I’m a Prince fan, and one of my favs is Thieves in the Temple -- “Love come quick; love come in a hurry. …thieves
in the temple tonight.”
That’s how I feel about the relentless barrage of holiday
hype. Christmas ads waaay before Thanksgiving. Stores open Thanksgiving Day and
all night long. Too many weeks of ‘how to cook a turkey’ on every cooking show.
Spoofs mocking families around the dinner table.
As I sat looking at yet another ad for the best Black Friday
bargains, I began to feel…robbed. Thanksgiving signals the beginning of the
year-end holiday season, at least for Americans. It is a time for gathering, reflecting,
celebrating and being, well, thankful for oh so many things. While it takes
some jockeying to be inclusive of even the most difficult relatives, and although
this year may find you a little less equipped to host a big celebration,
whether for financial, health or logistical reasons, it’s still a time to
exhale the stresses of the past ten months and inhale the sweetness of the most
wonderful time of the year.
I don’t know that I care about the traditional reasons for
Thanksgiving…you know Plymouth Rock and all that rot. And my family situation
has changed so much over the years that I have had to establish a new tradition
almost every year, so it’s not that I’m bound to generations of tradition. But what I’ll always be committed to is the
spirit of the season, which is Love. All the grocery and gift shopping, all the
menu planning, all the juggling and jockeying, even all the overspending… is a
Love thing. It’s one of the few times a year that we take the limits off and lavish Love on our family and friends without apology.
Talking with others about how many people they have invited, which grandma they’re honoring by using her recipe, how many desserts,
how the biggest family is always early and always stays late…sometimes overnight, how
they have to steal a nap, the Soul Train line after dinner and before the
football games and on and on…these are what Love is made of. These are the
things for which I am, we all are, I believe, Thankful for.
I just wish the advertisers and the retailers who assault us
with their ‘clever’ ads while robbing their employees of precious family time
with holiday store hours would forsake their ‘thieving’ ways, stop sucking the
life out of the most precious time of the year and for the few weeks
that are the holiday season, be led by the Love that is the very heart of it.
Love…come quick,
Karen
