Why Thanksgiving is the Best Holiday Even Though I Like Christmas More

I went to the grocery store yesterday with a list of items I needed for Thanksgiving dinner.  This is the first year we’re having the whole family to our house, so I wanted to make sure I got everything I needed.  I went during the middle of the day so it wouldn’t be crowded with people holding similar lists filled with similar items and thankfully I had no problem finding everything I needed.  The odd thing is that I could barely tell from wandering the aisles that we were days away from the second biggest holiday of the year.  The only indication at all was that the end caps were stocked with items like pecans, canned pumpkin and Karo syrup.  The fall decorations had been moved to the clearance aisle and almost everything in sight suggested that Christmas was in full swing.

Every year it feels like Christmas encroaches a little further onto the territory of Thanksgiving, the strong, silent winter holiday.  I was hoping it wouldn’t be so bad this year since Thanksgiving falls so early.  This means the Christmas shopping season even longer than usual and there is plenty of time to shop and hang stockings.  No need to get ahead of ourselves.  Instead, I think this year has been even worse.  Usually when the Christmas decorations start appearing on shelves in mid November, the predominant sentiment I hear is people bemoaning Christmas’s early arrival as though it were a great aunt showing up an hour before a family gathering.  This year, however, all I’ve heard are people talking about putting their trees up early or trying to get a jump on their shopping.  I’ve had several people say to me “Christmas is almost here” when it’s actually 5 weeks away.

I understand why stores don’t wait until after Thanksgiving to start in with Christmas.  I can’t really blame them.  They’re there to make money and they only make money if we’re buying things. This is why Thanksgiving gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop.  At Thanksgiving, no one’s getting a card and we’re not buying gifts for each other.  There are no balloons or huge bags of fun sized candies to be snatched up by eager consumers.  Thanksgiving has managed to remain one of the purest of holidays chiefly because no one has succeeded in commercializing it.  This is one of the best things about Thanksgiving. 

The other thing that makes Thanksgiving the best holiday is that it’s the great equalizer.  No one is disqualified from celebrating because they can’t afford it.  You could be alone and homeless without a penny to your name and still find a church or shelter serving a simple Thanksgiving dinner where you’d sit together with people of similar means and feel a part of something for that hour.  For most people though, the circumstances aren’t so dire.  And while Christmas separates the haves from the have nots when it comes to gift giving and elaborate light displays and decorations, Thanksgiving has simple requirements.  It’s one meal spent with people we love.  Most importantly, it’s not an expensive meal of steak and lobster tail and white truffles.  Thanksgiving is turkey, a meat that can be easily had for under a dollar a pound.  Thanksgiving is green beans, whether elegantly prepared or dumped out of a can.  Thanksgiving is cranberry sauce with the lines of the can still visible and a bowl full of mashed potatoes.  You’d be hard pressed to find a meal that can be had for less money unless you resorted to beans and rice. 

My point in all this is not to put a damper on the joy that comes with the winter juggernaut of a holiday that is Christmas.  I absolutely love Christmas and it brings its own set of heart-warming feelings of togetherness and love and charity.  The problem is that Christmas is also Black Friday and crowded malls and outdoing the neighbor’s light display.  So while I’m excited about Christmas, I’d like to just enjoy the uncorrupted purity that is Thanksgiving first.  I want to sit at a table filled with people I love and enjoy some cheap poultry and potatoes.  We’ll half watch a football game and talk about things that make us happy. And that makes me happy.

A Dose of Reality

In my life, I’ve watched my fair share of movies.  Of those movies, almost none of them have had subtitles and few were made anywhere other than Hollywood.  I rarely go to movies that would be considered “artsy” and only twice have I been to my city’s “independent” movie theatre.  I do have a bit of snobbery in me when it comes to the arts, but almost none of it is applied to films.  In fact, calling them “films” is as uppity as I get about it.  I say all of this to inform you that I don’t consider myself a “film critic” in any capacity.  I tend to watch movies for entertainment value and not once have I walked out of a theatre thinking “the directing was sloppy.”  There is, however, one general criticism that I feel I must make, because I have recently noticed a disturbing trend coming out of Hollywood.  The people in charge of making movies seem to think that if aliens travel to earth and attempt to take over, we’ll be able to fight them off with our “advanced” technology and scrappy ingenuity. 

