This is a concept that's been rattling around in my brain for some time. When you break down the holidays, look closely at their commercialism as well as their meaning, and viewed in light of how they are celebrated, Thanksgiving is a standout of a holiday.I'm not saying it's my favorite, just that, as holidays go, it's probably the best one.
Other holidays have been successfully (to varying degrees) stripped of their meaning or solemn celebration by the engine of commerce. Thanksgiving, however, still seems to retain its original meaning and means of celebration. I mean, what is Thanksgiving about? It's about gathering together with family, sharing a meal, and giving thanks for the good things we've been given in the past year. It is one of the most widely celebrated holidays in the nation, being, as it is, unbound by religious differences. And it is the most consistently celebrated: northeastern families, southern families, western...doesn't matter. In the end, it is still about getting together and sharing a lavish meal. There is nobody filing lawsuits against anybody else for "pushing" Thanksgiving on them, nobody complaining that their ability to freely celebrate Thanksgiving is being suppressed. No, we're pretty much all in this one together, that most American of holidays.
Where Christmas has become mostly about buying and receiving gifts, Halloween has been stripped of its spookiness in favor of smiling witches and hoardes of candy. Thanksgiving, despite its football games and talk of Black Friday sales is still, at its heart, about getting together with family and enjoying a communal meal. Somehow, it's managed to retain its solemnity in the face of an economy that strives to capitalize on every holiday. I mean, you never hear people complain that Thanksgiving "has gotten too commercial". Nobody stresses over what to buy the kids for Thanksgiving. But you hear it every year with Christmas (starting in about August), and to a lesser degree, Halloween - which, by the way, is second only to Christmas now in terms of consumer expenditures related to the holiday. The other holidays can be measured in how great "things" were: how much candy was given, how fancy the costumes were, how many presents were under the tree, who had the most lights on their home. By contrast, Thanksgiving's greatness is not measured in "things". We don't give Thanksgiving "gifts", and while we may dress a table, there isn't an excess of decoration involved in the celebration. As long as you have a meal on the table, you can have a great Thanksgiving, because success is measured in relationships with the people at the table, and nothing else.
I must admit, it has probably survived due to its built-in commercial aspect: people must buy food. But somehow, that's okay. The food bought for Thanksgiving is traditional, it's real, it may be gourmet, but it doesn't stray far from the way the holiday is celebrated by everyone else in the country. Because the commercialism does not, and it seems cannot, interfere with the "point" of the day - the people you dine with, and giving thanks for the bounty of our lives.
Somehow, Thanksgiving retains its purity through the commercial haze. And thus, I feel it deserves the title of "best" American holiday.
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