Once again, retailers across the land will be expanding their hours on Thanksgiving Day in order to fill their need for more corporate greed and for the American public to satisfy its gluttonous need to accumulate more shit. How sad it is that on this day we are supposed to pause and give thanks for all our blessings, so many have become hung up on acquiring more shit!

George Carlin documented our insatiable need to gather stuff (or shit) in this hilarious stand-up comedy routine (see below). “Have you noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff?” Classic!

Thanksgiving has become a hollow icon of what it once was – a day for family and friends to gather, chat, laugh, reflect, and spend quality time together. Nowadays, instead of gathering around the dinner table for a feast, far too many Americans are gathering around cash registers, as the rabid consumerists among us buy more shit. This forces those who work in retailing to be away from their family and friends on this most revered holiday.

Some conservatives claim there is a War on Christmas. I believe that they have it completely backwards, as the commercialized monstrosity formerly known as Christmas is instead killing the quiet reflection and sanctity of Thanksgiving Day. Funny how they don’t complain about the commercialization of Christmas or Thanksgiving, when that is the real threat to the integrity of both.

Both Charles Schultz and Dr. Seuss accurately predicted and depicted such irrational commercialized greediness in their classic cartoons, A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It’s too bad that so many of us missed (or forgot) the moral to these childhood tales and have instead decided to worship the almighty dollar/peso/euro/pound instead, while we accumulate more stuff…or shit.