OPINION:
On this Thanksgiving, when all of us have so many reasons to be thankful, pausing to give thanks is more and more an afterthought in America.
Let’s be clear: “Black Friday” is an amazing, soulful Steely Dan song, not the day after Thanksgiving to stand in line at 4 a.m., waiting for a store to open.
Black Friday, the first day of the Christmas shopping season, is what many Americans are really thankful for. More attention is given to Black Friday than to Thanksgiving Day itself.
Not at the Nugent household. No mention of Black Friday or Christmas is permitted on Thanksgiving at the Nugent household. We spend Thanksgiving Day pausing to give thanks for the numerous blessings bestowed upon our family and our nation.
I will take my sons and grandson hunting at the crack of dawn on Thanksgiving Day, celebrating the pureness of the spirit of the wild from which we derive our life’s sustenance. We will sit in a hunting blind together and wait for the mighty white-tailed deer. With a little luck, my arrow will fly true and my grandson will witness sustainable yield - real-world cause and effect the way God intended.
The centerpiece of our Thanksgiving dinner will be a wild turkey that I killed. Pure, organic, wild thunderbird nutrition. The tastiest, healthiest meat on the planet. We don’t play politically correct catch-and-release games at our house. I kill my own Thanksgiving turkey. Anyone who has a problem with that dwells in the land of the mentally lost.
We don’t watch NFL football on television on Thanksgiving, though we may toss around a football in the yard, and we most definitely will shoot our bows and handguns while we go for a family walk up the lane and talk about what we are most thankful for.
As the Thanksgiving Day afternoon begins to wane, your humble Motor City Madman will sneak to my favorite oak tree in the swamp, where I will sit quietly 20 feet off the ground, armed with my bow and arrows. An overabundance of deer requires the herd be reduced. I can fix that. I give genuine thanks for the bounty of the land.
Thanksgiving is not a speed-bump holiday for Christmas. I understand the need for merchants to make money, but I don’t understand the mentality of people who basically skip the essence of Thanksgiving in order to kick off the Christmas shopping season.
Times are tough for many Americans and our nation. Regardless, all of us can find reasons to give thanks.
Stop and give thanks on Thanksgiving, America. Black Friday can wait.
Ted Nugent is an American rock ’n’ roll, sporting and political activist icon. He is the author of “Ted, White, and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto” and “God, Guns & Rock ’N’ Roll” (Regnery Publishing).
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