Once a year, on the last Wednesday of November, millions of Americans engage in the subtle arts of deception. We master the shortcuts necessary to quickly minimize Farmville on our desktops. We develop complicated “product testing” fables to explain away our hallway chair races. We keep straight faces and make intense eye contact when we tell our bosses, “I always wear elf shoes.”
There’s a lot of hubbub about whether Christmas tramples on Thanksgiving. Some proponents of holiday chronologization scratch out their eyes when Target replaces white pants with wreathes around Labor Day. But here at Ethos3, we’re big fans.
Griping and fussing about how complicated the holidays have gotten aside, any excuse to celebrate is a good one. A well-meaning individual need live through very few consecutive days to experience the human horrors of monotony and discontent. The holidays, for such individuals (like ourselves), are like battery cables hooked to the hypothalamus–in a good way.
Around tomorrow’s dinner tables, families and friends will spill laundry lists of pleasant reminders that it’s a sweet life. You doesn’t have to be happy (or satisfied) to be thankful, after all. You just need to stop and reflect to face the truth: it’s a great country we live in, and no matter how much therapy you’ve endured because of them, it’s sort of metaphysically pleasing to know you share something with other humans on this planet, be it genetics, history, or just a meal. No one is ever truly alone.
We wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. Build up your Facebook farms. Achieve G-force speeds in that office chair. Rock the elf shoes with confidence. But most importantly, take a moment to stop and reflect. We’ve got our whole lives to spend meeting obligations; you’ve earned some time to relish the good that has come from yet another year on planet Earth.
