The Old Thanksgiving

Remember the good old days when all of your family would gather for Thanksgiving? Well, this guy does.

Seventy-year-old Charles Cognata of Sheepshead Bay remembers of a time when 20 to 25 of his relatives would be together for Thanksgiving.

“Thanksgiving was a day to give thanks for what you had received. It was a family affair where we would say thanks for the year,” said Charles Cognata in The Epoch Times.

Cognata is bothered about how everybody thinks of Thanksgiving now. He, and most likely many others, remembers a time when the holiday wasn’t about preparing for next day’s sales or thinking about what food one is going consume; it was about spending time with each other.

“At the first Thanksgiving supposedly the pilgrims and the Indians got together and appreciated what they got. That is the way Thanksgiving should be. It’s not like that now. It is commercialized,” said Cognata. “[Now] it is just the day before Black Friday. People are going to go shopping and get the day off. It’s not the same.”

Hoping to restore the holiday spirit and start a new tradition, he will throw it down in the kitchen and host Thanksgiving at his place, the first time in 16 years.