Thanksgiving Primer

Trying to see the Light—Thanksgiving?

So amazon choice gives us an absurdly abundant amount of lighting options for party and holiday lights and this year in this house… there will be lights.  Now… how to decide… ?   We’ve got  your standard soft glow, multi-color, red/green, clear or green wired, sound activated, motion censored, infrared or bluetooth music responsive four, seven, and eight function strings, curtains, and spinning globes.  You can start with 12 or go up to 1200 or more… 

And it’s only a day before Halloween so there’s time to decide right?…. wrong! You see… these lights might remind us that we are heading into the part of the calendar in the U.S. when we celebrate giving thanks and a season of hope and renewal and yep a little giving on the side.  

Oh and is it really ever too early to start being more aware of giving thanks and focusing on hope?   Oh and do we remember that H.O.P.E. stands for Hard work Optimism persistance and Experimentation?  Hope like peace is something you create not something you wait for.  Oh and “Thanksgiving” or gratitude enjoys the reputation of what we can use to change our perspective on gloomy circumstances… so we celebrate that by overeating… oh wait … not stuffing ourself that’s not the point of the day… everyone knows it’s football.  You are thinking surely we jest?   No. Football is a bunch of people in a limited space fighting over small treasures they’d like to take home year after year… so the grid iron is just a metaphor for Black Friday?  

Taking a few minutes to reflect, it seems like thanksgiving gets a little cheated in the decoration department.  For “trick or treat” we have entire families dressing  up and roaming neighborhoods exchanging fun-sized candies—(fun size is a great marketing term—like I always keep a “fun sized amount of cash in my wallet and many politicians seem to have a fun-sized proportion of common sense and ability to identify common goals with about half the other side of the aisle and thus we have a fun-sized amount of effective government?  

Anyway.. I will take a few minutes to look for thanksgiving lights.. however, what exactly should that search look like?  Could we find a ceramic set of misfit Europeans coming to a felt covered shore delivering a stack of bibles and miscellaneous  diseases to some indigenous characters?  Instead of a pine tree should we adorn some “Indian corn” with Hallmark inspired plastic mashed  or sweet potato  clumps hanging from it?   What about a blinking or dancing pilgrim…?  It would be great to see a spinning Mayflower that flashes to the tune of “Thank You for Being a friend” wouldn’t it?  One of the superstores could sell a life-sized “uncle Billy” figure that sits in a recliner and has  a half empty beer can in one hand and when football sounds come from your TV it emits little sayings like “that was holding… these refs need new glasses”  .. or maybe Uncle Billy  could just make belching and other bodily emission sounds?or spew random political insults which could be customized  for which ever party one might choose… and maybe you could get a matched set where one  figure barks out the standard political ramblings from each party and the remarks go back and forth until nobody is listening—-oh wait we already have that it’s called the Washington D.C. at home collection.    

Seriously.. it appears that Halloween and Christmas are sort of squeezing out Thanksgiving these days.  So maybe we can start the Thanksgiving season off by listing  five unique things one might be happy for.  Here’s a “starter” list.

1. Thanks for multi-ply toilet paper.  We’ve all tried single ply… enough said
2. Thanks for all drinks containing caffeine or other stimulants because that’s probably the only reason our GNP (U.S.) is growing  by well over 4% this year not to mention that this year the average American worker is producing 12 times as much as he or she produced in 1950 even though wages for most have not increased proportionately.
3. Thanks for all the digital music options that almost anyone can imagine as that eliminates the need to hang around the backs of grocery stores in order to swipe the requisite number of milk crates needed to store and move vinyl records.
4. Thanks for those new appliances that are connected to each other and to local merchandise providers—like the refrigerators that have an internal camera that tracks what you have inside and can develop a grocery list that can be forwarded to a local store where electronic payments can be made and a “door-dash”  driver can deliver it right to your door because when you only have two Kraft singles left…you just can’t wait until tomorrow?
5. Thanks for all the reminders that come up on our phones.  Everybody needs to know that you only need to use 82 more calories to reach your move goal and that your proctology appointment has been made and you only need to press #4 to confirm… and it is critical to know that “Cheezy feet 29 has posted two new videos of monkeys playing the tuba for a concert hall full of stray cats.

Okay to simplify … let’s start thanking the universe for things early this year and please keep us all posted if you run across an animated mechanical turkey that screams “save us—become a Vegan!”  Peace!