I know the trend of portraying humans as the ultimate underdogs didn’t start with movies…it was there in books and on radio dramas before the first movie was made.  But someone has to put a stop to this by speaking the plain, honest truth.  If aliens from the far reaches of the galaxy have the technology to travel to our planet and they are intent on taking over, they’re going to do it.  They’re going to alight somewhere in their spaceships, or maybe just appear out of thin air, and do whatever they came here to do.*  I’m not implying we would go down without a fight, and I’m certainly not discounting the amazing technology that has been developed by the human race. We might even manage to slow them down a little.  After all, we have put a man on the moon and sent research ships into distant space.  But we’re also the ones who lost a spacecraft on Mars because half the team was using English measurements and the other half was using metric.

I realize that a movie about the successful extermination of the human race wouldn’t have much of a box office draw, so I understand why alien invasion movies usually end with humans winning out.  You can make a great movie, and a lot of money, portraying humanity as unconquerable.  I myself, have very fond and vivid memories of seeing Independence Day for the first time in the theatre.  So why am I bothering to burst the metaphorical bubble?  The final straw was a movie preview I saw during this year’s Super Bowl. 

Really?  Come on, people.  If aliens are headed to earth, we’re not going to fend them off with horses and six-shooters.  A longer preview hints that one of the humans has some help, and trust me, they’re going to need it. 

Perhaps I’m making too big of a deal out of this, but someone has to!  These movies have a high entertainment value, but….AT WHAT COST?  These movies are encouraging a false sense of security while we should actually be developing a force field to surround the earth or some invisibility suits or laser guns.  I really hope someone at the pentagon is working on these sorts of things.  If I’m going to pay taxes, the money should at least be going toward something useful.

 

* I don’t, by the way, assume that aliens would only bother to come all this way if they had evil plans.  Maybe they would just come across our planet while trolling for new friends.  Maybe they’re trying to spread a peaceful message to all corners of the galaxy.  Maybe we have the best beaches.  Aliens might show up and be the absolute bee’s knees.  But they might also just be hungry.

A Semi-Accurate Historical Perspective on the Remote Control

I have always assumed that remote controls were a fairly recent technological development, which is based on me remembering a time when I didn't know that such a thing existed. This is how I tend to date historical events, by the way. Something either started happening since I've been alive (cell phones, home computers, and Justin Beiber) or else something has been around for my entire life (televisions, sweatpants, and microwave ovens). On this criteria, I labeled remote controls as "relatively new" because I distinctly remember seeing one for the first time and I distinctly remember being unimpressed.

The first remote I saw allowed you to change the channel without getting up off the couch, but it also had a wire running between the tv and the remote. This didn't exactly scream "groundbreaking technology" since this was at a time when people would sit through an entire program rather than switching channels at the slightest provocation. Under these circumstances, the remote saved, at best, a few seconds every half hour. Then and now, I don't think that level of convenience makes up for the risk of tripping over a wire every time I get up to use the bathroom or refresh my snack.

As is probably the case more often than I realize, my method of dating historical events based on my own personal experience is not very accurate. For one thing, it only puts things into the two categories of "less than 30 years old" or "more than 30 years old". When something falls into the "less than 30 years old", I can usually refine my estimate by remembering how old I was when something happened. This makes it easy to place New Kids On the Block before The Backstreet Boys, but doesn't do me any good if I'm trying to put Henry VIII in historical perspective. In a more relevant example, I can list all the presidents in order, but only if I start with Jimmy Carter. So while my method makes some refinement in chronology possible, it becomes increasingly inaccurate as the age of something approaches or exceeds 30. In the case of remote controls, I'm way off.

