Thanksgiving is my all-time favorite holiday. Good food, good wine and good company. What more can you ask for? Unfortunately, it’s easy to forget what the holiday is really about.
Why we need new thanksgiving traditions
Last year I worked a short-term stint as a substitute teacher. When turkey day rolled around the youngsters I was working with — middle-school students — had very little to say about thankfulness, family or even turkey. Instead, all they could talk about was “Black Friday.”
It is a sad state of affairs when a holiday about thankfulness becomes about shopping and consumerism. These days I work with college students. Though they’re a little bit more mature about it — shopping for interview suits instead of asking their parents for big screens television sets — their sentiments are the same.
That’s basically all the reason I need to go on a campaign to save Thanksgiving. Here are five unusual traditions that just might help us do just that.
— Erin Wildermuth