Exactly. Plus, it’s one that everyone observes, unlike the various religious holidays, and not only observes but actually celebrates, unlike 4th of July or something which is often just a bonus day off for people.
I’d like to give Thanksgiving a pass, since it’s a particularly painful time of the year for me, but I’ll be at my in-laws’ house for dinner.
But if I had my druthers, I’d be at home with a pre-made dinner.
Robin
It’s not a big deal for me. I like to go hiking, and the Canadian Thanksgiving is usually the last weekend for decent fall tree colours in Ontario, so if someone want to go for a hike with me, I’ll cook them a nice turkey dinner, but I’d rather not make a big family deal out of it.
I like Thanksgiving alright, even though I’m not a big eater. I like the family, like some of the food, and we aren’t football people. It’s nice, but I’m not fanatical about it.
The one I can totally do without is Easter. HATE IT. I do it (on Saturday, thankuverymuch), but it really sucks.
I would have happily given Thanksgiving a pass over the last 6 years, but my husband refuses to leave me alone and I don’t very well want to keep him from seeing his family over the holidays.
But this year, I just feel good about it. Hell, I even feel grateful. Despite my fear of crowds, I’m not really sweating the 150+ people who will be at his grandmother’s for Thanksgiving. They go all out on holidays (and any other day, heh), Thanksgiving with my husband’s family is big, and catered, and black-tie affair and you even get little name placards. I’ve got a lovely little blue dress and some crystal jewelry I’ve been waiting to wear since I bought it this summer. It will be a nice little escape from reality.
But… it is reality. For the first time in years, my present Thanksgiving circumstances are real to me. I see everything I have without thinking about what I don’t. It’s exciting.
Oh, but basically I don’t think it’s any big deal one way or another if you skip it/don’t. To some people it means something, to others it doesn’t, and that’s okay.
I’ll be the fourth person to quote **Cheesesteak **and say “I feel the same way about Thanksgiving”…
Then I’ll agree with **tremorviolet **that lately I’ve been ‘passing’ on it, at least in the ‘Traditional’ sense. This will be the 4th time in the last 5 years that we have blown off family and gone to Disneyland for the week.
Except that this year we will be sharing our vacation with some very close friends, so we will have a little bit extra to be thankful for 
Any excuse to roast up a great big turkey is all right by me. There’s nothing I like better than greasing up a big bird and poppit it into the oven and then smelling the house filled all day with the delightful scent of roasting turkey. I would be perfectly happy to replace most civic holidays with more Thanksgivings.
Mmmm… a big, 15-pound turkey, roasted just right, the juicy, tender meat slathered in brown turkey gravy, a big pile of mashed potatoes, carrots, stuffing… mmmmm… must have turkey…
Honestly, why do you love Christmas? Is it just for what you are about to receive? I think you should remember to take time out and be thankful for all you have when so many have so few. Tomorrow holds no guarantees for any of us.
Yeah, that’s it: I’m in it solely for what I receive. :rolleyes:
I actually do count my blessings on Thanksgiving, that being the whole point of the day. I’m not sure what I said that indicated I didn’t.
Jodi, I don’t much care for Thanksgiving myself. I like the time off - that’s about it. I see enough of family, frankly I don’t like the food, I’m not thrilled about the company this year, and honestly would prefer to just stay the heck home. I’m getting depressed about it already. 
I prefer Thanksgiving to Christmas in theory, though this year we are just staying home and having a small dinner. I can’t stand Christmas. People get so stressed about gifts–not because they are greedy, but because they are generous–they seem to feel tremendous pressure to make everyone happy and live up to expectations. This impression has only gotten stronger as I’ve reached my thirties and so many of the women I know have to manage a gift list for their immediate family, their extended family, and their in-laws and feel as if they must get everything exactly right, plus they must negotiate a 12-item itenerary to take the small children around to every household to hit the main celebration there. It just seems terrible to me, and a great blessing that my own mother washed her hands of the whole gift thing when I was 15 or so. We celebrate Christmas exactly like Thanksgiving–big meal and hanging out together, only with a midnight mass trip added.
My family doesn’t do Thanksgiving and never has - I think that, in Canada, the tradition is less strong and a lot of immigrants just don’t pick it up as their own tradition.
I like it well enough, though. I’m a food and family type. We go over to my boyfriend’s parents for it.
I’ve already had thanksgiving. Took a long weekend to fly up to my family for a pre-thanksgiving. Now I can just relax on thursday with no pressure.
I’ve spent some previous thanksgivings with a past roomate who is estranged from his family and those were good. I made the mistake one year of letting a friend know that I had no plans and had to spend the day with his in-laws. That was an endurance test, I tells ya.
I think I’ll just unplug the phone, turn off the lights and enjoy the solitude. Besides, my diet can do without another feast day.
I did in college - it was great.
Now, I live too close to my parents to just say “meh” to Thanksgiving. But if I were farther away, I’d probably do the nachos thing.
I might, out of a sense of guilt, make them turkey nachos.
I don’t have much family and my parents are out West, so I go to my “surrogate family’s” house. This year I hadn’t heard from them till a couple of days ago and I didn’t feel too bad that I might not be going anywhere. But then I started getting psyched for the Big Meal and was glad I had somewhere to go where someone else would be cooking for me.
I skip all the family deal. Much too far to go to visit people whose company I don’t enjoy. I technically do Thanksgiving, but I tend to throw a dinner party about once a month anyway; I just know when to schedule it in November.
I think it’s a great holiday which I don’t enjoy because it’s so sexist in our family. The men sit in the living room and watch football and drink beer all day. The women chop, slice, bake, peel, cook, mash, and basically work our asses off for 7 hours to prepare a meal which is horked down in 5 minutes at which time the men return to the living room while the women spend 2 hours cleaning up and dividing the food.
I love spending time with my family, but my blood pressure really rises when, after the last dish is dried, my uncle walks into the room to ask when we’re serving the pumpkin pie. :rolleyes:
PunditLisa,
One of my mother’s favorite memories of her father-in-law–and the first time she spent a holiday weekend with my dad’s family–is of watching her father-in-law and his sons clean-up after dinner, on the grounds that the ladies did the cooking. As I understand it, the ladies did the dividing of the food, but the men did their share of the clean-up work. (Note: I’m too young to remember any such big family occasions. But Dad washing the dishes after dinner is the norm in my family even on normal days) .
My family is barely doing gifts for Christmas this year, so I’m already half-way through shopping. And I still love Christmas more than Thanksgiving. I don’t care about the food. And the “family” thing is highly over-rated, since we’re going to be seeing them all again in a month for Christmas (yay, Christmas! :))
Also, I take time throughout the year to be thankful for everything in my life, so I don’t need a special day to remind me to be “thankful”, dammit. 
So why do you do it?
My mother would hit us over the head with the goddamn turkey roaster if we pulled shit like that.