Here’s progress: While the American Puritans are credited with getting the whole Thanksgiving thing rolling here in the New World, they lost control of the holiday soon after.
That was good news. That meant that the holiday soon became focused on the feasting part of Thanksgiving rather than the fasting part. How football and cheap TVs worked into the whole equation is more complex than atom splitting at CERN.
I’m thankful I don’t have to understand it all myself, and there’s even more I’m thankful for this year that’s easier to wrap your head or bacon around:
• I’m thankful the weather is frequently brutal at Colorado’s best ski areas, and that flat-landers tire easily and are fine just hanging in the lodge.
• I’m thankful my family no longer cares that I refuse to serve turkey at Thanksgiving and do things to an animal carcass that would require confession or therapy if they happened any other way.
• I’m thankful that Comcast officials will soon surely suffer from a virtual plague of ailments and unfortunate events after collecting the world’s worst karma for years.
• I’m thankful my addictions to extravagant foods, wines, brews and coffees don’t require me to shoot them up or hunt down a supplier who never takes off his coat.
• I’m thankful that there are now more micro-breweries and tap houses per capita in Colorado than anywhere else on our odd little planet. And this year, I’m especially thankful for Dry Dock’s Aurora Ale and eternally grateful for Left Hand Nitro Milk Stout.
• I’m thankful that, in my mind, I can believe that somehow the Russians cheated the election system and made it look like Donald Trump won the 2016 election. Because I still cannot believe or fathom that millions of Americans would vote for him.
• I’m thankful that my wife is now a snow snob and OK with skiing in freaky places under terrible conditions just for those minutes of ecstasy.
• I’m thankful that police radar and body cams can’t read my thoughts as I imagine all the horrible things that happen to the ass-hats on Interstate 225 during rush hour every morning and every night.
• I’m thankful for Denver’s donut renaissance.
• I’m thankful people in Europe see Donald Trump as something forced upon us that we must suffer, rather than something we have forced upon the planet that everyone but us must suffer. As bad as he is for the world, he’s ever so much worse for us.
• I’m thankful that unlike bourbon whiskey, cheap Irish whiskey is totally drinkable.
• I’m thankful I neither say, understand nor must suffer, “the shoe is on the other foot.”
• I’m thankful that my tolerance for physical pain has increased proportionately with my advancing age.
• I’m thankful you actually can buy happiness, and that I sometimes have enough money to prove that out.
• I’m thankful that I have perfected the ability to make it appear that I’m listening and enjoying someone blathering at me, or that I think I’ve perfected that skill and others are happy to not point out the opposite, or that I also have the ability to tune those complaints out, too.
• I’m thankful my wife and friends all agree that paying upwards of $40 for roast chicken in any restaurant is an accurate gauge of why I would never pay to eat there. I’m also thankful that I have no such scruples when I know I’m not paying for dinner, in such case, there is no price too high for the perfect dinner.
• I’m thankful that bell bottoms, skinny jeans and jock-socks with stripes aren’t marketed or even legally sold to my age group.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com.