Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving: that time where we say thank you to no one in particular for nothing in particular. Or, if you believe in God, you could replace "no one in particular" with "God,"  and "nothing in particular" with "everything."

Or if you want to get historical, you may say it's to commemorate the feast where the Puritans said thank you to the Indians who saved them from starving. The Indians were then shown just how ruthless Europeans, and their diseases could be. The story always sounded fishy to me as the Puritans' version of saying thanks would have been to covert you their own intolerant Christian sect.

In the good ol' days, and by that I mean during the Gilded Age and Jim Crow, the thanks in Thanksgiving would have been "Thank you boss (or masta) for giving me two days off in a row."

Only now, in the Second Gilded Aged, we've revoked the "spirit" of Thanksgiving by forcing people, especially in retail, to work. So, Thanksgiving is now coming to mean, "Thank you Target for this marvelous Black Friday sale starting Thursday!"

A different meaning for a new age. It's the most versatile holiday ever concocted.