Pilgrims' Regress

Pilgrims' Rock

Thanksgiving Day. What's not to like? Even turkey, which most days tastes like salted paper-towel, tastes great. Normally bland turnips turn into tantalizing tidbits on the tongue. There is no tree to purchase or trim, no frantic trips to town to buy Uncle Ralph a tie that we know he will never wear, and no marathon wrapping sessions in the attic.

Thanksgiving Day, brilliantly concocted to be on a Thursday, creating a four day weekend of food, football, and fooling around. Even we could not mess up Thanksgiving, could we?

Thinketh again, Pilgrims. Welcome to Thanksgiving Inc.

Wal-Mart has decided to open its doors at 10PM on Thanksgiving Night to accommodate "customers," AKA People Who Need to Get A Life.  Amazingly, those customers took umbrage at last year's experience, one might even say privilege, of having to line up beginning around midnight in order to get prized shoppers' wrist bands, which the stores didn't distribute until 2AM, while otherwise reasonable folk were sound asleep.

And they say that America can no longer innovate. Hah! Imagine what these sleep-deprived customers could accomplish if only they still had full time jobs with benefits and access to credit?

On 2nd Thought, Make it 12AM!

Thanksgiving Inc. Weep-eth with me, Pilgrims.

One guesses that the original Pilgrims could never have thought of something so clever as a huge shopping opportunity like Black Friday or, Black Thursday Night. After all, they could not even think of a name for the place at which they landed other than "Plymouth," the very name of the place from which they came. They landed at Plymouth on November 11, and, no doubt they were tired of the Mayflower's non-POSH food and the Pilgrim-in-Chief's constant sermonizing. Native corn, oysters, cranberries and wild turkeys, not to mention a snout full  of wild crabapple-liqeur must have seemed like a really good idea.

Americans now imagine that all descendants of early Pilgrims have become wealthy beyond all get out over the generations; but the truth is that not so many of them as imagined would make Warren Buffet's Millionaires' Most Wanted List for super-sizing their tax bite.  Instead, I think it's more credible and frightening to think that a good many Pilgrim descendants might be tempted to convene at Wal-Mart Store # 2336 off Route 44 in contemporary Plymouth to assail themselves of deals.

Bradfords, Brewsters, Standishes. Imagine the original Pilgrim set lined up in their pj's at midnight:

Pilgrim #1: "If only we had stow-ethed some of these container-size packeths of Depends for our ocean journey; we are indeed blessed in this new world."

Pilgrim #2: "You said-eth it, Pilgrim, and we could have used them along with these seven cases of bottled water for $1.29, with coupons! Have you knowledge of said blessing, Pilgrim, the coupon?

We live in an age in which we begin selling Halloween candy around July 4th, sign up for our free-range, grass-fed, organic turkeys while still wearing bathing suits, and begin seeing Christmas lights in the hardware store before the last homegrown tomatoes have fallen from the vine.

Bonkers Buyers Bunking

We may be able to do without the rotary dial; we can adapt to the new habit of treating a hurricane as Armageddon; we may survive allowing our boss, spouse, child to call/text us at 3AM; and now we know what it's like to have a blizzard in the northeast before the leaves fall.

But, Pilgrims, let us unite against this insidious intrusion into our Thanksgiving, one of the the last bastions of decency, sanity...peace.

Please-eth.