What are your strongest and best memories of Thanksgiving?  Did your family gather, members driving across country, did they sit around big tables telling stories and laughing?  Did the food get eaten, leftovers put away, then pulled back out again later in the day?  Did your family wrap up what was left, send it home in plastic containers to be warmed up again later in the weekend?

Mine did.

Maybe you remember spending the afternoon watching football games with your family, cheering on favorites, groaning when plays didn’t go your way, munching on turkey sandwiches or stealing another piece of pie.  Maybe your favorite memories are of distant cousins, elderly aunts, grandparents, people you didn’t see all the time.  Maybe your family called far away relatives later in the afternoon for long conversations, catching up with months of news.

Mine did – and I bet a lot of your memories are similar.  The point is that many memories of a best Thanksgiving are filled with family.

Now consider what it would be like if you had to work on Thanksgiving — and not because you were vital to the safety of your community, not because you were needed to fight fire or save lives in a hospital — but because people wanted to shop.  They wanted to shop for stuff that would not change the world, would not further humanity, would not even make others particularly happy.  Just ordinary stuff.

Imagine that you have to work because retailers are looking for a bigger profit.  Profit over family, not a unique concept, but imagine you don’t have a choice, that it’s not even your profit; you’re just a pawn on their balance sheets.

Think about it.  The only way retailers can exploit their workers, force them to work on a day that should be all about family, is if we all rush out to patronize their stores on Thanksgiving day.  We don’t have to do that.  What in the world do we need that is so important that we have to buy it on Thanksgiving?

Really?

Nothing.

So here’s a thought.  Join the movement, check out the facebook page.  And how about we don’t go out to shop on Thanksgiving.  How about we don’t let ourselves be manipulated for the retailers good.  How about we don’t let ourselves get caught up in the commercialism of the holiday.  How about instead we look around and see the family members that we love so much, how about we slow down and realize what is important.  How about we sit down to a family dinner.  How about we spend the day in conversation with each other.  How about we value family.

And how about we let everyone do that, even retail workers for one day.  One day filled with family, conversations, laughter, stories, football and pie.

Now that would be the real deal.