Buying Thanksgiving

Holiday cartoon depicting how Christmas is overshadowing Thanksgiving.

Every year, it's the same. Families gather on the third Thursday of November for a grand feast and to give thanks to all they have and are blessed with.

Later, the families pull a "Gone with the Wind" and take a nap in the same house together right after they had their full of food, if they didn't already watch a football game.

After resting, they would all head down to the nearest or most popular department or high-tech store to stand in line and wait to go in to take part in the big sales as the Christmas season officially begins.

But this year, it seems as though materialism is more overshadowing Thanksgiving.

For the first time ever, Wal-Mart, as well as others, opened their stores at 8 p.m. Thanksgiving night for the customers to start the sales.

This actually scares me. Stores are opening their stores up earlier into the holiday so they can get a head start on sales. It won't be long until store sales happen all day on Thanksgiving and families forget to keep what we do on that holiday a tradition.

As for my holiday season, my sister went to visit my other sister in New Orleans for the holiday so it was just my parents and I celebrating here in Maryland.

On Thanksgiving morning, we watched the 86th Annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV, as it was traditional. I didn't enjoy all that much. It had too many pre-teen celebrities and the parade isn't usually all that children oriented like it felt this year. For once, I watched the televised Dog Show that followed the parade. The dogs were so adorable.

Afterwords, we went to the chow hall on Fort Meade where we enjoyed are dinner in the mid afternoon.

That's funny how the early to middle afternoon is when families usually have Thanksgiving dinner. Must be that way to get enough rest before having to go to the many Black Friday sales at midnight.

After we prayed, we ate all the essentials: turkey, gravy, stuffing, ham, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, green beans, with mac & cheese, salad, and soup.

We left to go home and take our naps. My mom went to Wal-Mart at 8 p.m. and I went to Best Buy at midnight. I got in line at 10:30 p.m. and didn't get in until half an hour past midnight. All the sales I wanted to take advantage of were buy the 32 gb 5th generation iPod touch and get a free $50 gift card and buy a $100 iTunes gift card for only $80.

My rule for Black Friday is only take part if there is something you really want to buy and you must take advantage of the amazing sale. Also go by yourself in your own car so you and only you control when you leave in case you get annoyed by the crazy, bustling scenes.

Catholic Law Causes Death

Savita Halappanavar died after being denied an abortion.

Time and time again, humans have debated over the delicate subject of abortion, but for an Indian woman living in Ireland, she was denied one which cost her life.

On October 21, 2012 in Ireland, 31-year-old Indian woman Savita Halappanavar was refused an abortion because of the strict nation-wide anti-abortion laws.

Halappanavar and her husband went to the hospital because she was complaining of back pain. From a CNN report, the examining doctors informed Halappanavar that she was in the midst of a miscarriage that would end in a matter of hours.

From a an Irish Times report, Halappanavar spent the next three days in agony until the fetus' heartbeat stopped, while she also asked several times for her demanded pregnancy termination. The doctor's refused because of the Catholic anti-abortion law.

Savita and her husband, Praveen, dancing.

Praveen Halappanavar, Savita's husband, told CNN, "On Tuesday morning, she came back and [the doctors] said that 'I'm sorry, we can't help you because [Ireland is] a Catholic country. We can't help it, it's a Catholic thing.' So we just said that she's not Catholic, she's a Hindu, so why impose the law on her?"

Halappanavar was 17 weeks pregnant and she died from, what IBN Live says doctors said was, blood poisoning a week after abortion denial.

Two women protest for Halappanavar and women everywhere.

Ever since then, many organizations have made public protests throughout other nations around the world in Halappanavar's name. Some of them coming from the side of pro-choice and others from the side of women's rights.

This having happened has sparked major controversy and further question on when, if ever, is it ok to terminate a fetus. The Catholic Church  says never but then others say women have the right to do what they please with their own bodies. This grueling and hurtful debate between pro-life and pro-choice organizations has been going on for so long and it's difficult to say when it will end, if it will ever.

No Shave November

As curious as I am and as my friends are also taking part, I have decided to shave off all my facial hair and not shave or even clean it up as it grows as part of something called No Shave November.

This is obviously something that is meant for men, (unless women also take part but with their legs, ew!), and I imagine it is very popular between friends and classmates in high school as well as college. I am not usually this immature or at least I hope I don't seem that way, but I wanted to try it out and see how long I can go without cleaning my face of its "caveman" look, if it ever gets that way.

I have not shaved all of my facial hair off at once since my high school graduation in June 2011 and I wanted to see how I look without any hair on my cheeks, chin, or neck.

As it has been only half a week since No Save November had started for me, I have already decided that it may have been bad idea because I hate the way I look without facial hair and the coldness of the weather is not helping me as I am without a face warmer. But it is also an interesting experience to be in when I once had all the hair on my face, then I took it all off and hear someone in my class ask"what are you going to do with your hair next week?" referencing the fact that got a haircut the week before I shaved off my facial hair.

As it says on Noshember's site, "Everyone, young and old, male and female can participate in No-Shave-November..."

The site also tells its viewers what to do on certain days of the month such as to stowe away all razors on Nov 1, to control the desire to shave in the week of Nov 1-7, and Nov 30 is known as Photograph Day where pictured are taken of the hairy people who took part.

This activity is quite interesting I must say, but for me I think this will be the only time I will be apart of it.