In Praise of the More Modest Holiday

As the holidays approach, I find myself bracing for the onslaught of round-the-clock carols (sometimes sung by Chipmunks) and a mailbox full of smiling kids sitting in front of the fireplace with the obligatory dog-wearing-a-Santa hat.

It’s almost like everything is contrived to make you feel a certain way, especially during the Christmas season.  Like The Matrix sequels, Christmas promises so much, is completely ruined by a deadly combination of self-importance and ridiculous mind-numbing special effects, and makes you feel like you lack critical moral, spiritual, or philosophical insight if you don’t enjoy every second.    But there’s hope this holiday season, and it’s coming on Thursday.

Thanksgiving, the more modest of the “holiday trinity” (comprised of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year), is a welcome deviation from its more glitzy counterparts, making it the superior holiday.  First of all, there are no expectations of giving or receiving gifts, a huge plus in my book.  Gift giving is the closest our society gets to Communism in terms of the inefficient distribution of resources.  I hate to think of the productive time and energy wasted in the manufacture, shopping, giving, returning, and disposal of gifts.  If someone really wanted to be helpful, they'd come and take stuff out of our house.  Second, it has a simple premise -- the giving of thanks --without much in the way of commercial or theological agenda.   And third, it has no associated songs that play non-stop for a month.

I can't think of a better, simpler, more necessary, or more universally accepted principle than gratitude.  And what better way to celebrate the principle of gratitude than to gather as families and try to eat as much as you possibly can?  I have an ongoing contest with my brother to see who can eat the most Thanksgiving pie.  Strictly speaking, the rules of fair competition suggest we should eat a comparable amount for dinner and the pie slices should be the same size, difficult-to-verify criteria when we're in different states.  Sure, technology would allow us to send pictures by phone these days, but we've come to rely more on a system of wild exaggeration and half-truths.

I suppose a Thanksgiving scrooge could criticize the holiday for its encouragement toward gluttony.  We are, as we're being told repeatedly these days, really fat.  But the culprit isn't Thanksgiving, it's Christmas.  Thanksgiving is perfectly positioned on the calendar right before the winter season sets in.  You get together with family, you laugh, you cry, you eat way too much, and then you resolve to eat better/exercise/or hibernate for the winter.  But those resolutions get immediately destroyed by the entire month of bad eating and stress that characterize every Christmas season.  New Year's resolutions have no chance at that point.  It's better to wait until Spring and incorporate resolutions into whatever hodgepodge of traditions make up Easter these days.

In any case, at least before we attempt to eat ourselves into a coma, we take the time to express our gratitude at the Thanksgiving table.  I'll leave you with what I expect to hear this year:

"I'm thankful I only damaged the car four times in my first year of driving and that no one was hurt."

"I'm thankful my switch from the Red Sox to Yankees finally paid off; I've waited almost half my life for the Yankees to win a World Series."

"I'm thankful that I only have to listen to my husband complain about Christmas for four more weeks."

"I'm thankful for the best day of my life (except for wedding and birth of kids -- my wife might read this): Utah win over Alabama in Sugar Bowl."

"We're thankful for our parents, who we know love us even though they can't manage to get us presents for our birthdays, or major holidays."

And so I have this one day to look forward to -- sort of a last supper -- before the flood of packages, trees, expectations, and neon Santas are let loose, to enjoy the humble good times of family, food, football, and five pieces of pie. Or -- as I’ll tell my brother -- eight pieces.