Picture: Rainbow over a forest after a storm, Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, Shasta County, California
(Click here to purchase a print or license for use in publications. – ID# shas-2139)
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For reasons I won’t go into right now, this is probably the most thankful Thanksgiving I’ve had in a long time. To that end, I wanted to pass along my best Thanksgiving wishes to all of my friends, family, and followers.
Although Thanksgiving is an American holiday, the sentiment embodied by this day certainly can be translated across all sorts of borders. I encourage everyone to take a few extra moments to pause, to look, to feel, to enjoy, and to appreciate all those special people around you. You just never know when it will be too late, and the chance to express that thanks is gone forever.
And speaking of encouragement, if I was to ever start a personal crusade protecting the Thanksgiving holiday, it would be to say that I really dislike the metamorphosis that is transforming this day from one of family, thankfulness, and togetherness, to one of shopping and media-hyped hyper-consumerism. This is a holiday about friends and family, and if there’s anything that gets under my skin, it’s stores opening on Thanksgiving evening, taking employees away from their families to help feed the corporate consumeristic bottom line. More than any Black Friday sale, this further encourages the degradation of the holiday away from family and into big box stores and shopping centers. I would encourage everyone to have a Black Friday boycott OF the stores that feel the need to be open on Thanksgiving. Perhaps we can send a message that they should thank their employees by allowing thm this one full holiday t be with their families. Instead, raise a glass in honor of those who do have to work today in service of society, i.e., doctors, nurses, police, firemen, other public safety personnel, etc., because we truly do owe them our thanks.
Go shop on Friday if you need to be part of the consumer frenzy. But I for one pass on my respect and patronage to stores like REI who’ve chosen to not only stay closed on Thanksgiving, but have also chosen to stay closed on Black Friday so their employees can be outdoors. They’ve pushed the social media hashtag campaign of #OptOutdoors. Our local parks will also be admission free on Black Friday. I hope many others will also choose to take Black Friday back from the stores and go spend the day, or even just a small part of it, outdoors reconnecting with nature. After all, we should all be oh-so-thankful that Mother Nature has given us this planet we can call home.
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Gary Crabbe is an award-winning commercial and editorial outdoor travel photographer and author based out of the San Francisco Bay Area, California. He has seven published books on California to his credit, including “Photographing California; v1-North”, which won the prestigious 2013 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Gold Medal award as Best Regional title. His client and publication credits include the National Geographic Society, the New York Times, Forbes Magazine, TIME, The North Face, Subaru, L.L. Bean, Victoria’s Secret, Sunset Magazine, The Nature Conservancy, and many more. Gary is also a photography instructor and consultant, offering both public and private photo workshops. He also works occasionally a professional freelance Photo Editor.
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