Here come the supermalls again, splurging on one-page ads in broadsheets proclaiming days of preparation and observance of “Thanksgiving.” Since when did the Philippines have Thanksgiving Day?
I am a very senior citizen and I never saw any Thanksgiving Day celebration in the Philippines. My parents had American teachers and they never even mentioned any Thanksgiving Day to us. Christmas and New Year, yes, but Thanksgiving? Never heard of it. And that goes also for Halloween. Both of these days are not and have never been a part of Philippine tradition and custom.
Our big malls have only one purpose in trying to impose Thanksgiving Day and Halloween on the populace: money! These malls are just plain greedy for money that they would purposely bombard falsehoods on Filipinos.
The United States has an official Thanksgiving Day on the fourth Thursday of each November through a proclamation signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941. The day is not just for the often-stated history that the pilgrim colonists and the Wampanoag Indians celebrated a bountiful harvest way back in 1621 (something that many American Indians do not believe in) and for other more serious reasons for celebrating like the end of the American Civil War when President Abraham Lincoln decreed that it be kept as a celebratory day.
The other nation I know that has an official Thanksgiving Day celebration is Canada but they hold it on the second Monday
of October. India, China, Malaysia and South Korea have their own thanksgiving day for celebrating a good harvest but
they also have some folklore attached to the celebrations.
What folklore or harvests are the retail companies trying to impart to Filipinos? Greed for money is no folklore. Of course these malls will harvest tons of money!
ROCKY B. DENOGA, rocden41@yahoo.com