Thanksgiving is an Important Holiday that is Overshadowed

When most people imagine a holiday, the first thing that comes to mind is Christmas. People widely consider it to be the best time for families to get together and give, forgetting a holiday that is a much better fit for that title. Thanksgiving literally has “giving thanks” as its name, but I digress.  As years go by, I see less and less people acknowledging Thanksgiving, yet it is a much better and more meaningful time to get together with your family and friends, eat food together, and be thankful that you have each other.

Christmas decorations already flooded stores immediately after Halloween, and people were already making Mariah Carey jokes, but I barely heard the word “Thanksgiving” come out of anyone other than to talk about this past Thanksgiving break.

Christmas has been overhyped by corporations, so they can make extra sales in the 4th quarter. It is inherently a trap for you to spend more money when you otherwise wouldn’t have. Most people only like Christmas for its gift-giving and nothing else. 

Thanksgiving is just an innocent time for you to eat food with your family, no obsession with presents. It brings people together regardless of wealth. Getting together with just the premise of eating food and giving thanks to the people who are in your life is a much more beautiful sentiment than material gain, and it makes me sad to see people brush over it.

Thanksgiving food is iconic. The turkey, the cranberries, the stuffing, the gravy, the yams, all of it. Some people even have their own traditions to bring their families even closer, like having duck instead of turkey, or having special marshmallow yams. I don’t think I can say the same for Christmas. I know some people have traditional Christmas dinners, but what exactly is a traditional Christmas dinner? Taking a closer look, it doesn’t seem very “traditional” as there are so many different meats and sides called “tradition”. Not very iconic. 

Christmas also has an underlying religious aspect to it, while Thanksgiving is still mostly secular- since some people don’t celebrate Christmas because of that religious aspect, but Thanksgiving can be celebrated by everyone regardless of religion. In the world right now, I feel that just being thankful for the people who are in your life and breaking bread with them is much more important than religious or material gain. Holding loved ones close for no particular reason other than to appreciate them holds much more raw value than any other holiday tradition. 

Christmas isn’t even the only holiday in the holiday season. There’s Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Bodhi Day, yet Christmas is the one that is popularized. Thanksgiving is completely out of that loop and takes place in November, out of the way of the other holidays. 

On my personal Thanksgiving, I had very heartwarming dinners with all parts of my family over the break, getting to spend time with family friends as well! Enjoying time with my family brings me just that much more joy than Christmas with its presents. There’s no gift-giving anxiety involved, no chaos in having to set up Christmas decorations, just the warm food and hearts.

Next year, let’s just appreciate Thanksgiving and the people that you get to spend it with a little bit more. As it’s a much more special and beautiful holiday than the overhyped Christmas, with much more important values.