November is a special month. The weather is brisk, but not too brisk. A wide variety of prettily-hued leaves blankets the landscape. Turkeys everywhere keep their heads on a swivel when they leave their homes. Their Day of Reckoning — aka Thanksgiving — looms. Best of all, November marks the second month of the Christmas Season trilogy, a fact which radio stations celebrate by dropping their normal rotations in favor of all holiday classics, all the time.
I’m sorry, but for me, its not really Christmas time until I hear “Christmas Bells,” the song where Snoopy and the Red Baron put aside their airborne rivalry for just one day. Never fails to bring a tear to these old eyes, I swear.
Yeah, November has a lot going for it. Just look at all those beloved Thanksgiving traditions, the best of which involves dressing up like a pilgrim or an Indian and going door to door to get seasonal treats from your neighbors.
Sadly, it seems that this practice may be going the way of the doo-doo bird. Back in the day, Thanksgiving in my house used to be measured by the laundry basket.
Allow me to explain. Each year we would give out little party bags of
turkey and cranberry sauce. We typically made enough bags to fill about two laundry baskets. As the years progressed, the number of bags given out got smaller and smaller, and thus the number of bags put together also shrank.
Look, I refuse to let trick or turkeying be sent to an early grave. The thought of my kids growing up never getting to experience it depresses me to no end. I don’t fight for much, but this is worth it. If doing so requires me to kick down some doors and get sent to jail for burglary, so be it. Viva la revolucion!
I’m sure that all of you out there can relate to this. You probably all have similar stories of declining interest in trick or turkeying. I blame the fact that kids today are growing up too fast what with their skinny jeans, scene haircuts and MTV2.
And swine flu. I blame that too.
Like any good month, November doesn’t rely solely on one holiday to carry the festivities. No sir.
Before families have even had the opportunity to take their Thanksgiving trees down for the year, November is at the holiday thing again, this time
delivering the seasonal sucker punch that is Black Friday.
Now I’ve got some things to say about this particular holiday, so allow me to get up on my soap box here for a minute. Ok, I’m on it. Being up here is going to make typing difficult but I will not allow such things to slow me down.
Christmas takes a lot a flack for being “too commercial” and having lost its meaning. I hear these complaints all the time, and even if this is truthful and no one remembers what the real point of Christmas actual is— how can you say that about one holiday and not the one that precedes it on the calendar?
I mean, just look at Black Friday with its dangerously slashed prices and unruly packs of bargain scavengers trolling local malls and commercial centers, willing to do anything, with no thought spared towards future litigations, just to save a buck or two on the “G.I. Joe Deluxe Edition” DVD.
Does anyone out there even remember what Black Friday used to stand for? Before consumerism claimed the day after Thanksgiving as its unholy bride?
All you history buffs out there will know that Black Friday was named for Major General Zachariah Black, the man who signed the treaty that effectively ended the American-Canadian War of 1878. Since that day, which was a Friday, the two countries have lived in harmony, with the longest unfortified boarder in the world running between them.
How this momentous day was turned into a celebration of greed and profit, I will never know. It makes me sad though, that the memory of Major General Black has been lost to time.
I think I should have been a history major.
Regrets about my career path aside, this will be the last issue of The Quad before December. So, have a wonderful time trick or turkeying, enjoy some time spent with family and friends and, most importantly, stay safe.
That includes steering clear of the malls on Black Friday. No bargain— no matter how appealing it may seem, no matter how incredibly, Earth-shatteringly low, no matter how gargantuan the pile of money is that you would save— is worth getting injured or worse over.
Now get out of here you crazy kids. Go listen to the Snoopy and Red Baron song. It will change your life, I swear.