It is the year 1621. Plymouth Colonists and the Wampanoag are sharing a hearty autumn feast together. There is not a hint of worry in the air. Life is good. Centuries later, we still celebrate this wonderful holiday where families come together and just have a good time.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas, I wouldn’t consider myself as a “Grinchy” person at all. However, something I do despise is when the calendar hits November 1^st  and people completely ignore Thanksgiving and just switch into Christmas mode.

Christmas has been commercialized into the dirt by the United States and is no longer celebrated for its true meaning. The true meaning of Christmas was to celebrate the birth of Jesus Chris; not for toddlers to cry if they don’t receive an Xbox from “Santa”. The way the United States portrays Christmas honestly just looks like an opportunity to sell products to consumers which brings me to my second reason.

Immediately after Thanksgiving, there is a period known as Black Friday in which people purchase gifts for Christmas at a discounted price. In 2008, a Walmart employee by the name of Jdimytai Damour was killed due to a crowd surge and being trampled on. This ruins the thankful and happy mood of Thanksgiving as people’s greed gets the best of them and literally murder people for the latest TV.

My third reason is that people celebrate Thanksgiving for its real purpose: to unify people who may have not seen each other or have conflict and to have a feast in which they have no worries in the world.

This brings us to my fourth point, which is that Thanksgiving food absolutely steamrolls Christmas foods. During Thanksgiving, there are varieties of different appetizers, food, and desserts in which even the pickiest eater can find something they can enjoy.  But for Christmas all you can really get is gingerbread cookies and hot chocolate, which are both very available throughout the whole year.

Finally, there is plenty of football to watch during Thanksgiving. The Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys have hosted football games annually on Thanksgiving since 1966. The only sport Christmas has available is NBA games, which draw in significantly lower viewership than football does. According to Sport Media Watch, the NFL drew in around 30 million viewers which in comparison is only slightly less then the Academy awards and game 7 of the Cubs-Indians world series.

In comparison, the most NBA viewers average around 7 million viewers, which is miniscule in comparison to the NFL.

Thanksgiving should not be totally skipped over for Christmas. There are plenty of things wrong with Christmas that people seem to totally ignore. Don’t get me wrong–Christmas has some awesome things, such as music, movies, and atmosphere.  But this is still not an excuse for Thanksgiving to be totally forgotten or passed over.