Thanksgiving Cards

Thanks to NiceGirlNotes for the heads up on this one!

Shutterfly now has a whole batch of Thanksgiving themed cards you can send out to help celebrate the holiday!

Shutterfly - Thanksgiving cards

Nordstrom's Safe Haven

If you want to go shopping this season, but you don't want to be bombarded by the Christmas Creep, take your credit card over to Nordstroms for your pre-Thanksgiving shopping.

Nordstrom's department stores won't be rolling out the holiday decorations and fanfare until the day after Thanksgiving. It's a low-key policy they've carried out for as long as company spokesman, Colin Johnson, can remember. "It’s our longstanding tradition that we wait until the day after Thanksgiving to unveil the holiday trim at all of our stores," Johnson told Yahoo! Shine. "We think it’s important to celebrate each holiday on its own so we’re doing it again this year. "

Article: Yahoo Shine: Nordstrom's funny holiday shopping policy. Who knew?

Hooray for Nordstroms!

WOW Respect

If you're a World of Warcraft player, last year they had some achievements you could complete related to the Thanksgiving holiday!

Check out the blog Tree of Life - Respect The Turkey for more details.

Very soon we'll start to see the Christmas creep happening in the stores, where companies put their decorations out for sale sooner and sooner.

Remember, No Christmas Before Thanksgiving! ncbt!

Turkey Hand

Who doesn't love a good turkey hand?

I mean of course the art project where you trace your hand on paper, then make your thumb the turkey's head and your fingers it's feathers.

I'm thinking we should all wear these t-shirts between Halloween and Thanksgiving to show our Respect for the Turkeys!



Source: Threadless - Turkey Hand by earlwallace

Cafe Press - Products

User Respect The Turkey over at Cafe Press made a great t-shirt back in 2008 supporting the cause!





It was made for 2008, but I think if you wore it today people would still get the hint!

Respect The Turkey

Every year it's the same thing.

Stores are so greedy to get their sales from Christmas shopping that they put out their displays earlier and earlier!

We all love Christmas and it's a wonderful holiday, but every time of year has it's place. At first the stores waited until the day after Thanksgiving to put out their displays. Then they started the weekend of Thanksgiving, and now they have their displays out the day after Halloween.

Some stores are even putting out their Christmas displays out before Halloween, a full three months before Christmas!!!

Christmas time is a magical happy time of year, but let's keep it after Thanksgiving at least. NCBT - No Christmas Before Thanksgiving!

Turkey Holiday Lights

A Thanksgiving light up decoration, now THAT'S what I'm talking about!

A friend mentioned over lunch that Thanksgiving might be a more notable holiday (and less likely to be ignored in favor of Christmas) if it had a mascot.

I did some Google searching, and I found suggestions from people for all sorts of things:
Turkeys, Native Americans, Pilgrims, Puritans, Turkeys, Pie, even Snoopy, and someone called "Turk the Jerk"??

All of these are recognizable as icons of the Thanksgiving holiday, but all of them would have problems being a mascot.
- If the mascot is a Turkey, then you're either spending the whole holiday protesting eating turkeys, or you end up eating your mascot?
- If the mascot is a Native American or a Pilgrim then it kind of leaves out the newer immigrants that weren't part of the original Thanksgiving story.
- Pie? Well... that's my favorite choice probably, but I think you need something with a story around it.
- Snoopy's awesome of course, but the whole Peanuts is really for every season not just Thanksgiving.
- Turk the Jerk... yeah... not a very happy mascot, so we can skip him!

One of the results I found is buried in a collection of stories compiled in the early 1900s.
It's part of the public domain, and is published on-line through The Gutenberg Project.

Beetle Ring's Thanksgiving Mascot, By Sheldon C. Stoddard

It tells the story of a gruff small lumber town in the middle of winter, and a poor family who is struggling to make it through the winter.

The family falls on even harder times as the father gets injured, and the mother can barely afford to feed the baby, but she is still optimistic and throws out this line:

"Next Thursday's Thanksgiving. We've seen hard times, and we may see harder, but I never knew Thanksgiving to come yet without something to be thankful for--never."

That's a pretty good line for Thanksgiving really, and from a pretty good story about hard times.
The family is starving, poor and near freezing to death, but still optimistic about something good on Thanksgiving.

In the end the other townspeople embrace the family, and take on the little baby as their good luck mascot.
They are moved to a warmer place to stay for the winter, and everyone brightens up a little with thoughts of good luck and prosperity for the future.

The baby is never named, but they refer to her as "Peart", which I'm guessing is like "perty", slang for "pretty", but it's a good enough nickname?

So without further ado I present to you the official Thanksgiving Mascot as declared over 100 years ago:

Baby Peart, the Official Thanksgiving Mascot

(Or Peart, the Beetle Ring Baby)
- She helps you remember to be thankful for your friends and family
- She reminds people to be optimistic about the future, no matter what!
- She brings good luck
- She would look great on a Thanksgiving card or a pin :)

Any graphic artists out there want to graphic up a little Thanksgiving baby girl for me? :)