This is What I'm Thinking (or, Where Did Thanksgiving Go?)

It's 4 (a.m, in case you're wondering) and pitch black outside. My kids and hubby are tucked in their beds, and I am thinking that Christmas is only a few days away. We've had a busy few weeks with many activities and appointments. I think we're all tired and ready for a quiet week of Christmas prep. Today is cookie baking day, and I'm looking forward to it as much as the kids are.

I love the time I get to spend focusing completely on just being with the people I love most. At home, we celebrate as my family always has, and there is something comforting about that. I know that Cheeky feels it. She is caught up in the holiday tradition, reminding me often, perhaps even excessively, about what we did last year and the year before, counting out loud the number of Christmases we have spent as a family.

There are traditions that my other children are ready to say goodbye to, but that I continue for Cheeky's sake. The other four have become more focused on the moments of the Christmas season. For them, the gifts have become secondary. That is not to say that they don't LOVE getting presents, but over time, they have come to realize that what they love more is just being a family and together. My boys, who a few years ago were more interested in eating cookies than baking them, are gungho for the tradition now. I see in my sixteen-year-old that he senses time passing, and that he is enjoying these last few years of being part of this before he moves to what comes next.

This is as it should be.

I feel time passing, too, and I want to hold on as much as I am eager to let my kids fly. That is the paradox of being a mother, I think.That we rejoice with each stage and each milestone even as we mourn what we will not have again.

I was thinking this as Thanksgiving approached, remembering a time when no stores dared open on Thanksgiving Day. People stayed home, cooking and eating and cleaning and eating some more. There was no last minute run to get cranberry sauce, because there was nowhere to run to buy it. Then, Thanksgiving existed as a day to spend time with those we loved, giving thanks for all that we had.

Now, Thanksgiving is lost in the shuffle between Halloween and Christmas.

I was in Walmart in October and saw Christmas decorations on one aisle and costumes on another. How ironic that both celebrations seem to be centered around getting. Candy. Presents. Something for nothing.

Thanksgiving, the one day of the year devoted exclusively to being thankful has become simply the day before Black Friday. As a matter of fact, I'd venture to say that many people spend as much time plotting their black Friday spending spree as they do their Thanksgiving feast.

It has occurred to me that Thanksgiving has diminished in importance as the the word holiday has hammered its way into our collective consciousness and become our catchphrase for what should be the most holy day of the year.

We do not, as a country, celebrate Christmas the way it was once celebrated. Now, we celebrate the holiday. So fearful are we of offending one group or another, that we have taken something magnificent and beautiful and made it into something mundane and generic. Worse, we have turned it into a commercial enterprise.

When I hear that there are mobs of people fighting for toys and electronics in the wee hours of Black Friday  morning, that a man died on the floor of a store while shoppers milled around him, that  a woman used pepper spray on fellow shoppers, I am not surprised. In a culture that says it is okay to use offensive language in every day conversation, but that frowns on using the word Christmas to refer to Christmas, those incidents are simply a symptom of the disease.

I'll leave it up to you to decide what that disease is.

Me? I am going to spend the day baking cookies with my kids, playing Christmas carols on the radio (yep, we still have one) and singing along loudly while my boys cover their ears and my girls giggle. After all, there is quite a bit to be said for tradition!