Maybe some of you haven't heard about it, but Thanksgiving is coming up. Since the end of October, I've met so many people who are already preparing for Christmas. Trust me, I get it. Christmas is one of those holidays that just instantly brightens your mood and makes the winter a little less dull. I, like many of you, will probably be overly enthusiastic about Christmas when December comes. But why skip over Thanksgiving?

For starters, Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that are actually intended to give you a break. Before the chaos that is the Christmas season, Thanksgiving allows you to relax and enjoy the last days of fall. I am aware that preparing a Thanksgiving meal is actually a lot of work. But once your done, you have time to enjoy the company of others and unwind after all the work is done.

Thanksgiving is also a time to catch up with family and friends. For me, its the one time during the year that most of my family gets together. I get to see people that I haven't seen or talked to in months. And despite my lack of enthusiasm of having to go to family functions, Thanksgiving is one of those times when I don't mind. Sure, I'll be bombarded with questions about how my semester went and be forced to go into detail about all the things I've been up to, but in the end I'm thankful that I have a family, no matter how annoying they can get. Now I know that Christmas is also advertised as a time for family, but often we get lost in the whirlwind of buying gifts and planning the holiday that we often lose sight of that.

Finally, Thanksgiving is a time to be grateful.The commercialism that surrounds Christmas has taken over a holiday that relies solely on humbling ourselves and thinking about all the things we should be grateful for. In today's society, its so easy to get wrapped up with all the little problems in our lives that we forget to take time to realize how good a lot of us have it.

This past week I learned a lot about gratefulness. As I was sitting with some of my friends, one of them mentioned how they start each day by writing down three things they were grateful for without repeating the same one. She suggested going around the table each saying something we could be thankful for since Thanksgiving is only days away. As I started to think about it, I realized that there are a lot of things to be thankful for that I have often taken for granted. For the last three months, I had been focusing on the negatives in my life: bad grades, problems with my roommates, being alone in a completely new place, etc. But there are so many positives in my life that I never stopped to think about. Being able to attend university, having shelter, food, water. Those are all things many of us take for granted but those are things we should remember to be grateful for. Thanksgiving is a time when we should reflect on all the things we forget to be thankful for during the year.

Whether you're a fan of Thanksgiving or not, I think there's something we can all gain from celebrating this holiday. Many of us today lose sight of the important things in life because of our hectic schedules and stressful lives. Thanksgiving should be that one time of year where we focus on those little things we take for granted. While Christmas is great, Thanksgiving is greater because it allows us to take some time out of our lives to focus on the important things.