At this point it’s become a sort of inevitability that sometime in late October you’re going to turn on the TV one night to see a commercial full of reindeer, Christmas music, and holiday cheer — nearly two months before the season. Give it another week or two, and you’re bound to hear a holiday tune here and there while flipping through stations on the radio in the car, and look out the window to see disgruntled convenience store workers building a monument to the holiday outside of their store. Eventually, one is sure to ask, what about Thanksgiving? Almost every major holiday has its day in the limelight, so why is it only Thanksgiving which is forced to live in the shadow of another larger holiday?

The likely answer is simple. Christmas is, in the eyes of most people living in America at least, the biggest holiday of the year, especially for those who reap profit when they put us in the holiday spirit — companies, businesses, and corporations. Simply put, the sooner Wal-Mart and other major companies put out their first holiday commercials and get Christmas on everyone’s mind, the more time they have to make money from Christmas related purchases. Christmas is an insanely profitable holiday, and the sooner companies can push forward the season, the better it is for their bottom line.

Compared to Christmas, Thanksgiving has almost nothing to market. No one is decking out their entire house and yard in red, yellow, and orange lights, no one is buying hundreds of presents, no one is putting a big turkey statue in their living room, people are buying food and that’s about it. There’s so little that can be earned from Thanksgiving, that for businesses seeking a profit it’s much easier to forgo advertising products for that holiday and focusing on the next, much more profitable one. It may seem kind of petty of the businesses and somewhat unfair to Thanksgiving, but at the same time you can’t blame them, they exist to earn as much money as possible and by pushing forward the holiday season they’re doing just that.

Though, if people are getting upset about Thanksgiving being a seemingly overlooked holiday, then it can’t be all that overlooked to begin with. It may not have the glamorous image of Christmas, or most other holidays for that matter, but most people still have Thanksgiving dinner with their families, most people remember the holiday  and spend time preparing for it. If anything existing in the shadow of Christmas helps make Thanksgiving a more simple and humble holiday, and there is a certain charm to that. Thanksgiving isn’t a holiday that needs the limelight, and as long as we keep the tradition of Thanksgiving alive that isn’t a real problem.