“How is it that we go right from Halloween to Christmas,” muttered the man on the bar stool next to me. He took a long draw on his draft beer and continued: “I don’t understand it.” I made no attempt to answer the question or to add to the discussion. I collected my beer and retired to the pool tables, but as I continued with my solitary and desultory shoving of billiard balls across the felt, I gave the question some quiet consideration.
I have noticed the early November increase in television advertising focused on “Black Friday,” the traditional precursor to the Christmas season, and until I sat down to craft this column, I believed the myth that the term referred to the date that retailers went from “red” (loss) to “black” (profit.) But according to History.com, it has a darker history, attributable to the Philadelphia Pennsylvania police department in the 1950s. The police dubbed the Friday after Thanksgiving as “Black Friday” because of the chaos that the city endured when it was besieged by shoppers and tourists who came to town to see the Army/Navy football game, which was held on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. (I guess the recent mob of Taylor Swift fans created for Indianapolis folks a “Pink Friday.”)
The tradition of Thanksgiving is acknowledged to be an outgrowth of the 1621 harvest festival that the English colonists from Plymouth celebrated with the native Wampanoag people. It became a national holiday during the Civil War in 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that the day be celebrated each November. “Black Friday” became the day after Thanksgiving, when retailers priced goods and services in a way designed to stimulate pre-Christmas sales. And despite its own sad history – Native Americans can object to having been overrun by English immigrants – the Thanksgiving holiday can be a time of reflection. We got a lot of things right, and what went wrong can be overcome.
I gave an associate a copy of one of my columns published in January 2012, when the Weekly View was still the Eastside Voice. In “Turn, Turn, Turn,” I wrote of the music that singer/songwriter Pete Seeger put to the words from the Book of Ecclesiastes. Seeger released the song in 1959, but when it was covered in 1965 by the rock band “The Byrds,” it reached a larger audience. And to every thing, there is truly a season. And for this brief period between Halloween and Christmas, there is a time to give thanks, in whatever way we choose. During the period leading up to Thanksgiving, my second bride would take our two children to the Julian Center to help serve dinner to people who lacked shelter and needed a resource for a meal. The hope was that for that time, and maybe for other times, our children would learn to share with those who had less than they had.
My first bride died on July 23rd, 2024, and our daughter is grieving, for this is her time to mourn. It may take some time for her to remember what there is that she should be thankful for, but her mother lived for a time to hope, and gave to her two grandchildren, a time of joy. And I swear it’s not too late for those two to learn the lessons of living, love, and loss. And in a time of loss, it is important for us to remember the joy that we had before. Despite how we might feel about the days that preceded this one, we can still find things for which to be thankful.
cjon3acd@att.net