Bor da, Thanksgiving DAY isn't very commercialized compared to almost every other holiday. In fact, it's almost totally ignored. The day after, and every day until after the first of January, is part of the most commercialized season of the year.
I stay home. My entire family helps cook. We enjoy each other and the company of friends today. There was not a single robo sales call ringing the phone today. We only study if we feel like it.😀 It's one of the best days of the year.
Actually, I don't know if today or yesterday was better. Yesterday I got to chop the head off my rooster and then pluck and clean him. Ahhhh, my FIRST TIME - what a memory! So, today I got to sleep in without being wakened at 5AM with his crowing. Yes, I had much to be thankful for today!
Sorry, for those of you who feel like time spent with relatives is an annoyance. I come from a rather large family. Nine of us are living in the house right now, and I have some older sibs who have married and moved away. We really enjoy any time we can spend together.
I'm glad to hear that your day with your own relative was happier than usual.
Oh man, that rooster bit sounds AWESOME. It's been a desire of mine for a while to cook something from the most basic state possible--deboning, defeathering, the whole deal. I'm rather jealous. But these are the travails of a metropolitan area XD
To be fair, a lot of the awkwardness comes from political/philosophical divergences. My immediate family is quite liberal compared to my mom's family, the ones I spend thanksgiving with. I'm afraid that any thing I say about my studies (biochemistry and religion) will set off my mom's family. And I'm introverted to begin with, and by extension, terrible with small talk. Today, fortunately, my little chats about genomics went over their heads and the chats about religion involved only a benign discussion of religious diversity in India. I got to talk about what I liked to them and I didn't get criticized for it. That was what made me happy (in addition to the food).
And I've worked on Thanksgiving several times in the past (I worked in a grocery store, as a cashier and later as a bookkeeper) and seeing the way people deal with everything on Thanksgiving has probably colored my view quite a bit. At some point people didn't seem to care that I had a home and a family and a meal I wanted to get back to, and I was just another cog in the machine. It was a pseudo-gourmet grocery store, too, and no one seemed very thankful or considerate of anything.
I guess the commercialization that I was thinking of was the fact that it is completely ignored in the larger pantheon of American holidays, when in theory it's one of the sweetest, heartwarming days there are. It's commercialized in the sense that it's just a stepping stone between Halloween and Christmas, I suppose. I would love for stores to take a bit more time off for Thanksgiving, to hold off on Christmas decorations, and to actually guarantee a closed day.
I'm probably slightly cynical for this discussion
😛