As it turns out, the first patent and demonstration of a remote control didn't require any wires, didn't use AA batteries, and it most certainly didn't occur in my lifetime. It was done by Tesla in 1898. He used radio frequency to control a boat during an exhibition at Madison Square Garden. I would like to think that the event looked like this:

But it was probably more along the lines of this:

I don't know a lot about history, but I did read that the U.S. Patent office was reluctant to recognize Tesla's patent until he had a working model because they were so incredulous about the claims he was making. If even the U.S. patent office couldn't imagine such a thing, how was the working model received by the locals? Perhaps it met with cries of "Witch, witch, burn the witch!" (This was the same time as the Salem witch trials, right? It's hard for me to know since they're both so old.) I'm pretty sure I would have read about Tesla had been burned at the stake though, so I guess everyone was pretty reasonable about the whole thing. They probably sat down over a grande half-caff caramel macchiato and dreamt of a day when people would be free to set off fart sounds remotely and change channels at an alarming speed without even the aid of wires.

Science is Sexy and the Robots are Coming

A friend of mine recently mentioned how sick she's getting of the current prevalence of vampires in books, movies, and tv shows. From Twilight to True Blood to The Vampire Diaries, they're everywhere. And it's not just in the books and movies, it's the product tie-ins and the tween t-shirts and the expectation that anyone give a rat's ass about Team Jacob or Edward. Don't get me wrong....I read all the Twilight books, saw two of the movies, and am currently catching up on True Blood. But I know exactly where my friend is coming from. At first, it was novel and interesting, but now it's just getting to be passe.

The problem with getting rid of one fad is that there's always another one ready to replace it. In this case, I'm prepared to make a prediction on what fad will follow vampires. Bear in mind that I'm not making this prediction willy-nilly. I've put some thought into various factors that might come into play, including what made vampires popular in the first place, what trend is ready for a comeback, and what current trends might bleed over into pop culture. After considering several possibilities, I predict that the next pop culture trend will be....robots.

If robots do make a resurgence, it's going to require a book, movie, or tv series to spark the fire, but the kindling is already there. Robots have been popular before, but it's been awhile. There was The Day the Earth Stood Still in the 50's. There was Vickie the Android and the Terminators in the 80's. The 90's brought us Lt. Commander Data, and in 1999/2001 we had Bicentennial Man and A.I.. Most recently, there was I, Robot in 2004. So while there has certainly been a thread of interest in robots for quite some time, I think a resurgence of "robot mania" is right around the corner. This continual undercurrent of interest is ready to erupt. The only thing required is for someone to come along and make robots sexy. Someone needs to give us a robot with a heart of gold, a sense of humor, an acceptably tortured psyche, and a sex drive. Someone needs to do for robots what Twilight did for vampires.*

If you aren't convinced that robots are primed to make a comeback, look no further than Verizon wireless. All you people out there with iPhones are certainly still convinced that there is no substitute, but if you've spent much time with one of the latest Android phones, you'll know that the playing field has been leveled. Android isn't actually a phone, it's an operating system, but Verizon knows that if you try to explain that to the average cell phone buyer, their eyes are going to glaze over and they're going to get distracted by some other shiny object. So Verizon got permission from George Lucas to brand their Android phones as "Droids". The phones are thin, smart, fast, more popular than ever, and advertised using a robotic motif. Score one for the robots.

Finally, I think robots are ready to come back because science is cool again. Science no longer means you're a dork who hangs out in a lab, it means you're capable and intelligent. Even the Emmy award winning series The Big Bang Theory, which paints 4 physicists as geeks on the outlying corners of social interaction, had enough sense to pair up Leonard with the stereotypical hot chick, Penny. There is also the 2007 movie adaptation of I Am Legend to consider. The main character is Robert Neville, who is one of the few survivors after a virus turns most of the earth's population into light-hating, human eating creatures. If they'd stayed truer to the book, Neville would have been a fairly uneducated alcoholic, but instead, the movie paints him a methodical scientist who keeps a lab in his basement and is actively developing an antidote to the virus. He's also played by Will Smith. In other words, science is sexy.

