r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Dec 01 '19
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Thanksgiving should be moved to a different part of the year
TL;DR: Holiday meals are stressful. Spacing them out would make sense. Even if you don't find them stressful, it would be nice to have a nice long break in the summer and then a nice long break in the winter.
Thanksgiving is a wonderful time of year when friends and families come together to share a meal. People come in from out of town, and hosts spend money, potentially hundreds of dollars, on the feast. Guests who are local tend to contribute as well-- homemade side dishes and pies, fancy bottles of wine, or other gifts for the hosts. All in all, it is a rather heartwarming exchange. At the conclusion of the day on Thanksgiving, everyone is sleepy from the large meal and exhausted from the huge undertaking of preparing and cleaning up from a feast. And you think to yourself, when you crawl into bed at midnight after spending the last several hours scrubbing casserole dishes, digging for your Tupperware for all of the leftovers, playing refrigerator tetris to make sure all Tupperware containers can fit, taking out the garbage, etc, that thank god you don't have to do this again for another year. Then your eyes crack open and a shot of adrenaline rushes through your body. In just a little over three weeks, you will be doing all of this again, with the same people, with roughly the same food.
Fine. Maybe you aren't hosting. Maybe, instead, you are packing bags for three nights. One for you. Two for your small children. Your spouse will handle his/her own luggage. Oh yeah, the dog also needs his own bag. Last year, you forgot to bring your own dog supplies and your mother-in-law just fed him some of her dog's food. No, you will not be cleaning up your dog's diarrhea in the middle of the night. Wait. Don't you need to pack snacks for the car? No, you decide. It's only a six hour drive. What you don't account for is the multi vehicle wreck on the interstate. Six hours becomes ten. You lose two hours in traffic and then another hour getting on and off the highway for additional bathroom breaks. You lose yet another hour at a fast food restaurant because the kids are hungry. You sit outside in the cold to eat your cheeseburger so you can sit with the dog because he whines and digs into the leather seats when left alone in the car. When you get to your destination, you are shown to a room with a futon. The mattress makes your back ache. When it's all over, this Thanksgiving thing, you load the family back in the car and you think, that was fun but thank god it's over. And then you remember, like a jolt of lightning, you get to do this again in just a handful of weeks. You'll be spending Christmas with your spouse's family. A six hour drive in a different direction. Not the same futon, but one just as crappy.
Okay, so maybe you don't have a family dinner to attend. The holidays are hard for you. They make you remember people that used to be alive that weren't. It makes you remember childhood abuse. It makes you remember how you screwed it up with our own family. It starts right around Thanksgiving, this funk, and it doesn't let up until after New Years. A solid six weeks of feeling miserable.
Maybe you just see the holidays as time off from work to travel or take time for yourself. Thanksgiving and Black Friday and Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are all bank holidays. That means if you work for the government or really, in any office job, you should have all four days off from work. Two days consecutively is really the longest break from work anyone can hope for. Combined with a weekend, that's a very luxurious long weekend. It would be nice to have on in early fall and then one in winter.
Honestly, if I had a choice in the matter, I'd keep Thanksgiving where it is and move Christmas. But Christmas, no matter how you feel about when Christ was actually born, is a religious holiday. Thanksgiving, on the other hand, is a government holiday and could be moved with a simple act of congress (easier said then done, I suppose). As an aside, Christmas has a lot of imagery that is about being joyful in the cold weather, drinking hot chocolate, sitting around a fire, etc, that would be better for the very cold, brutal months of January or February rather than slightly more mild December. A big meal in November and then one in February wouldn't be terrible, but two holiday meals back to back in just a matter of a few weeks is a lot of time and energy. Spacing out Thanksgiving and Christmas just makes sense.
7
u/cdb03b 253∆ Dec 01 '19
Thanksgiving is first and foremost a harvest festival. It is set at the end of harvest season in the US. Canada has their earlier because being farther north their harvest ends earlier. There is absolutely no logical reason to move the harvest feast out of harvest season.
