening News about Halloween, "As with every trend, where the U.S. leads, the UK eventually follows."

And the UK has certainly followed, embracing all things marketable and opening up 18 franchises of the chain store Birthdays Halloween. But have they sacrificed tradition for commercialism? Said Geoff Sanderson, Birthdays marketing director, in the Oct. 30 edition of The Scotsman, "Edinburgh is steeped in tradition, history and all things ghostly and ghoulish, so it was an obvious location for our not one but two Halloween stores."

But is this all a bad thing? Do we even care that Thanksgiving has become a commercial institution under the radar screen? Is it a big deal that the business of Halloween is appearing overseas?

Maybe, but it's at least inevitable. We live in a capitalist culture, and entrepreneurs will always want to make money by doing whatever works. But as participants in this capitalism, we all have to keep our eyes open and recognize when something is being sold to us. Advertising and commercialism have become more and more deceptive, and the true capitalist designs of some holidays have been hidden underneath our habitual celebration.

Maybe we don't like the idea of Thanksgiving as a commercial holiday, but we can't decide whether or not we like something unless we know what it is and what it looks like. If we like it, we can keep it, but at least we were able to make that choice ourselves. If we don't like it, then each individual should do his or her part to reclaim tradition one table at a time. I, for one, sat down at mine and thought about how truly thankful I was for my family, my friends, and my Tickle-Me Furby.

--Zach Goodman is a sophomore.

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