Following is an excerpt from this week’s column on AL.com. The link at the bottom takes you to the full column.
It’s time to Occupy Thanksgiving. I know what you’re thinking – the day after Halloween means it’s time to break out the Christmas decor, right? No.
We don’t really need six weeks to set up the tree and the nativity, inflate the blow-man family for the yard and the string the lights, that’s just what retailers want us to believe. (Although, really, go ahead and unpack the lights … it could take that long just to untangle them.)
I don’t understand why we need to rush into Christmas, y’all. Just because stores start by piping in Bing Crosby as soon as the trick-or-treaters are in bed doesn’t mean we have to take the bait. Could we stop for just one moment and consider the feelings of poor Thanksgiving, the Black-Friday sheep of holidays?
Before Halloween, any Thanksgiving decor in stock is relegated to the lower shelves closest to the warehouse, the Siberia of big-box stores. The day after, when the costumes and candy have been moved to the 95-percent-off bins, you’ll find the cornucopias and ceramic turkey napkin rings … still on the lower shelves but now outside the garden/Christmas shop.
On behalf of Thanksgiving, I say, “Wth, Walmart/Target/Big Lots? Wth?”
Y’all know I love gifts and Santa and carols — did I mention gifts? — but there’s such a thing as overkill. By the week before Christmas, I am ready to scream if I hear one more note of “Feliz Navidad.” I can’t shed one more tear over a Hallmark movie, or find any more second-tier friends on whom to bestow a re-gifted fruitcake. We could avoid that overload if we paused for a bit to celebrate Thanksgiving, a native word for, “No, really, take our food and our land.” Click here to read the full column on AL.com.
KellyKazek.com 
I agree with you, the whole Christmas shopping season has gotten absurd. As much as I like Christmas, I’m not ready to listen to Christmas music the day after Halloween, or put up decorations, as some of my neighbors have. Some local stores even opened on Thanksgiving-I think that this is very unfair to the people who work there, and I won’t go to a store on Thanksgiving, no way. It’s a family day and these folks should be able to spend it with their families. We have so few “real” holidays left any more as it is. All the other “holidays,” I’ve come to call non-holidays because nobody closes and most people still have to go to work.
The only days where everywhere shut down had gotten down to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Day, and now they want to turn Thanksgiving into a commercial day too. Why, because they can’t make much of any money off Thanksgiving, except for food? How about New Year’s Day instead. Well, people are too exhausted from partying the night before to go shopping, and, of course, Christmas is over. We don’t drink, so I guess we miss all the so- called fun. Last year, Hubby and I took a day trip to New York City to see the Intrepid Museum on New Years’ Day and the highway going there and the roads in the city were absolutely deserted. If you wanted to film a post-apocalyptic movie, this would have been the perfect time! We loved the lack of traffic, it made for a pleasant ride.
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Sweetums and I were actually thinking of traveling on Christmas Day this year. With the kids scattered, we thought it might be fun.
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