Giving Thanks

Although the National Football League and three television networks have made it difficult, Thanksgiving may be the one day a year when American families sit down together at the dining room table. When we were kids, aunts, uncles and cousins joined the five of us around our Ping-Pong table sans net with a couple of large sheets serving as a tablecloth. Detroit, which was flush from another successful role out of gas guzzling automobiles, celebrated by being the only NFL franchise to host a football game, and it was usually against the Packers. So, as loyal Wisconsin fans, we digested while watching. However, nothing took precedent over the lavish feast of turkey, gravy, candied yams (We called them sweet potatoes.), cranberry relish, and pumpkin pie.

We gather to give thanks--nobody is left in the kitchen.

While my parents raced to have everything prepared in the kitchen prior to the first relative’s arrival, my sister, brother and I gathered in front of the massive 16-inch black and white screen displaying the Broadway star-studded floats, highflying balloons, and monophonic sound of marching bands at the Macy Parade. We turned the TV off at the final commercial immediately prior to the float with Santa Claus. It may have been because we were Jewish, but I can remember times when our parents let us join with the other kids and have fun sitting on the big guy with the white beard and red suit’s lap—especially if the line was short. More likely, however, the end of the parade signaled time to set the table and give some thought to why the whole mishpacha was coming to our house on this day.

You can see the thanks written on our faces.

This year, as with most Thanksgivings during the past two decades, I placed two leaves in the pecan wood dining room table, roasted and basted the turkey, and glanced at the first of the football games while getting all the trimmings ready. Mother, sister, brother-in-law, nephew, two daughters, one daughter’s boyfriend and his parents replaced aunts, uncles and cousins. Like the pilgrims that survived that first winter and the Wampanoag, who not only shared their knowledge of native crops but also celebrated the first harvest with them, we expressed our gratitude for being able to share our abundant good fortune.

There's plenty of food and none of us feel a need to shop.

Yet, there was something different about this year. Long before the media dubbed the day after Thanksgiving Black Friday, based on its significance as the day most Americans initiated their Christmas shopping, its role in retail marketing was evident. In 1939, the National Retail Dry Goods Association influenced FDR to move Thanksgiving a week earlier to extend the buying season. When the Internet became a haven for consumers who wanted to avoid being trampled in the Black Friday stampede, they invented Cyber Monday. Ever ready to make things “better for consumers,” retailers started opening at five A.M. and then, midnight. But, that wasn’t good enough. Enter Gray Thursday. That’s right, this year a few—you know who they are—stores decided you can end your thankfulness, leave your family gathering at five P.M. and get to their place by six for the super sales of everything you’ve always wanted to give to someone who already has too much, but is appreciative because it’s your patriotic duty as an American consumer to buy as much as you can on this newly invented bastion of the marketplace as the center of all that we are thankful for in the world.

With all these great deals it was hard for many Catholic consumers to understand why their new pope was arguing against unfettered capitalism. Apparently he was upset that the death of a homeless man from exposure didn’t receive as much attention in the media as a surge in the market. I wonder if any rabbis feel the same way.