As the cool winds of fall lead us into the heart of November, the lovely leaves drift lazily on the ground and beckon to the most wonderful time of the year. No, despite the oft-quoted lyric just referenced, the most wonderful time of the year is not Christmas but instead the glorious holiday that is Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is easily the best holiday to ever exist, especially for the NYU freshmen. Thanksgiving, on top of the many other delightful qualities, is extremely timely. It comes around three months into the school year and will be the first opportunity to visit home for many freshmen since the day they moved in. Along with this, it could very well be the first meal that will not be absolute grease-filled garbage peddled to us on street corners or in buffet lines. For students, being reunited with friends and family from home is always a welcome experience. And for those who choose to stay in the city, there is a plethora of fun to be had. Taking center stage would be an up-close and in-person view of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Home or still on campus, for NYU freshmen, there is no better time than this.

But of course, Thanksgiving’s timeliness is not its best attribute — that title belongs to the beautiful heaps of food. What makes American Thanksgiving so unique from all other holidays is the fact that there is no other real focus other than the food. As we Americans have slowly swept the original basis of its origin under the rug, we have piled on glorious portions of food. Although there are sometimes uncomfortable conversations that take place at the Thanksgiving table that revolve around topics like politics, the benefits outweigh this cost.

While it takes dressing up and a great deal of photographs and fluff to get such excessive amounts of food at a Christmas dinner, Thanksgiving skips the filler and formalities to get straight to the point. There is no necessity to wear fancy clothes that restrict waistlines and oppress our appetites. We must understand that given the choice of presentation and a gluttonous excess of gifts or football and a gluttonous excess of mashed potatoes, the latter is a far superior option.

Thanksgiving is the eclectic mix of nostalgia, kindness and kinship that we often forget over the course of the year. There are no distractions from those messages which are oftentimes lost in our increasingly consumer-cultured Christmas. Thanksgiving still holds onto something centralized and humble in the face of that, and despite its lack of flare, it is obvious the holiday that holds the title of king.

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Email Thomas Price at [email protected].