Thoughts on Thanksgiving
Matt Unrau
The Holiday Season is fully upon us at last. Come this Thursday we’ll all be gorging ourselves on Turkey and pumpkin pie. After eating, eating enough to satisfy three grown men, many of us will then loosen our belts three notches and watch football until we pass out from Tryptophan (the stuff in turkey that makes us sleepy).
On Friday, a new unofficial American tradition has been taking shape. It’s black Friday and many of us will hope to try and work off those Thursday calories by standing in line before stores open and then racing down shopping aisles looking for the Christmas gift that is conveniently marked 50 percent off.
Although I love the idea of desperate parents fighting over the new Transformers game on Nintendo DS, I’ve never really gotten into the Black Friday spirit. Mostly it had to do with growing up in the country with the nearest store being 40 miles away, but I’ve been much of a shopper and my favorite way to buy a family member a gift is pitching in with whatever my sister buys.
However, polishing off your Christmas shopping is only one of many ways to take your first step down the Holiday Highway. After Thanksgiving our family would always start putting up our decorations especially our tree.
For tree shopping living in Northeastern Montana is a little bit different from Northwest Montana.
Seeing as there are no trees over there other than the ones you planted in your backyard yourself chopping down a pine tree was out of the question. I could have tried, but I’m pretty sure my parents would have wondered where I got the tree and why there was only three trees in our yard now, compared to the previous four.
For us, chopping down a tree equated to rummaging through boxes upstairs looking for a shiny plastic tree that we bring out every year and assembling the five pieces into one nestle free replica.
It wasn’t until my oldest sister lived in Spokane for two years that I finally was able to go on a tree-chopping adventure. I remember being surprised and astonished that anyone would ever allow me to carry an ax out into the wilderness and chop down a tree.
To this day that still remains one of my favorite Thanksgiving moments other than getting three days off of school and playing video games 12 hours out of the day. Now, this year as I’m staying in Plains for the entire week I’ll be able to recreate this one Thanksgiving, and tail a local family in the adventure and write down all the delirious details in a story that will be in the paper in upcoming weeks.
If you have any Thanksgiving traditions that you love or just things that you’re thankful for I would love to hear about it or even print them in the paper. Email me at editor@VP-MI.com.