What is the relative value of this column?

The bird’s been boiled, the meal tucked away in the refrigerator and the cork shoved back in the Barboursville bottle.

There can be no question that the season is officially upon us, but, like a hospital ad torturing metaphors to improve public perception, there are questions we may ask, if only rhetorical.

What is the periodic function of Thanksgiving?

What is the relative humidity of a family?

How warm is seasonal pogonotrophy?

A simple celebration

Thanksgiving remains simple, private and personal. It is a celebration of food and family and good fortune. We found that this year’s holiday, ignored by commerce and perverted by special interests with the initials NFL, was a beautiful day that turned into a glorious evening by an amazing home-cooked meal, family in from out of town and down the street and a dog-led walk through the neighborhood to work up the appetite.

We have also learned that, before we’ve digested the day’s thoughts and fare, shopping comes. Christmas creep has all but obliterated the holiday of thanks, but has not diminished its traditional importance as the launch pad of the seasonal shopping season.

So what is the rational root of an early morning shopping trip?

What is the theorem of Santa shacking up in the shopping mall?

What is the polynomial equation of a holiday parade?

What we have learned through the years is that the joys of a holiday are not necessarily congruent with the common denominator of life experience. Few but the oddly hardy, for instance, line up at 3-dang-dark in the morning in front of a shopping mall to fight for a gift certificate or a bag of goodies and a chance to a buy a few odds and ends on sale, items that will later be wrapped and given away to one’s in-laws.

Tradition runs strong through the tribe. For instance, it’s chilly and cold and dark on a Friday morning outside Belk at Fashion Square and there’s a line out the door as people wait to buy goods on sale at 4 a.m. that they could buy on sale at 10 a.m.

“I didn’t bother to go to bed. I’ve been up since 11 p.m. and just looked at the TV until 1:30 a.m. and then drove over here,” said Wanda Sutherland, of Shenandoah, as she stood waiting for the doors to open. “It’s a family thing. I started my son doing this when he was 2 and he just stopped doing it four years ago.”

In the red on Black Friday

Unfortunately, not everyone has the moolah to shop. Not everyone has the ability to drop a Ben Franklin or two on food for the nation’s one true day of feasting.

Nationally, there are some 16 million people who are unemployed who want to be working, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

How much is not enough?

How few are too many?

What are the multiples of nothing?

It’s good to ask enough questions and seek answers. That’s how we discover many answers that need to be questioned, many more questions that cannot be answered and what we can do to change the results.

And, if we pay close attention, we discover that there is such a thing as a stupid question. In fact, there are many of them.

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