Hello, and welcome to another edition of Extremist Makeover! If you missed the first installment, shame on you! But since I like ya, I’ll let it go…this time!
Basically, Extremist Makeover tries to take something we know and try to improve its image by slapping a new coat of paint on it. Today’s installment involves one of my favorite holidays, Thanksgiving.
There was a time in this country when Thanksgiving meant something. Getting together with family, enjoying all sorts of food, watching the Detroit Lions lose again. You know, the really important things in life. But lately, Thanksgiving is treated like the Arbor Day of the fourth quarter of the year: recognized by a handful of people, but otherwise overlooked. Like Pauly Shore’s movie career.
In preparation for this piece, I did some thinking about the nature of society and the three major holidays of this time of year, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. All three of these holidays involve giving in some fashion, but only two involve tangible goods. For Halloween, you give out candy, or booze if you’re a parent of a trick-or-treater. For Christmas, you give presents. What do you give for Thanksgiving? Well, thanks. It’s literally in the name of the holiday!
This is where society comes into play. It wasn’t that long ago that people loved to spend time with each other in fellowship and food. With the advent of the Internet and social media, people are no longer interested in turkey and stuffing and more interested in taking pictures of the turkey and stuffing to post on Instagram. Oh, and taking selfies doing a turducken face.
As we’ve gotten more superficial and obsessed with material goods (yay capitalism!), we’ve forgotten how to give thanks or appreciate what we have. In turn, that’s turned Thanksgiving into a detour between Halloween and Black Friday. And the weekend after Thanksgiving turns into a detour between Black Friday and Cyber Monday where you can still buy a Blu-Ray player for $25, but you don’t have to leave your house to fight off your fellow human beings for it. So, yay, I guess?
In short, Thanksgiving is getting the short end of the shaft. And, as anyone can tell you, that cat Shaft is a bad mutha…where was I again? Oh, yeah, Thanksgiving! How do we turn our annual triptophan fix into something even the most superficial amongst us would want to be part of?
With the nature of modern society being what it is, you might think merchandising and advertising would be the answer. But you’d be wrong. Americans aren’t opposed to spending money on Thanksgiving, and only the dumbest person would be a hard sell on a day off in the latter half of the week, so we don’t need to raise awareness of Thanksgiving’s existence. What we need to do is make people care about it again.
For this, we have to look at what makes America tick these days. And what really gets us going is a combination of violence, getting something for nothing, competition, and the possibility of someone getting embarrassed and/or seriously injured. There’s only one thing I know of that ticks all those boxes.
Japanese game shows.
More specifically, Takeshi’s Castle, better known in the States as Most Extreme Elimination Challenge.
Basically, the idea behind the shows is people competing in a series of physical stunts to whittle down the contestants to only those who successfully beat the challenges. Then, the finalists compete in one last challenge until there is only one contestant standing, often literally.
The original show had over 100 contestants at a time, so to increase the likelihood of violence, getting something for nothing, competition, and the possibility of someone getting embarrassed and/or seriously injured, I think we should keep this number. And we shouldn’t limit the scope to just a few people who want to humiliate themselves on camera!
Pick out 100 people at random from all socioeconomic groups and offer fantastic prizes, like having their personal income taxes paid in full or a really nice set of steak knives. You know, something the whole family can enjoy.
So, where does Thanksgiving come into play? This competition would be held on Thanksgiving Day! Replace the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Detroit Lions game with the new Thanksgiving tradition, Thanksgiving Thunderdome! With the stunts and challenges I have planned, we could rip through the contestants at a pretty good clip. And don’t tell me you wouldn’t get a lot of joy at watching Bill Gates try to navigate a field of cow patties while being chased by people who think Microsoft is the worst company ever? (Namely, anybody who has used a Microsoft product on a regular basis.)
All we need is a network to pick it up and we have ourselves a hit and a way to make Thanksgiving mean something again!
Until next time, keep your feet on the ground and your head on top of your neck.
Tag: thanksgiving
Thanks, But No Thanksgiving
Maybe I missed the memo on this, but has November become the black sheep of the calendar family? It seems we’ve gone from wearing scary costumes to Santa costumes in the span of, oh, minutes after Halloween ended. It’s almost as though we’ve forgotten the major holiday that occurs in November: Black Friday.
Seriously, though, we’re more interested in running up credit card debts we’ll be paying off right around next Christmas than we are about being thankful for what we have right now. Granted, COVID-19 and 2020 in general make it harder to be thankful than usual, but I’ve noticed this trend well before this year. It seems like the one time of the year set aside to appreciate what God (or whatever entity you worship or don’t worship) has given us has been replaced by a new god. No matter how cool the PlayStation 5 is, that should give us pause for concern.
It’s natural to want to have what others want and to get it first so you can be the envy of your friends. This feeling has grown to Godzilla-sized proportions with society getting more narcissistic and tech-addicted because they have allowed us to shrink our universe where we are the center of it and can document it all from the exhilarating to the mundane. Technology has also allowed us to reshape our reality for the online world. Don’t like your face? There are any number of filters and cartoonish features that you can add! Think you look fat in your pictures? A little Photoshop work and you’re thinner than the plot of a romance novel. You can be the perfect you in your own little world.
But the problems really start when you prefer your little world to the real world. Ego is a double-edged Sword of Damocles. A healthy ego allows you to be proud of who you are while admitting you’re imperfect. An unhealthy ego doesn’t split the difference; you either love yourself excessively or hate yourself excessively. And right now, there are a lot of people comfortable with loving themselves.
I know this seems like an odd tangent when we were just talking about Thanksgiving, but here’s the payoff. When your ego is inflated like the Goodyear blimp, you start thinking everything good comes from you, thus you have nothing to be thankful for than you. I’m sure that saves time when it comes to thinking what to be thankful for this year, but it alienates a lot of people in the process.
I have a saying: “Success is never singular.” What I mean by that is you never achieve a personal goal without some help along the way. Think back to some of your greatest achievements in life and look at who was there for you as you achieved them. A teacher, a loved one, an author, the list is potentially endless, but they’re all united by the fact they gave you the tools to be the best you can be. When you look at life in that way, you learn to appreciate more and be grandiose less.
In other words, you learn to be more…what’s the word…oh, yeah, thankful.
Even with COVID-19 taking a big chunk of the heart of Thanksgiving, we can still take a moment to be thankful. After all, the Pilgrims had a rough go of it, and they didn’t even care about what Black Friday deals the local trappers had. Even when they had little, they were thankful for what they had. In today’s world of instant gratification, ego stroking, and trying to keep up with the Joneses, it shouldn’t take less time to appreciate who and what you have in your lives than it does to place an Amazon order or post a heavily-filtered selfie on Instagram.
Yet, somehow, I think the majority of people will do just that. That doesn’t give you an out, though. Take a moment or several to open your heart and mind to the possibility/probability there are people you should be thankful for and then thank them, publicly or privately. You’d be surprised at just how awesome you feel afterwards. The turkey tastes juicier, the mashed potatoes and gravy taste better, the cranberry sauce tastes…well, I don’t know because I don’t touch the stuff, but the point is your perspective changes when you are thankful for what you have. Money can buy you a new iPhone, but it can’t buy you a moment of personal reflection and gratitude.