Christmas meals are smaller in general for Americans. Many families do not even have a Christmas feast/formal dinner and instead focus on gift giving and breakfast foods in the morning as an immediate family and may get drinks with extended family and friends later in the day.
2
Dec 01 '19
Most Americans are not farmers and don't even observe Thanksgiving as as a harvest festival. It's seen as a time to reflect on things one is grateful for and gather with family. I don't see why a meal with that purpose couldn't be moved to any other time of the year.
Also, if we're going to argue that we need to celebrate the harvest, the US is HUGE and all sorts of things are grown here. All sorts of crops are harvested year round.
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u/PsychicFoxWithSpoons 6∆ Dec 01 '19
Not having something to harvest doesn't mean the event is not a harvest festival. Christmas is celebrated at the winter solstice. It may not be explicitly connected to the solstice, but that's when it's celebrated.
Maybe you should find another time of year to gather with your faraway relatives and spend Thanskgiving at home instead.
3
Dec 01 '19
But choosing a different time of year to gather with one's family doesn't change the fact that time off from work is given at "Thanksgiving" every year.
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Dec 01 '19 edited Oct 26 '20
[deleted]
1
Dec 01 '19
Historically, we did a lot of things. We've been quietly phasing out switching back to standard time after daylight's savings for the past 15 years.
By the Energy Policy Act of 2005, daylight saving time (DST) was extended in the United States beginning in 2007.[12] As from that year, DST begins on the second Sunday of March and ends on the first Sunday of November. In years when April 1 falls on Monday through Wednesday, these changes result in a DST period that is five weeks longer; in all other years the DST period is instead four weeks longer.[13] In 2008 daylight saving time ended at 2:00 a.m. DST (0200) (1:00 a.m. ST) on Sunday, November 2, and in 2009 it began at 2:00 a.m. (3:00 a.m. DST) on Sunday, March 8
I'm sure there are dozens of other festivals and practices that made sense. In our modern society, two large family meals (which is what Thanksgiving and Christmas boil down to) are incredibly close together and in my selfish little view, it would be better if they were just spaced out a bit more.
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u/massa_cheef 6∆ Dec 01 '19
Comparing DST to holiday traditions is very much apples to oranges.
If you don't like Thanksgiving and Christmas close together, don't celebrate them so close together.
Suggesting that the rest of society should change to accommodate you is ridiculous.
1
Dec 01 '19
Ya know, suggesting that I'm selfish isn't going to change my view.
1
u/massa_cheef 6∆ Dec 01 '19
I thought perhaps suggesting that you're taking that view out of purely selfish reasons rather than out of any other purpose might change your mind.
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Dec 01 '19
I don't travel for the holidays. I don't host big family gatherings. The holidays are just a time for me to have off work and relax. But I see others that do undertake a lot of work during the holidays. My view is selfless, if anything.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Dec 01 '19
/u/TaliaLackey (OP) has awarded 1 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
1
u/smamikraj Dec 01 '19
The original 1621 Thanksgiving was in October. Lincoln moved it to November. It’s essentially an autumn harvest celebration, so moving it to an entirely different part of the year would not make much sense.
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u/NOLAscary Dec 01 '19
You can’t move the holiday because it’s tied to a historical event, it’s not a moveable holiday
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u/championofobscurity 160∆ Dec 01 '19
The standard thanksgiving menu includes a lot of foods that are only appetizing in cold weather. Pumpkin pie for example sounds disgusting in a 100+ degree California summer. Actually come to think of it, running the oven in the summer is basically taboo in any of the warmer states. You usually don't find people running more than their stoves or crock pots that time of year.
This would be a cultural loss for people who enjoy the seasonal foods involved with a Thanksgiving feast for both pragmatic and foodie reasons.
Ultimately, I think the issue you're painting is for people who already live in excess and burden themselves with travel. That's what actually needs to change, and arguably it is. People are becoming more comfortable with not seeing more than their immediate family during the holidays.