So there you have it. Popularity is a fickle thing, so it might end up being centaurs or mermen, or demigods or aliens or any host of other things, but my money is on robots. I've tried to consider all the options and weigh the evidence. I've laid out my argument in a logical manner and stuck to a method in order to solve this pressing matter. Why go to so much trouble? Because science is sexy, and soon, robots will be too.

*Ok, ok, I know that Twilight wasn't the first series to make vampires sexy. I think Interview with a Vampire already did that, but I doubt most of the people with "Team Edward" posters know that. And of course, Anne Rice wrote that book 20 years before the movie came out and maybe someone else did it before her. I'm too lazy of a blogger to really trace this back to it's origins. You should know that about me by now.

Diet Dr. Pepper Tastes Nothing Like Regular Dr. Pepper

Having gotten some coupons in the mail yesterday, I decided to treat myself to lunch at Arby's today. My meal came with a drink and, trying to be somewhat health conscious, I chose diet Dr. Pepper. There are some diet drinks that I can easily drink without thinking about the "diet" designation with every swallow, but after taking a sip of my drink, I was reminded of the harsh reality that Diet Dr. Pepper is not one of those drinks.

Diet Dr. Pepper's slogan is "Diet Dr. Pepper...tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper." I know that slogans sometimes sacrifice grammar and accuracy in exchange for brevity, but this slogan makes no sense. The problem is that little "more." If you took it out, it would be a blatant lie, but with it in there, the phrase is begging for a "than." Did they update the formula and now Diet Dr. Pepper tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper than it used to? Does it taste more like regular Dr. Pepper than Sprite does? Does it taste more like regular Dr. Pepper than it tastes like chicken broth? The possibilities are open to interpretation.

The problem with diet drinks is that they are trying to taste like something that they'll never really taste like. Sodas are sweet. When you change that key ingredient, sugar, you'll inevitably get a different taste. In a way, I admire that Coke knows this well enough that they doesn't even bother trying to make Diet Coke taste like regular Coke. When Coke introduced Diet Coke in 1982, rather than making it a diet version of the original formula, they used a different formula entirely. In fact, when Coke make the ill-fated decision to change their original formula back in the 80's, they took the Diet Coke formula, made it with high fructose corn syrup and called it New Coke. It was a disaster. It wasn't till they came out with Coke Zero that you actually get to try the "original" coke recipe with a diet spin. So perhaps it would be more fitting if Dr. Pepper would lend their slogan to Coke. Then you could accurately say "Coke Zero tastes more like regular coke than Diet Coke does!"

I Want to Be My Own Shiny Object or Why I Don't Play WoW Anymore

While the human mind may, at times, have a notoriously short attention span, it also has the uncanny ability to fixate on a task to the point that all sense of time is lost. For example, last night I was laying on my bed playing a new game on my phone. It's a simple, repetitive game where you have to prioritize tasks and click through actions as quickly as possible. I kept trying to move to higher difficulties and beat my past times and before I knew it, Daniel came in to announce that he was heading to bed. It wasn't until that moment that I noticed that when the game is running, the clock on my phone disappears. I'd been playing the game for over a half an hour without even realizing it. My mind had been so fixated on the game that it took some outside intrusion on my attention in order to break the spell.

I've seen this cycle of mental inertia played out many times before. A mind in motion can remain in motion until acted upon by an outside force. Casinos know all about it. They don't give you any clocks or windows to judge the passage of time in the hope that you'll just keep pulling levers and placing bets. Television marathons play a similar game when they remove the opening sequence and closing credits from between episodes. This runs one show into the next and before I know it, I'm 3 hours into a Real World marathon and none of my laundry is folded.

