It’s already a thing; they have existed for decades.
Yes, I am of the age where I remember Thanksgiving being a big deal in school - you would cut out your paper turkey, talk about Pilgrims, look forward to lots of food, and nary a word about Christmas until the end of the Macy’s Day Parade.
BTW, here is a link to art work and story that was a fall tradition in the Midwest:
http://www.tkinter.smig.net/Chicago/InjunSummer/
Might be considered too politically incorrect today, but that picture and story ran every year in the newspapers and it was almost as traditional then as the “Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus” article was around Christmas.
Aside from grocery stores, there are very few retail outlets that can make bank selling Thanksgiving-related merchandise.
I suspect that’s the answer to the OP’s question.
Halloween is now the second only to Christmas as the biggest spending holiday of the year … thanksgiving is still a holiday, but black Friday has taken it’s toll which started in my emails from Amazon and Newegg about three weeks ago.
Thanksgiving is just a feast before Christmas.
Me too! I even did a thread about it and if you Google King Kong and Thanksgiving it comes up near the top. Godzilla on Friday too!
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and frankly I’m happy they’re taking whatever horrible commercialization existed around this holiday and moving it to Crapmas. I don’t care if I never see a Thanksgiving advertisement again. The President can pardon a ham, and Macy’s can go back to hocking whatever it is they normally hock.
Thanksgiving can stay in the home, among family, and who gives a shit what marketers think?
I almost vomited when I started seeing “Holiday” (really Christmas, but hell if they’ll use that word) commercials BEFORE HALLOWEEN.
Seriously, now the entire month of November is part of Christmastime? FUCK THAT SHIT.
And fuck stores opening on Thanksgiving to get a jump on Black Friday sales (fuck Black Friday too, btw, it’s gotten too insane).
We got our first Xmas catalog in:
May. WTF? 
Please educate me. What holiday manifestations outside the home are (were) there for Thanksgiving? As I understand it, it’s an exclusive one-meal celebration. Of course, your son might have played Miles Standish in a school play, or people are invited to visit the Plymouth theme park in Boston. Other than that?
Nothing holy about Thanksgiving, but New Year’s Day is a Holy Day of Obligation by us, so New Year’s Eve Mass covers that.
Eventually, in a decade, you’ll be in the same position we’re in now, and Thanksgiving for us will be a quiet time signalling a pause in the shopping season, and we’ll all be able to give thanks for being almost done shopping.
I do think it’s particularly bad now, with stores opening Thanksgiving day and all, but that Black Friday and thanksshopping will evaporate in a few years, with the big deals leaping forward to the Saturday prior. Christmas will still be lurking around, of course, like it is early December, but it won’t be such a major competition.
I was thinking about this. Thanksgiving is vulnerable because outside a few busy days in the supermarket, it’s private holiday. The holidays bracketing it are very public. Costume parties and trick-or-treating one one side; on the other side major shopping, gift-giving to even minor aquaintences and busineess associates, along wiith public decorations like Christmas lights on houses and trees in town square.
I think what you are seeing is nostalgia. We are used to thinking of holiday’s from a kid’s point of view. For a kid, Halloween is all about kids getting candy, Thanksgiving is lessons on pilgrims and a big dinner, and Christmas is Santa Claus and presents. From a kid’s perspective, you don’t see the Halloween partying or the Christmas shopping craziness or the fact that turkey isn’t actually all that good and half the family is feuding with each other. The reality of what adults do on holidays is no comparison to the magic of them in childhood.
As mentioned, New Year’s Eve is the vigil Mass for New Year’s Day, the solemnity of Mary Mother of God, a Holy Day of Obligation. There is nothing about Thanksgiving, an American national holiday, that makes it a holy day. I am aware that Catholic churches have decided to have Mass that day, perhaps to turn the thanksgiving heavenward, but that doesn’t make it anything to do with religion.
Seriously – Thanksgiving is now the opening act for Black Friday.
The bottom line is that you can’t upsell Thanksgiving very much, so the marketing crowd abandoned it in favor of* dun dun DUNNN* Black Friday and the Xmas Xickoff.
Halloween was always a holiday growing up because it is Nevada Day. We’d go to the state capital (Carson City) for the Nevada Day Parade, everything was closed (schools and businesses) and then we’d go trick-o’-treating in the evening. Most people would put out Nevada flags in front of their homes.
This is it, see also Columbus Day. IIRC the story of the Pilgrims’ first contact with the native population is usually presented as one of mutual trust and goodwill, and it may have been that way at the time. But subsequently the arrival of Europeans obviously proved to be a disaster for the indigenous population, even if much of the damage was unintentional. Either way the heroic myth has given way to more sobering accounts that reflected little credit on the newcomers, particularly when it comes to holding them up as the legendary founders of what would eventually become the United States. What’s more, in a culture which at its best aims for inclusiveness, the traditional Thanksgiving narrative has little relevance to those whose ancestors arrived later, or were brought here by force.
I disagree with even sven about the turkey though. I loves me some turkey with all the traditional sides.
Actually, I would argue that what you don’t see about Thanksgiving is that it is a lot of WORK. If you have a family gathering of any size (10+ people) and it stretches across breakfast and The Big Meal, the cooking-cleaning-cooking-cleaning cycle pretty much takes up the whole day for 2-4 adults. I never saw that as a kid: I thought setting the table represented some sort of meaningful contribution. I do think it’s a labor that a lot of people find rewarding, but it’s still labor.
I also wonder if there are fewer households that have someone who can cook like that. Lots of people still cook, of course, and the even marginally-interested cook has access to better recipes, techniques, and ingredients than anyone has ever had in the history of the world. But 50 years ago, every household had to have a cook: now, it’s a hobby. So while the absolute number of fantastic cooks in America has to be at an all time high, we may also have a record number of households where no one can cook anything more complex than mac’n’cheese.