Thanksgiving: The Most Underrated Holiday

I feel sorry for Thanksgiving, always getting out-shined by Christmas and what not. Especially this year. Literally the day after Halloween, everyone cast aside their cat ears and fish nets in exchange for icicle lights and garland. Don't get me wrong, I truly believe that Christmas is "the most wonderful time of the year" and listening to "Merry Mixmas" can put anyone in a good mood, but writing out a list for Santa and wishing for a white Christmas in early November forces people to overlook another important holiday, Thanksgiving. In a perfect world, no one would be required to work on holidays and although most people try especially hard to avoid working on Christmas and Easter, Thanksgiving is another huge opportunity for families to get together and catch up on life.

The Dixon's celebrate by eating a ton of turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, corn pudding, broccoli casserole, fruit salad, and assorted desserts such as angel food cake, pecan pie, and peanut butter cookies. While eating our weight in these delicious Thanksgiving staples, we play board games. Usually the adults all crowd into the dining room to play Rook and my cousins and I gather in the living room to play the no less-competitive, Monopoly, and when no one feels like losing to me for the zillionth time, we break out Apples to Apples or Scattegories. My cousins and I used to be so close; we were practically brothers and sisters. We would spend so much time together playing board games so in a way, maintaining a tradition of playing these games every holiday (especially Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter) is our way of reliving our childhoods and staying unified in the present even though our lives are completely different now.

Others can be putting up their Christmas trees and dreaming of a white Christmas, but all throughout November, I will be thinking of ways to work off all that turkey, and dreaming of acquiring all the orange spaces on the Monopoly board.