Cheatsgiving: 6 Reason Why I Hate Thanksgiving

I really don’t like Thanksgiving. As end-of-year holidays go, it sucks. I mean, Halloween is costumes and candy and spookiness, which is amazing. Christmas is cookies and carols and presents which, hello YES. But Thanksgiving is…food, family and football which to me is essentially indigestion, fighting and falling asleep. It’s not, and never has been, my jam. Here’s why.

1. Forced thankfulness! I am already thankful for lots of things in life. I keep a thankfulness journal, in fact, right next to my bed. In it, I write the things I am thankful for on a daily basis because I have a tendency to be bitchy and complain-y, so forcing myself to look at the good things I have is necessary. Otherwise, I would spin off into even more frequent and more dramatic daily fits. So, I’m all for being grateful. But I’m going to get corny and say yes, I think it’s something you should be doing all year, every day, not just when you’re sitting around a table with your family, when you’re required to say a trite reason before you can dig into your turkey and stuffing.

2. It’s too close to Christmas! If we must have Thanksgiving, it should be in June or something. Having to see extended family just a month before you see them again for Christmas is excessive, in my opinion.  At least Christmas softens the blow with gifts…Thanksgiving just has food.

3. Football!: Cannot muster up even two figs of a fuck to give about football at any time of the year, and that includes Thanksgiving. Ditto parades.

4. The Color Scheme! Ok, I know this one is a little bit weird but….I’ve always kind of thought the colors that go along with Thanksgiving (gold, orange, brown, rust) were just ugly. I don’t want to decorate with that! I know everyone revels in the beauty of fall leaves, gourds, cornucopias, but…give me some happy red and green, please.

5. It’s Kind Of A Lie! That lovely story you learned in elementary school about the pilgrims and Native Americans all getting along and sitting down to a lovely harvest dinner is not really…true. No one ate turkey, it was actually in October, and no, the Pilgrims didn’t introduce the concept of giving thanks to the native tribes. Oh, and did you know Squanto was a Wampanoag who was actually kidnapped, brought to Europe, and then found his way back to the Americas to work as a translator? Yup. There are plenty of Native Americans don’t find Thanksgiving a reason to rejoice.

6. Retail Madness! Everyone needs to seriously chill out with all the standing in line at 4:30 am to buy toys and electronics. If the day is purportedly about family, then it should actually be about family””no getting up from the table to score Xboxes or whatever. Each year, the the holiday gets more and more co-opted by the retail industry and it’s frankly a little scary.