Now that the kids are back in school I’ve finally managed a minute and wanted to just make a few points about Thanksgiving.

I’m not a huge fan of this holiday.  In short.

YOU SIR, ARE NO CHRISTMAS

To me, Thanksgiving is like sub-Christmas, a junior varsity Christmas if you will.  It’s the day that you make the effort to drag your family to visit the people that you probably won’t bother visiting during the “real” holiday.

FAULTY PREMISE

The story goes that the Pilgrims came here seeking religious tolerance.  I don’t really think that’s true, is it?  The Pilgrims were puritans and lived by a pretty restrictive code.  Seems to me that they came here not for religious tolerance but in order to practice their own brand of religious intolerance.

TURKEY IS FOWL

It’s honestly not that I don’t like don’t like turkey, it’s fine.  Just fine.  Still, ham is where it’s at.  As of right now, ham is optional dish on Thanksgiving, and turkey a must.  I say we switch that.  I don’t think it’s too much to ask.

THANKS BUT NO THANKS

Every Sunday we have a big family dinner in the dining room.  During dinner everyone in the family takes a turn saying what they’re thankful for.  It’s basically a weekly recap of event and general counting of blessings.

It’s a great little exercise, giving thanks.  And it doesn’t take much.  It certainly doesn’t take so much that we need to set aside one day a year in order to concentrate on it.  But we have the day set aside nonetheless.

One of the things I think saying thanks best helps to illustrate is that the most valuable things in life are not things at all, but are people.

Which brings me to Black Friday (which now begins on Thursday (the Thursday formerly known as Thanksgiving)).

In truth, I don’t care about the mob scene at Wal-Mart.  It’s doesn’t bother me at all if you want to stay up all night standing in line so that you can fight your way through tightly-packed crowds in order to get cheap things.

After, this here’s America.  And in America, we love cheap things.

And just how much do we love cheap things?

So much that we took the one day we had set aside to say thanks for people, and we replaced it with a day to celebrate things.

And that’s just fine if that’s your thing.  But I’m not really interested in that.

So let’s make a decision, America, once and for all.

People or things?