Getting Into Thanksgiving

The celebration of Christmas is a sticky issue, considering how people have responded to its commercialization. The internet has become a battlefield for the campaign to take back Thanksgiving by slandering early Christmas sales, early decorating, and Christmas music in November. What, you guys? I thought Christmas was supposed to be a good thing! For heaven’s sake, elves that kill baby reindeer for every person who decorates early? That is not the Santa Claus I believe in!

Odyssey--I MEAN DOESN'T THAT MAKE YOU SICK?

If I had my way, I’d listen to Christmas music openly year round.  I do acknowledge that there is a time and a place for it. But I’m not an extremist. I like to start my Christmas music (privately) in November. The first three weeks of December can get busy and you don’t get around to all the Christmas stuff you planned on way back last year.

I do admit, though, Thanksgiving can be a frustrating holiday because there isn’t really a lot of special music for it the way there is for Christmas, and not really as many special decorations you can do beside pumpkins and turkeys. Smack right between the two biggest holidays of the year, it can seem like the only thing that matters about Thanksgiving is the family dinner and gratitude and...well, food.  And Black Friday is fun when you get to go shopping with friends and family, but it does seem like the emphasis on all the Christmas sales right after Thanksgiving can take away from your turkey.

The issue, then, is how to make Thanksgiving more special without bruising our Christmas spirit in the process. Here’s something I’ve been thinking about. Why not during the month of November celebrate with American folk music and spirituals? Folk music is as much a part of our roots as pilgrims and pumpkin pie. And for good measure, you can listen to folk hymns during October or when you want to get religious without feeling like Halloween has to dominate everything during that month. We celebrate the autumn with fall leaves and harvest decorations--why not music about similar themes of gratitude and rejoicing?  This is something I want to try as well.

Amazon

I am a huge fan of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, so bear with me, this isn’t a paid plug, but they do a lot of great arrangements of folk songs and spirituals. You can tune in to their YouTube channel or check out some of their albums. I highly recommend Come, Thou Fount of Ev’ry Blessing--this post was mostly inspired by the fact that the cover of that album is an autumny color.

This was going to be a small post but I ended up writing a lot, as usual. But I hope this suggestion will provide a useful outlet for your anti-early-Christmas angst.