DC's View: Holiday Madness

By DC Cueva

@DC408dxtr

Today sees the beginning to one of my favorite times of the whole year, and it's everyone's favorite as well (let's be honest, it's everyone's favorite, my young bro loves it so much). Yes, the holidays are rapidly approaching. And if you haven't noticed from all those displays that's been going up in stores, malls and houses across the country, it's gonna be everywhere come Thursday. It's the only time of the entire year where most Americans have an extended 4-day weekend (5-day for some, and a paid holiday for many) when the country celebrates Thanksgiving and the beginning of the holiday rush.

This very Wednesday is the start to all of this: the busiest travel day of the entire year. Airports and roadways across the United States will be jam packed as families on the last day of the year's only 3-day work week either take work off or after work to fly home to spend Thanksgiving with their loved ones. I would always like to joke that for this day only, it'll almost feel like I live in L.A. with the freeways being jammed up all day long as many head off to grandma's to spend the next four days in. And airports will almost be like an actual sport with long lines at the ticket counter, large queues to the airport garage and the eventual journey of trying to find any parking spaces.

   Outside the airport, it is also one of the year's busiest nights for bars and clubs, sometimes referred to as Blackout Wednesday, as most college students & others fly back to their hometowns to reunite with family & friends and engage in a few cold ones. In the suburbs of Chicago, this night is sometimes more popular a night to party than New Year's Eve or St. Patricks Day, while it is also the top drunk driving night due to underage drinking. To say the least, it will be busy as ever on Thanksgiving Eve.

Then, of course comes the big day, that fourth Thursday in November when Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. Historically, it started out as a way of celebrating the harvest of the year and while it remains so for those who live in rural areas, as well as being rooted in religious and cultural traditions, it's become the official beginning of the holiday season. It has been celebrated annually since 1863 when, in the midst of the Civil War, President Lincoln first proclaimed it a national holiday. He thought of it as a day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dweeleth in the Heavens," just as the nation was going through that turmoil.

   This can all be traced back to what many think of as the "First Thanksgiving," celebrated by the Pilgrims after spending their first harvest in 1621 in New England. Their get-together, attended by 90 Native Americans and 53 Pilgrims, lasted all of three days. Those in the region were used to celebrating thanksgiving - back then it was days of prayer to give thanks to God for blessings like a military victory or the end of a drought.

   Numerous thanksgiving celebrations would continue on a regional basis in the years ahead before it became an official national holiday in 1863 when President Lincoln made the last Thursday in November the first Thanksgiving. And in 1939, during the Great Depression and in a once-in-a-while year that had 5 Thursdays instead of 4, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved thanksgiving one week earlier to the fourth Thursday of the year. His reasoning was to give merchants a longer holiday shopping season, and influenced by the head of Macy's (and with some early political difficulties), it would eventually become the norm in 1941.

Ever since, it has become a holiday that brings so many families together, and along with Christmas there's nothing like holidays when everyone is together. And it's also full of traditions, too. Since 1947 at the White House, the National Turkey Federation has presented the President with one live turkey and two dressed turkeys, and it has become tradition since the Reagan administration for them to be given a presidential pardon.

   In New York City since 1924, Macy's has hosted its annual Thanksgiving Day Parade, arguably America's biggest parade and televised across the country on NBC. Starting on Manhattan's Upper West Side, working its way through Times Square and right into the department store chain's flagship location in Herald Square, it features parade floats, cartoon character balloons, Broadway numbers, celebrities and high school & college marching bands. And of course, it climaxes with the arrival of Santa Claus, which serves an the unofficial beginning of the holiday season. Other thanksgiving parades take place in Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis and Pittsburgh.

   And of course, there's those Thanksgiving football games, headlined by NFL games whose tradition dates back to its 1920 founding. Since 1934 and except for WWII, the Detroit Lions have hosted a game on Thanksgiving Day. They were joined in 1966 by the Dallas Cowboys, and 40 years later a 3rd game was added on Thanksgiving night - which in 2011 saw, what turned out to be, the first Harbaugh Bowl as brothers Jim and John coached their respective 49ers and Ravens teams, two years before their Super Bowl XLVII rematch. A number of high school football games are played on this day, while college football's regular season ends over the weekend. Football aside, other sports events include early season college hoops tournaments, an NHL Friday nationally televised matinee, and local Turkey Trot road running events in numerous cities on Thanksgiving morning, ranging from 1-mile fun runs to 10-mile events.

Now to the evening festivities, and of course the food is the talk when you walk through the door to grandmas. The majority of dishes in your usual U.S. Thanksgiving dinner are comprised of foods of New World origin, as per tradition the Pilgrims received their foods from the Native Americans. And of course, the main dinner course is that large roasted turkey.

   The use of a turkey preceded the 1863 nationalization of the holiday when President Alexander Hamilton declared "no citizen of the U.S. should refrain from turkey on Thanksgiving," and many Founding Fathers had great regard for it, but didn't become standard fare until the 1800s. Since then, it's become the most common main dish at Thanksgiving, a day that's often referred to as "turkey day." These days, turkey growers are projected to raise around 270 million of them, to be processed into five billion pounds of turkey meat w/ an $8 billion value tag, with a third of all turkey consumption during the holidays and a per capita consumption of nearly 18 lbs.

