Gobble, Gluttony, Gobble

As every American knows, Thanksgiving is this Thursday.

I was listening to the radio (I'm an avid radio listener.  A good amount of my conversation is based on what I've heard recently.) and for the past two days, a prominent program has been talking about the perils of Thanksgiving dinners.  For example, how can you keep family members from bringing up taboo topics?  The answer: drink less.  Then the host pointed out that sometimes the only thing that makes getting together as a family bearable is the copious consumption of alcohol.

Then the guest recommended using cloth napkins because it really spruces up the table.

Important stuff, I grant you.

By a show of hands, how many of you have seen a commercial for Thanksgiving that doesn't involve gluttony or Black Friday deals?  I don't see any hands.

If we went by the advertising, Americans are duped into believing that Thanksgiving isn't an important holiday because ads go straight from pushing candy and costumes at us, to pushing Christmas spending.  Buy, buy, buy!  But whatever you do, do NOT be grateful for what you already have.

This attitude makes me want to lash out.

I heard a statistic once that stated that ninety percent of the world's population can't afford carpet.  How can we consistently find things to be unhappy about when we have carpet covering our floors and warming our toes?

I hope all of us will take more than a couple of seconds this week to think about how much we really have, carpet included, of course.  The turkey will be much happier to have given his life for our annual family argument if we're only shouting things at one another we're grateful for.