It seems that Thanksgiving is all about marketing these days. It is the unofficial start of the Christmas buying season. Many stores will open their doors on Thursday afternoon. Most will be opening them very early on Black Friday. Following this extended weekend of shopping will come Cyber Monday. It is the season that retail marketing is running at full bore ahead. Of course, I am a marketing professional, so to see the many techniques advertisers use to draw people to their stores intrigues me. However, I want to take my marketing hat off for a moment and talk about Thanksgiving devoid of the marketing.

We have come to think of Thanksgiving as a day of feasting and football. In the very earliest of Thanksgiving traditions (there were many different dates used by many different groups) the day was actually a day of fasting and reflection on the condition of your soul. It was a day of thinking about the good things in your life. By taking a break from food for a day, it was a physical reminder that you were fed your daily bread on all other days, that you had your health, a job to meet your material needs, and people who cared for you and your well-being. Entire communities took part in these fasting Thanksgiving Days. These special days were sometimes proclaimed by presidents as a decree for the entire nation to recognize thanks to God for life and liberty. This is especially true after wars had ended. Presidents Madison and Lincoln both issued such Thanksgiving Day decrees after the War of 1812 and during the 1863 campaigns of the American Civil War, which were some of the bloodiest of the war. President Washington proclaimed a Thanksgiving Day of fasting after the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1789.

Taking a day to stop eating is a foreign concept to most of us, as is a day for the reflection of our soul. We prefer to be entertained and overfed. However, I am seeing the value in all of this. How can I truly be thankful if I never take the time to reflect upon the good things in my life. I must admit, as a marketing professional, that my job is to point out people’s unhappiness and to promote the purchasing of things that will fix that unhappiness. This is, I believe, why marketing during the holiday season is so successful. Why do we shop and eat and work ourselves into a frenzy this time of year? It is to try to make ourselves and those around us happy… which is to admit that we don’t have happiness at the moment. It is just outside of our reach, but we can fix that by buying the right gifts during the season. Is there any thanksgiving in that kind of thinking? I’m not sure there is. So reflection on what is good about my life at this very moment and thinking about where it all comes from just might be the starting place for contentment in my life.

Do you have it good? What is the source of goodness? Push away the food, turn off the TV, get away from the early bird specials and reflect on that for a little while this Thanksgiving.