Jesus, it’s Thanksgiving! I should post something on Facebook about what I’m grateful for. Really I should. This is the extent of the original intent and essence of this dying holiday expressed by many people.

What happened? Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday. Even considering the fabricated nature and false origin story of the holiday the “author’s message” is a noble and visionary one. Although mythological, it’s message of American cooperation and diversity is to be admired. But that message has effectively disappeared from the celebratory landscape of this uniquely American philosophic contribution to the world politic.

A festive gathering of “others”, supping together in a testament to the unity of all peoples, a symbol of our embrace of diversity as strength and love as a primary character trait, has been reduced to gluttony and argument immediately followed by greed.

As Target is the geographically closest alleged discount store to me I use it as a thermometer to measure our nation’s commercial temperature. The retail monster that is Christmas continue’s to usurp more and more of the shopping year. It has devoured Thanksgiving and were it not for the occult appeal and “only this one day of the year” deference to childhood excess it would engulf Halloween as well. This year, Christmas tree lights, the first harbinger of the commercial onslaught, were out on the shelves BeFoRe Halloween. This phenomenon has been creeping toward this inevitability for years, a few more days every year.

Candy displays, which mark the official changeover of holiday, er merchandising, seasons now switch immediately from Halloween’s pumpkin-shaped Reese’s and black cats and witches hats on the packages to Christmas jingle bells, snowflakes and Santa-shaped chocolates of infinite variety. Not that Thanksgiving has a unique candy footprint. But come on man, can’t we have three weeks of normal colored M&Ms. Please.

If there is a token acknowledgment of Thanksgiving in modern American consciousness it is wrapped up in the form of the Turkey. Not the fierce and proud Wild Turkey (I’ll have a double) but the domesticated, cage-raised, breast augmented turkey. Each year the current President pardons this year’s Barabbas from certain slaughter, signaling the start of the barbaric genocide of this year’s “crop” of fattened calves, err birds, for the sacrificial pleasure of the unapologetic masses.

The Thanksgiving meal, once a legendary, semiotic standard of our generous and egalitarian natures has now become a no man’s land battleground for any and all partisan issues. Nothing is out of bounds; every nicety graciously observed the rest of the year flies out the window. The gloves come off. Every indignation, resentment and outright hateful feeling that blackens our hearts are bared right there amid the cranberry sauce and cornbread stuffing. With jabbing forks jabbing we challenge each other to prove our worldview is righteous and good and yours is perverse and damning.

Then the Tryptophan kicks in, we relax and acquiesce, all of us, to watching the NFL and discussing the family’s divorces, babies, and surgical procedures. The day’s battle settled, halftimes bring the patriarch’s mandated Thanksgiving speech followed by each singled out family member’s obligatory declaration of “what I’m thankful for”. This is where children learn that adherence to the respect of the origins of the Thanksgiving ideal lies only in this one obligatory sentence. Our elders reveal that a wide berth of veracity is allowed in this ritualistic reality of the modern Thanksgiving experience. As long as you are thankful for something, no matter how meaningless and insignificant, you have fulfilled your familial, and thus your nationalist duty.

Could it be that I am caustically cynical about how we as a society have desecrated this manufactured attempt by our ancestors to remind us of the nobility of our nation’s origins and respect for non-white peoples?  You’re damn right I am. Frankly, I’ve been pulling my punches. There were way more expletives in my first draft. Have we no shame? We can’t even honor a national holiday based on a falsehood.

And I haven’t even gotten to the whole unholy Black Friday thing. Just as the tree lights have crept onto shelves earlier and earlier so has the other gluttony of the day. We used to have a few hours respite, a chance to digest both the food and the sparring before we arose like vampires at midnight. Once upon a time the retailers actually waited until Friday. This year my Target credit card authorized me to get doorbuster prices on Wednesday. Emails from a week or more before the holiday teased me with “Black Friday prices”.  I’m pretty sure you were offered “Black Friday in July” pricing this summer. Dinners now start at halftime in order to get in line by 5 for the 6 PM Walmart opening. It’s let’s throw the dishes in the dishwasher and time’s a wastin’.

Armed with our family battle plan, forged out of intense research and study of the three-inch thick Thanksgiving Thursday newspaper, we attack the vast array of local big box stores in a multi-front, coordinated frenzy of credit card maxing out.

I’ll run interference while you grab the last deep discounted ultra high def flat screen smart TV at 70% off MSRP. This is why we watch football earlier in the day, to get some ideas for blocking schemes, to keep the other family’s linebackers away from our designated grabbers. It’s every gang for themselves, may the best shopper win.

Some folks skip the meal entirely and go directly to the self-propelled vacuum cleaner at pennies on the dollar. Why not? It’s damn hard to roast a turkey. And to avoid going 12 rounds every year with Uncle Harold over gay abortion is a great idea. In fact, why don’t we just do away with Thanksgiving altogether? I mean really, who is really thankful for anything these days, without reservations or exceptions or objections or consequences.

Am I still caustic, full of vitriol, toxic in my disdain? Of course, you betcha. I just can’t understand why we insist on allowing one of our most positive, meaningful traditions to deteriorate into disrepair, unredeemable and sadly, distinctly unamerican. Even if it wasn’t true it still represents something. What are we thinking?

So what am I thankful for, as an American on this day of flying cartoon characters and too dry turkey and football and deep discounts? To what do I owe gratitude on this disappearing tribute to an imagined America of tolerance and shared abundance?

I am thankful that I am still free to write these words and express my anger without fear.

I am thankful that America has always been great, if only for simple freedoms and always keeping a space available for love.

I am thankful that America has always been great for allowing dreams the opportunity to become reality.

I am thankful that America has always been great in its vision beyond the horizon, its foresight in the face of hindrance, hope in the face of despair, life in the face of violence.

Please don’t think I am chastizing everyone. Millions and millions of us know love of neighbor in their hearts and are thankful for their good fortune, health for them and their families, joy, and respect.

I’ll never give up on Thanksgiving.

I’m thankful I can.