With all of the activity surrounding the holidays, and my family’s traditional holiday vacation trip coming up, there has been no time for crafting my usually deep and thoughtful blog posts.

Tonight (Christmas Eve) my family has our holiday gathering with my wife’s side of the family.  Tomorrow morning we see what Santa brought us. Tomorrow night, yet another holiday gathering with all four of my brothers’ families.

We head out for Disney World on New Year’s Eve for a four night stay.

The Alabama Crimson Tide play for the BCS National Title shortly after we return.

It’s going to be a busy next two weeks or so.  In the interim, I’ll be working on my goals for the blog for next year, possibly writing a few posts to be published later, and hopefully upgrading to WordPress 2.9.

But, before all of this I wanted to sincerely wish one and all a very Merry Christmas, and blessings for the coming new year. I also want to express my gratitude for the new friends that I have found in the process of blogging and twittering. I look forward to getting to know all of you better this next year, and hopefully reaching one of my 2010 goals: meeting my twitter friends in person (well, at least some of them, anyway).

See You Next Year!

I’m sure you’ve noticed the process of the retail world.  On January 2, stores start rolling out the Valentine’s day swag. By February 15, they’ve moved on to Easter, then Mothers Day (and possibly Father’s Day). Before Summer is over, the Halloween products roll in. Then, as early as November 1, it’s suddenly Christmas time.

You shouldn’t have to wonder why.  With each and every one of these holidays comes an enormous amount of spending.

Thanksgiving, however, is not the type of holiday that elicits a large amount of shopping.  There aren’t traditional Thanksgiving decorations, there is no gift giving, just a lot of shopping for food, which in the grand scheme of things, does not carry a high profit margin.

So why is Thanksgiving mostly ignored, especially by retail establishments? There just isn’t enough money to be made around Thanksgiving to invest in promoting or supporting it. Also, Christmas (and the other surrounding celebrations) can make or break the year for a retailer.  The sooner they get you, the consumer, thinking about Christmas, the more likely you are to begin spending money on it.

The only thing those retailers are thankful for every year, is your cash.

So, if you’re already listening to the Christmas music 24/7 on the radio (an obvious ploy for Christmas advertising dollars), already buying decorations, and putting up your tree, you may be helping to support the continuing holiday commercilization mentality. And in the process, you might be disrespecting Thanksgiving, a holiday that retailers apparently would rather you forget about (except for the fact that Black Friday is the next day).