Thanksgiving and Christmas

 With Thanksgiving break just barely behind us and Christmas break coming up soon, I wanted to take a moment to compare and contrast these two holidays and their accompanying traditions. Upon closer examination, while Christmas and Thanksgiving have similar themes and operate on essentially the same premise, celebrating loved ones with a lot of food, they facilitate different human-to-human interactions, as Thanksgiving has more verbal appreciation, and usually gatherings of smaller magnitude, while Christmas has larger celebrations with gift exchanges. For this reason, Christmas is the better holiday and is more appreciated.

The central values of Christmas and Thanksgiving are similar. They involve relaxing and enjoying the company, through appreciations and gatherings, of those who mean the most to us. Christmas and Thanksgiving are marked by parties and celebrations all throughout the US. In particular, Thanksgiving features a familial meal (generally a lunch or dinner) where relatives gather around and say things that they are thankful for, and eat staple Thanksgiving dishes. For instance, turkey, casseroles, and mashed potatoes. Christmas too has a similar theme. While Christmas get-togethers generally have a more varied assortment of those related to us and those that are close friends, the same idea remains. Christmas also is distinguished by its exceptional food. While it has less emphasis, Christmas turkeys are not unheard of and are seen on the Christmas menu frequently as well.

On the other hand, these holidays do have very different and unique aspects that make them distinguishable. For example, the ways that people generally interact during these holidays. As the name implies, Thanksgiving has a very heavy emphasis on giving thanks. During Thanksgiving people generally exchange messages of appreciation and thankfulness, taking time to appreciate the people in our lives and their importance. Contrastingly, Christmas is commonly known for its gift-giving tradition. Giving and receiving gifts is a major way that people interact and communicate their gratitude and cherishment of their friends and family. This cycle of giving and receiving brings a lot of joy and Christmas spirit to the many participating in it. More so than the verbal appreciation during Thanksgiving, the tangibility of Christmas makes it generally better received and higher regarded.

While operating upon a very similar idea and both having fantastic food, because of the tangibility of Christmas and its gift-giving tradition, Christmas is a better holiday, and it brings more joy to those who celebrate it.