Modern Thanksgiving Was Invented to Drive You Nuts
In a way, it has always been a celebration of stress
Ah, Thanksgiving. The day when families reunite, when the stuffing is just like grandma used to make, when everyone takes a much-needed break from work and school to count their blessings together.
Except, it’s t-minus two hours to when your guests arrive, the vegan and gluten-free sides are already competing for space on the stove with the old-school ones your aunt can’t do without, and your nephew, who’s supposed to be bringing the cranberry sauce, just texted to say he can’t make it after all because he needs to fill a shift for the Black Friday sale, which now starts Thursday.
When you take a break to check your phone, you see the magazine-worthy shots of intricate cookie turkeys your college roommate just posted to Instagram. You glance guiltily at the store-bought pumpkin pie on your own counter.
Wouldn’t it be great to return to a simpler, less stressful kind of Thanksgiving celebration?
Well, yes, if it ever existed. But while Thanksgiving has changed a lot over the decades, it’s always been a complicated, angsty affair. Let’s take a brief journey back through time to see how Thanksgiving became such a stressful hassle for so many of us.