The good news is that this tendency can also be used to an advantage. Nabisco knows this as good as anyone. In recent years, they have started marketing many of their long-standing products in special "100 calorie" packs. All food has the nutritional information is right there on the package, so it should be easy to exercise portion control for ourselves, but a full size package of Chips Ahoy cookies is too easy to eat right through in a few days time. While nothing is keeping people from eating several 100 calorie packages in a sitting, the act of having to stop eating long enough to open a new package is often enough of a break in your attention that you have to decide whether or not to keep eating.

Knowing how easy it is to get lost in certain tasks makes me want to be more mindful of my actions. I've always felt like every moment of every day is a new chance to make a new choice, but in reality, those choices usually get made while my brain is on "auto pilot." Sometimes all it takes to snap me back to reality is a little shiny object, whether it's in the form of a tap on the shoulder, the credits at the end of a tv show, or the 10 seconds it takes to get another package of cookies. My goal now is to be my own shiny object. I can't always rely on chance to keep me from getting sucked in. I have to take the initiative to either set myself up for distraction or do my best to minimize them so that, at the very least, I can say that my precious time was spent on something of my own choosing.

I understand people's apprehension about holding babies. Knowing that you hold a new little life in your hands can be nerve wracking. This is especially true if you're a new parent or just aren't used to being around little ones. It's like going to a Catholic mass for the first time - you're not sure what to do and you don't want to look stupid. Even if you've done it before, you have to be able to match the baby's developmental stage with the proper holding technique. Emily has gone through several holding stages to get where she is today.

When Emily was a newborn, the general rules of caution applied. I had to make sure her limbs weren't crimped, her skin wasn't pinched, and most importantly that her head was supported. As she started to develop some neck strength, holding her became more casual, but her preferred position was still chest to chest with arms and legs tucked neatly under. There were many an afternoon when she assumed this position in a sling and happily slept while I cooked, did laundry, or watched tv. Once she had developed to a point where her sleeping didn't amount to near comatose and she struggled to tell day from night, she would sometimes fidget and squirm and cry when I held her. During these times, I would try many different methods of holding her, but often got the best results from having her perpendicular to my body with her head nestled into my side and her legs dangling about. This emulated the position she laid in while breastfeeding and I often thought that might have heightened its comfort. There were a couple of hard weeks when she and I spent most of the night in that position - her cradled in my arms, trying to learn what to do with her drooping eyes or her bursts of energy.

Emily is older now and her neck and legs are strong. She can even walk, which makes her more "toddler" than "infant". When I hold her, I hold her like a child, perched on my hip and supported by my forearm. She holds tight to the shirt on the back of my arm and I manage to accomplish quite a bit with her in tow. Just like we've moved past her gangly limbs and wobbly head, we've entered a time when sleepless nights are a distant memory. Her body has learned that, come 6:30, a fresh diaper and a bit of milk signals sleep. I can lay her down wide eyed and not hear another peep from her until morning.

When Emily got her first two teeth, they took me by surprise. I expected days or even weeks of fussiness with nights broken up by fits of crying. Instead, one day the teeth just appeared. They came later than expected, but with little fanfare. I expect more to arrive anytime and based on the last couple of days, the time may be sooner rather than later. Emily has had erratic naps and has woken up around 4am most nights this past week. It's mildly disruptive, but it only takes a minute of holding her up on my shoulder to put her to put her back to sleep. This evening, however, she woke up a half hour after we put her down. She went back to sleep, then woke up again an hour later. This second time, even after I laid her on my shoulder, she cried and fidgeted. I passed her off to Daniel while I retrieved the infant Tylenol, purchased months ago but never opened. I gave her the medicine and then sat in the glider to wait it out. She cried and squirmed and squirmed and cried. My arms got tired of trying to hold her still, so I reclined the glider and let her move around. She pushed with her feet and tried to roll around and ended up with her head in the crook of my arm and her legs laid across the arm of the chair. For the first time in months, I held that little girl like a baby, which turned out to be exactly what she needed. Whether it was the medicine or the position, she managed to fall back asleep and stayed that way till morning. We might have more nights like this ahead of us, but at least now I know what to expect and I know for certain that this growing little girl will always be my baby.