I think, as a nation, it is time that we looked at ourselves in the mirror and asked a very important question. (No, it is not, “How am I going to get rid of all this extra turkey?”)

Hope you kids like turkey, because we’ll be eating it for the next three months.

Why, as a nation, do we largely ignore Thanksgiving?

That’s not to say that we don’t celebrate it. After all, family reunions, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and eating enough to satisfy a small nation are all part of the experience. Yet, as a whole, we don’t really have much to do with Turkey Day anymore. There’s no build up and no hype. When compared to Halloween or Christmas, Thanksgiving just doesn’t seem to have much of a presence.

In fact, that might just be part of the problem. The other three majorly marketed holidays around this time of year (the unholy commercial triumvirate of Halloween, Christmas, and New Year) all have characteristics that make them uniquely “sell-able,” so to speak.

“Sell Christmas-Trees shaped like Jack-o-lanterns? Bill, you’re a genius!”

Christmas can be marketed as a jovial and loving time of year, secularly expressed by gift-giving. Halloween takes on an energetic and “creepy” vibe, often encouraging candy consumption and the preparation of elaborate outfits. The New Year is celebrated with lavish parties, many of which take weeks of costly preparation.

Yet, Thanksgiving functions differently. It doesn’t have a central tone to it. Getting riotously excited over Thanksgiving football doesn’t exactly mesh too well with an internalized feeling of thanks. On top of that, there’s no good way to really sell Thanksgiving. The commercial opportunities of the holiday are limited to various foodstuffs and cooking supplies,

mean, I guess that you could spend your money on something like this but, then again, maybe you’re not completely mad.

At the end of the day, there’s no good way to market Thanksgiving. There’s no commercial figure to center it around (like Santa Claus) nor is there a prevailing atmosphere to the holiday (like Halloween). But I think that the reason that we tend to ignore Thanksgiving goes a little deeper than a simple lack of marketing. After all, there’s a reason that we’re concerned that Christmas has taken over Halloween while Halloween is completely untouched by Thanksgiving.

I’ll put it this way. How often do you think back to the history of Thanksgiving? The connections back to European harvest celebrations are sparse at best and the American recognition of the holiday inadvertently brings up some rather bleak subjects.

The American celebration of Thanksgiving can be traced back to the Puritan settlers who, in a twist of fate, were saved from starvation from Squanto and the Wampanoag tribe of Native Americans. (The feast is frequently traced back to the year 1621.) When children learn about this event it creates a pleasant, patriotic, and idealistic representation of early European interactions with Native Americans. However, as we grow older, it’s hard not to remember some of the atrocities committed towards the Native Americans and any optimism connected to the original Thanksgiving is underwhelming at best.

“Wow, thanks guys! We definitely won’t kill hundreds of you and force our ways of life upon you over the next couple hundred years.”

Of course, not even later events can really make Thanksgiving historically relevant. You could argue that Lincoln’s declaration of Thanksgiving as a national holiday would make it relevant, but that’s grasping at straws. We seemed to have devalued the holiday as a nation. Its historical background is uncomfortable at best and the actual celebration is hard to market.

Now, none of this is to say you can’t enjoy the holiday. Heck, I plan on stuffing myself to the brim with stuffing. But if you hear someone complain about how Christmas is overshadowing Thanksgiving, just remember that, as a nation, we made that call ourselves.