As far as Thanksgiving songs are concerned, “Over the River and Through the Woods” may soon be replaced by rock group Chicago’s “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?”According to a Wall Street Journal article titled “The Whenever Thanksgiving,” a survey by polling firm CivicScience shows that 16 percent of respondents plan to celebrate Thanksgiving earlier than the traditional Thanksgiving Day this year, and another 13 percent are willing to experiment in the future. (And 24 percent of those surveyed thanked God that they keep an air horn by the telephone for occasions when pesky pollsters call during mealtime. At least pollsters THINK that’s what they said.)Yes, in order to work with the busy schedules of family members and lessen holiday stress, a growing number of Americans no longer consider themselves tied down by the fourth Thursday of November.Oh, there are still traditionalists, like my elderly neighbor, who thinks Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments in one hand and a recipe for mincemeat pie in the other. She won’t even let the menfolk watch football on TV after the Thanksgiving Day meal (insisting that they honor indigenous peoples by receiving the play-by-play via smoke signals).Nonetheless, a significant segment of us ARE observing Thanksgiving earlier.
Thanksgiving: have you already missed it???