A Call to New Englanders: Please Defend Thanksgiving

My fellow New Englanders,

I write today to decry the creep of a certain holiday on a certain other holiday, one with roots right here in our beloved Bay State.

And I’m talking about the Salvation Army bell-ringers already in place along Huntington Avenue, and the 24-7 holiday music station, 103.3 WODS, that began the wall-to-wall holiday broadcast last weekend.

My friends, Thanksgiving is in danger of being overwhelmed by Black Friday speculation, “doorbuster” openings carving ever deeper into Thanksgiving dinner, and retail store interiors switching from Halloween to Santa Claus with barely a hiccup for Thanksgiving.

T’isn’t the season, my friends. Not yet.

Last year was the first time I noticed Christmas trees in store windows barely a week after the sales on Halloween candy ended. Even now, some Bostonians are trotting out their holiday spirit. But for the wrong holiday.

Yes, we’ve drank the Christmas Kool-Aid (and no, I’m not talking about Christ-in-Christmas Christmas). Sad is the day that Thanksgiving became nothing more than the day before Black Friday — a placeholder for the “official” kickoff of the holiday season that encroaches ever closer to Labor Day.

Doesn’t that mean we’re headed for holiday fatigue even sooner than usual — when the sleigh bells ringaling jing jing jingaling drives away the jolly?

The backlash is already underway. Retail giants are getting push back. It’s time to seize that momentum and secure a few weeks out of the calendar to think about turkeys before turning our attention to the malls.

Yours in solidarity,

Casey