Thanksgiving is..

The holidays are coming and the first up is Thanksgiving... Do you have anything this year to truly be thankful for with gratitude? Me and librarian joke and say that we will be in the corner of our family parties, drinking! (heehee, j/k i think) Usually at my family parties, I tend to act the anti-social part and listen to my IPod while texting or playing a game on my phone. It's not that I don't like family get-togethers, I love the fact that it is a tradition in my family for all of us to get together and spend the holidays talking and sharing our lives. I think my basic problem is that this is how my family parties go down anymore =
Family shows up. Uncles take over tv, no matter what we were watching and change the channel to some football game. We say something, and nobody cares that something else was being watched, since Uncles have already changed the channel. Aunts go to kitchen and cook or get things set for the meal. Time to say grace and tv gets muted (notice how the tv doesn't get turned off). We eat, then if its for a birthday the gifts get opened. Otherwise dessert comes out, we eat again. Sit around for about 1/2 hour to talk or act sociable and then everyone leaves. Your families probably do this too, right? This is the basic party for our family though. I guess I have gotten mad that it doesnt matter if shows were watched, tv still gets changed. Then, everyone gets glued to tv or setting table. You could say that I go out and help for a bit, and that is true... but then after that, its all kind of boring, just sitting and watching the game. That is why I pull out my IPod or phone, because if I have to be there, I am going to be doing something that I want to do, and that no one can really take away...
It's really sad that this is what Thanksgiving has come to, what ever happened to the family sitting around the table and saying what they are thankful for and sending up a genuine prayer of thanks, without a tv showing pictures in the background? Is anyone still having the real thanksgiving with the family, being glad that the family is together and not fighting over who gets to watch what on which channel? Thanksgiving has changed, and I think that the change has the made the holiday worse and so then it feels commercialized...