   Cooking a turkey on Thanksgiving is so much popular that Butterball runs a "Turkey Talk Line" phone bank for those who need help in all this. Most would prefer stuffing it with the traditional herb of Sage along with celery, carrots and onions. And others, including one of my aunts, would deep-fry one and then bring it over to our place, just as she did a few years ago. Alternatives to a turkey, or those that's served alongside them, include ham, a goose, a duck, and, especially in Texas, a quail.

   For the side dishes, among the varied choices include cranberry juice, stuffing, dressing, gravy, sweet and/or mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, green beans, winter squash, peas, carrots, bread rolls, cornbread, green beans and a salad. If you go to other parts of the country, you may find macaroni & cheese and collard greens in the South, some lasagne at an Italian-American family's table, or see mole & roasted corn with the Mexican-Americans. For desert, many pies are on offer including apple, sweet potato, pumpkin, pecan and mincemeat. And for beverages, spirits and cocktails are sometimes available before dinner, followed by Apple cider and/or wine on the main course.

And then, on the day after Thanksgiving, as many take advantage of those leftovers, most Americans undoubtedly take advantage of this Friday off to trek over to malls & shopping centers for, by far, the busiest shopping day of the year: Black Friday. It is the unquestioned kickoff to the Christmas shopping season and many non-retail employees & students join those federal & most business workers in enjoying Black Friday off in this Super Bowl of shopping, thus increasing the number of potential shoppers into the thousands in many malls. And it's known for attracting aggressive crowds, with reports of assaults, shootings and overcrowding by some to get their hands on products before it's off the shelves. I have been in that adrenaline rush many times, and it never gets old experiencing what it's like being one of the many who go to a mall on a Friday or during the holiday weekend.

   Recently, most major retailers have moved up the holiday opening bell extremely early by offering promotional sales just days after the Halloween trick or treating ended. For years, it was commonplace for stores & malls to open at 6:00am, but a few years ago (mirroring a trend among local morning TV news) many started at 5:00am, even 4:00am. And in 2011, Target, Kohl's, Macy's, Best Buy and others opened at the crack of midnight for the first time. A year later, Walmart & others did one step further, and opened their doors at 8:00pm on Thanksgiving night in most places (except in states where blue laws protect workers from working holidays). This year, Kmart will be open around the clock from 6am Thanksgiving morning to 11pm Black Friday; while other Thanksgiving night openings include Toys R Us at 5pm, Walmart & Best Buy at 6pm; Macy's, Sears, Target, Kohl's & JCPenney at 8pm, and Simon Malls (including my hometown Great Mall in Milpitas, CA) also opening up at 8pm.

   What's the origin behind the name "Black Friday?" It originated in 1961 in Philadelphia, where had originally been used to describe the heavy, often disruptive traffic amongst people & cars which took place the day after Thanksgiving, and started gaining broader use outside the Delaware Valley in 1975. Its definition from a business standpoint is that while retailers typically operated at a financial loss from January to November, "Black Friday" marks the spot where they start to turn a profit, or going "in the black." For Walmart and other large retail chains, their net profit skyrockets from $14 billion to $19 billion in their calendar year net profit income.

For brick and mortar and locally-owned businesses, the day after Black Friday sees their biggest day, Small Business Saturday, a relatively new shopping holiday having just been conceived in 2010 by American Express and now taken seriously by those businesses. Through social media and Amex's multi-platform ad campaign, SBS encourages holiday shoppers to patronize and/or sample the small and local businesses that look to cash in on the increased business that comes with the holidays.

   Sunday sees the 2nd busiest travel day of the year when airports and roadways will be busy yet again for the return trip for so many families as the Thanksgiving holiday ends. Among the travelers include my dad, who has spent the last two weeks in the Philippines celebrating his birthday over there, and has also likely seen some of the devastation from the devastating typhoon that ripped through the motherland days before he flew there after my bday.

   And the day after that when all of us return to work and to school, it is Cyber Monday. Based on a trend that retailers began to notice about ten years ago, this is the day when all retailers who sell online experience their biggest online selling day of the year. Those retailers realized that many consumers who were too busy to go to the mall or didn't find that thing they wanted, went online to shop for bargains on that first workday after Thanksgiving, and they had to adjust their strategy to reach them online. Last year, a record $1.465 billion was spent on all ecommerce in those 24 hours of Nov. 26, 2012.

And when the final tally by the National Retail Federation is published just after the first holiday shopping weekend wraps up on Sunday, the numbers will just about mind boggle you. For last year, it was a blockbuster showing: more than 247 million people (or 79% of the entire U.S. population) spent $59.1 billion over the four days of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. And the average spending total for a typical shopper was $423.66. In all three categories, it was a record by a mile, and this coming after all of the turmoil, politically and socially, of a recession that ended during the year.

And, that is that. Nothing much more to say after all that, other than to hope everyone is all set for the wave of emotions that we will be experiencing over the course of the next 100 hours or so.

   That's my view, and thanks for reading. Until next time, DC Cueva saying, have fun, happy travels, happy shopping, and have a safe & happy thanksgiving.

Sources: Wikipedia

Articles sourced from: Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving (United States), Thanksgiving Dinner, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday, Blackout Wednesday, Christmas and holiday season