Thanksgiving has always been a time that gets everyone excited and everyone starts talking about it. In college, students talk nonstop of a good home-cooked meal, in high school its talk about Black Friday shopping, and in elementary schools kids babble on about vacations. Everyone, all throughout my life, loves Thanksgiving, and I don’t understand why. Call me a Grinch, but I hate Thanksgiving.

I don’t like Thanksgiving dinner, a gateway drug into the life of obesity and diabetes. The older I get the more I have realized that I hate the way my family cooks the Thanksgiving turkey (sorry Grandma). Sucked dry of any moisture, the last 19 years I have eaten turkey dryer than the Sahara that no amount of gravy could revive. Mashed potatoes always remind me of instant mashed potatoes (that was a terrible experience to be told another day), and the vegetables are never fully cooked. To be completely honest, the only foods I like that are around the Thanksgiving holiday are cranberry sauce, the Pillsbury croissants you can purchase at any time of the year, and pumpkin pie for breakfast.

Try as we may, Thanksgiving just never works out the way we want it; last year it was three of us eating enough bone-dry food for seven people. Boom! Food coma! Thanksgiving “dinner” is actually closer to lunch, followed by many hours of laying in bed, too grossly stuffed to move. There is nothing beneficial to eating your weight in turkey and mashed potatoes to the point where you have no option but to sleep it off. An excessive amount of starches, carbs, and a lack of vegetables makes Thanksgiving “dinner” one of the least healthy meals of the entire year, and no one likes having to carry around a food ay the size of the turkey for a few days! It just isn’t healthy.

While I hate Thanksgiving, I love Christmas (I’m sorry to all the friends who have had to put up with my Christmas carols in stores so far). My family has more Christmas traditions in November than we do Thanksgiving ones, and Thanksgiving just gets in the way. The most “Thanksgiving” we decorate is busting out the Publix Pilgrim salt and pepper shakers, yet at the same time Christmas items slowly leak their way into our house. It is frowned upon to be in the Christmas spirit before Thanksgiving, but my inner 5 year old just can’t help that Buddy the Elf is her spirit animal! I would rather decorate a house for Christmas, stinging popcorn and cranberries for the tree, than baste a turkey all night and be thankful it is only one night.

Thanksgiving, as we are taught in school, is time designed to recognize what we are thankful for, yet over the years that message is forgotten, our eyes blinded by images of roasted turkeys and mashed potatoes. While the idea of thinking about what you are thankful for in your life is incredibly important, it should not come down to one single day. Every day of your life you should wake up and recognize how fortunate you are and what you are thankful for, not just a single designated day that the holiday has become.

Thanksgiving is just like a filler holiday that has lost all significance over the years. A gateway to obesity and diabetes, the holiday is so negative on health that it counteracts any kind of attempt of the “Get Up and Move” campaign. For the children of families who cannot cook, the holiday is a nightmare, and for Christmas lovers like myself, it is hard having to deal with the judgment of others when you just want to sing Christmas carols all day. Thanksgiving isn’t everyone’s holiday... Black Friday on the other hand...