INSULT TO INJURY: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THANKSGIVING? PART ONE: THE DECLINE

It used to be a big deal -- Thanksgiving. It used to mean something. A time to squeeze together into the family sleigh and head over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house. A time to gather together to ask the Lord's blessing, and all that.

No more.

Thanksgiving has been crowded out by the ever-widening reach of the holidays surrounding it.

The continuing popularity surge of Halloween among costume-crazed baby boomers and their progeny, coupled with the enduring prominence of Christmas, has pushed Thanksgiving to the second tier of holidays, alongside Memorial Day and Labor Day, and just a notch above Groundhog Day.

Airlines tell us Thanksgiving is still the busiest time of year. But that's only because folks have a four, sometimes five day weekend and feel that overwhelming need to make it back to the old homestead.

Even so, three of the four days will be consumed with Christmas shopping and not with anything remotely connected with Pilgrims, Indians or giving thanks.

Nowadays, once Halloween is over, the big Christmas rush begins in earnest. Few give much thought to Thanksgiving, except as another hurdle to clear before the stretch to the Yuletide finish line. Most jump immediately from "The Monster Mash" to the manger, happily exchanging Elvira for elves.

And who's at fault?

Oh, we'd like to blame the merchants, those greedy old blankety-blanks who want only for us to buy and spend, buy and spend. So they hurriedly display Christmas wreaths and mistletoe and start blaring Muzak versions of "Cantique de Noel" alongside "Grandma Got Ran Over by a Reindeer" as soon as possible.

The merchants, who, despite their cheery persona and happy holiday greetings, are really more interested in stuffing their coffers than in stuffing a turkey. It seems there's more money to be made in Christmas than in Thanksgiving, so it must be their fault.

But, no.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stores, but in ourselves.

Consider:

The problem is that we have become more interested in form than in content, in style than in substance. How else do we explain a culture that wouldn't be caught dead at the symphony but that makes Adam Sandler's "The Waterboy" number one at the box office, with receipts of over $50 million in its first week alone?

How else do we explain how such little attention is paid to the announcement that statesman and scholar Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-New York) is retiring from the United States Senate, but beaucoup press is showered upon Jesse "The Body" Ventura's election as governor of Minnesota?

Form, not content. Style, not substance.

And that's the problem with Thanksgiving. No style, no pizzazz, no glitz, yet sandwiched in between the two really flashy holidays -- Halloween and Christmas. Halloween, with ghosties and ghoulies and long-leggety beasties and things that go bump in the night. And Christmas, with that jolly old elf so lively and quick, his reindeer, the sleigh. You get the picture. Hey, even the Grinch has personality.

But Thanksgiving? Pfffttt.

Face it, it's hard to get excited about a holiday that is centered on turkey -- an ugly bird that doesn't really fly much, squawks that annoying gobble and contains typtophan, an amino acid known mostly for inducing sleep.

It's hard to get excited about a holiday where the focus is on trading recipes for giblet gravy or on finding the fanciest way to garnish canned cranberry sauce.

And it's hard to get excited about a holiday that has a Pilgrim as its poster boy. A Pilgrim!

Pilgrims, with their stodgy black hats and dour expressions, are a stern and sober lot, humdrum enough to cause a whole gathering of Quakers to nod off in unison, or to provoke even the most stalwart of the Amish to shout out, "Lighten up, Pilgrim boy!" And this is Thanksgiving.

It is a dull, dull holiday.

So it has fallen upon me as my task this season -- nay, my mission -- to champion Thanksgiving that it might return to its former glory. But like most crusades, I cannot, I dare not go it alone. I require the support of others if the holiday is to be saved. Recommendations are encouraged, suggestions welcomed, financial contributions cheerfully accepted.

And no thanks are necessary.

~Jeffrey Jackson is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.