12:01 AM, November 1st. The distant sound of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” becomes stronger, ready to take over radio airplay and retail stores until the New Year. The cobwebs from Halloween and pumpkins from Thanksgiving are quickly swept away to make way for tinsel and mistletoe. However, there is a holiday in between those two which  becomes more and more ignored by the year: Thanksgiving

Sure, Thanksgiving has a troubled past to say the least. However, the modern holiday has become synonymous with family, football, turkey and sales. This time of year is a nice transition from the barely needing a coat weather of fall to the harsh winds and snowdrifts of Ohio winter. 

Thanksgiving also serves as a transition between holidays. One usually decorates for. Halloween calls for skeletons and spider webs and then the next day it’s supposed to be reindeer and tinsel? The average person is not a cast member at Disney, able to switch  between the two in a manner of hours. 

There is something about the nature of Christmas which requires snow to be on the ground, the air to be cold. A large portion of Christmas music speaks of white as far as the eye can see and desires of hot cocoa. While this phenomenon is great, it can be challenging to relate when the snow is still days or weeks away, and something simply feels less than timely about the music you hear; it is an odd sensation hearing “baby, it’s cold outside” while my weather app says it’s 60 degrees and I am in a t-shirt.

While corporate America tries to encroach and even leapfrog Thanksgiving, there are many who still hold firm in putting up their trees after Thanksgiving, maintaining that each month should have its own holiday. This is of course one small part of a larger trend of holiday encroachment.

Some may argue and say that starting the Christmas holiday celebrations earlier will let us move on from Thanksgiving as a holiday and allow people to be in better spirits for a longer span. However, to do so  is to disregard the other variety of holiday spirit that comes with a food spread, plenty of gravy, time with family and also football. Holiday spirit comes in many different forms and each needs to have its own time in the spotlight. 

So while the annual Mariah Carey defrost occurs earlier and earlier by the year, there is no shame in holding onto the turkey leg and letting Thanksgiving have its moment in the sun too.