Exactly- it's "only a date". There is no history to it, no tradition, it's just a preprescribed day on which you pay attention to your friends and family, in contrast to every other day, and there's no real reason for it except that it came handy. It's a day to eat lots of stuff and not consider maybe why that day is different or what late November has to do with food. It basically "means" visit the family and stuff yourself.
That's not meaning, except in the absolutely most crass sense. But it's all holidays mean to 90% of people. Thanksgiving means you eat turkey and stuffing, Valentines' Day means you buy your girlfriend some jewlery, Easter that you look around the back yard for boiled eggs with the kids. Nobody knows why you do that, nobody's interested in the significance of turkey or eggs, nobody cares. They just do it because they're told that's what's appropriate, shrug their shoulders, and move on. At most they manufacture a rationalization for it that has nothing to do with the actual reasons, just because they're uncomfortable admitting that they're spending their lives doing these things and they have utterly no clue why, or interest in finding out.
And that's not the limit of it, either, that's just all that ties directly into holidays. It's damn few people who know or are marginally interested in the historical context of these days, never mind why they exist now. It's just a day when the advertisements all feature turkeys and family get-togethers, so you buy a turkey and have a get-together.
