Farmers Weekly Review

By Nick Reiher

Thank you.

Two words. Two words that show the person saying them appreciated what you did for them. Or for just being there for them.

Appreciation in itself has shown to be more important to a lot of people than money. I don’t mean “employee of the week,” or “Hey, we’re having pizza Friday because of all the hard work.” Nice, but …

I mean giving genuine, heartfelt thanks to people for what they mean in your life.

I’m pretty sure by now few of us really take the time to appreciate Thanksgiving. It’s often a harried time days or a few weeks in the making to prepare a feast for anywhere from two to 40 people.

It’s a time to overindulge on food and football. As much as I appreciate both, I have to say I am too bloated by both by the end of Thanksgiving Day to appreciate more than a good belch.

Thankfully, Black Friday sales backed up to Thanksgiving Day are beginning to fade away, as are the early-morning crush to get those sales for Christmas gifts.

It’s nice to see employees of those stores getting to spend time with their families on Thanksgiving as we put our zeal to show Christmas spirit by fighting over the latest fad at discount prices.

As with Christmas, a lot of what Thanksgiving should mean fades away when we get to be adults, physically anyway. Oh, to be kids again, when we just looked forward to a four-day break with great food and weather decent enough to play some football.

Or, before we were ejected from the garden of knowledge of Christmas. A magic time when there was so much hope and excitement for a few weeks, we didn’t think we could take much more.

Neither of those cherished memories capture the real meaning of either holiday, of course. Many of us haven’t been groomed to appreciate (there’s that word again) the real reasons for the seasons. Maybe because we’re afraid of sounding hokey.

Not as hokey as some of those gifts you’re thinking about buying. But, hey, we gotta keep the economy going.

We’ve pretty much skipped over Thanksgiving, whatever the meaning, once again this year. I’m sure workers at Target, Walmart and the like spent a lot of their early “Day of the Dead” pulling down any tattered remnants of Halloween and stocking Christmas stockings, trees, decorations and all that we celebrate for that big day.

I suppose there’s only so many days you can put up Thanksgiving decorations. And we don’t give each other gifts for Thanksgiving. Not enough to keep the economy going, anyway.

How about we give each other a Thanksgiving gift that keeps on giving: true appreciation.

Despite what’s going on in our lives, there are more than enough reasons to thank “The Big Guy.” But I bet He would love it if we thanked each other for what we bring to each other’s lives.

These are tough times. We need all the support from each other we can get. An appropriate hug or just a simple “Thank you” can mean more than a trinket grabbed waiting at the checkout line.

A simple, “Hey, I haven’t heard from you in a while. Are you OK?” says more than the funny saying on the coffee mug that will be stashed with the others after Christmas.

Appreciation.

I appreciate the people who take time from their lives to ask how I and my family are doing, or to say how much they liked a story or one of my columns. As well as those who reach out, respectfully, to say they didn’t. It shows you took time to read and to feel strongly enough to comment.

I appreciate all of you who subscribe to Farmers Weekly Review. You are supporting not only community journalism, but a small business like many of you may have.

Again, thank you. And have a safe holiday season.

Nick Reiher is editor of Farmers Weekly Review.