Dear Thanksgiving,

While others may overlook you and skip right into the Christmas spirit as soon as Halloween is over, I would like to acknowledge the fact that you exist and you are one of my favorite holidays.

From elementary school through middle school, Thanksgiving has always been one of the holidays that teachers made time to have a class party. Whether it was full-out like in second grade with a class reenactment for the first Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims and Native Americans, or the getting up to get food that was set up in the back table while my English teacher was teaching, there was always something planned around Thanksgiving.

There were always activities that had us write down what we were thankful for. Even the high school had that activity; the huge "tree" made from construction paper, sitting on the wall in the front entrance of the school, with its branches spread out for students to stick their leaves with thoughts on them. Thanksgiving in school was a tradition I looked forward to.

In my second year of college, I've made new, yet similar, traditions. My resident hall building creates its own Thanksgiving. The resident assistants and the director of the building come together with the residents to create a dinner for the entire building before we go home for Thanksgiving break. Even here we have the construction paper leaves to write out what we are thankful for in our lives.

The dinner brings residents from the entire building together in the main lounge; new friends are made as we all sit around the lounge chatting and discussing our semester and how excited we are to finally go home for a few days.

Last year, a friend of mine was not able to spend Thanksgiving with her mother because her mother was in California and she was, well, in New York. Not wanting her to spend the holiday alone on campus, I convinced her to come back home with me. At first, she felt that she was imposing, but my parents welcomed her with open arms and made her feel at home. This year, I'm bringing home a different friend because his parents decided that they weren't going to do much of anything for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving, you are the time of year that brings people together; you bring family and friends together to remind us that we are each other's support network. You bring mountains of comfort food that we inhale by the plate, laughter around the table as new tales are told, and the reminder that life should be enjoyed to its fullest. So I thank you, for always being there, for being the underdog of the end-of-the-year holidays.

Sincerely,

A Thanksgiving Fan

P.S. To those who go from Halloween straight to Christmas: