A British reader pointed out—Thanksgiving is kind of an anomaly among holidays. And Americans love holidays. Halloween has gone from kids trick or treating to adults dressing up and going about to their favorite pubs or parties, decorating in orange lights—black ones still elude the determined! —doing their front yards up with filmy spiderwebs and silly tombstones, not to mention jack o’ lanterns. And then Thanksgiving follows it a month later and kicks off the Serious Holiday season, toward solemn Christmas and blowout New Year’s. Since Americans actually have to get some work done, they’ve somehow neglected to connect New Year’s to Valentine’s Day, but give us another few decades.
What is Thanksgiving? In origin, it’s a harvest feast, and commemorated survival. It’s gathered legends of Native American assistance (there was,) celebrates New World foods (squash, corn, and turkey) and trappings of Victorian sleighs and rides (during the last of the Little Ice Age) to Grandma’s house over snowcovered roads. Traditionally, it’s the time for the reigning matriarch to hold a really big dinner for all her offspring at once, so in-laws and cousins meet, probably for the only time that year, sometimes alternates between ‘his’ mother and ‘her’ mother’s house. Lately granddad and the guys have added (besides the football game on telly) the ritual attempt to fast-cook an entire turkey in a hot oil deep-frier in (hopefully) the driveway of the grandparental home—keeping fire companies on duty through the holiday.
It’s a time in which if you haven’t got a huge family feed, or sometimes if you do, you invite friends to get together: restaurants and bars, jails, and hospitals switch their menus to include the traditional fare, and people who are out of touch call each other.
It’s not a religious or political holiday, so much as it’s a beginning-of-winter, we’ve survived, let’s get family together sort of holiday, celebrated around a long table, or a tv football game or event (I kid thee not) —the latest being the efforts of otherwise sane people to fling innocent pumpkins as far as possible with a mediaeval catapult; or sometimes in a restaurant, with memories or at least imaginations of the big Dinners. It’s a time to take a second thought, refocus, and be appreciative of the good things we have.
So that’s what we do.
I love Thanksgiving for the big family get togethers, and the sharing of traditions and memories. And the Pies, don’t forget the pies!
I enjoy Thanksgiving and this year I have much to give thanks for. I am financially secure for the rest of my life, have a loving girlfriend, and life is looking pretty good. I have little family left-just my two sisters-but a good group of friends and my girlfriend’s adult daughter make up for it. And I chose them, making them frequently better company than family.
I think what I like about Thanksgiving is that there are no religious overtones. It’s secular. As a Jew I always feel a bit left out of all the Christian based holidays. I just remind myself that Jesus was a good Jew. The rest came later.
Happy Thanksgiving and I hope that everyone had as good a year as I did.
Phil Brown
If Thanksgiving went great, the day after was, let’s just say it was really a trying day. But I’m home today, and I’m regaining a little perspective. I think. Maybe.
One friend always said Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday, more than Christmas, because Thanksgiving was about family and friends and being together to enjoy, and not all about presents or candy or the other things we seem sometimes to substitute for the original holiday’s purpose.
I would agree with that, in principle, and wish it could once again work out in practice.
Thanksgiving is a holiday that doesn’t pick and choose which religion or what kind of faith we have, and that seems to me to be more what faith ought to do than how it is often…misapprehended and misapplied.
Yes, some people would say (with some justification) that Thanksgiving is a celebration of overeating and sports, but I’d like to think that most families (or groups of friends) remind themselves to keep aware of Thanksgiving’s true meaning.
There is one bit about Thanksgiving and Christmas / Hannukah / etc., though, that is troublesome. A lot of people spend their holidays without someone else to celebrate together. Now, of course, if that’s by choice, then there’s room for that. (I have known holidays when I would far rather have had the time to be by myself.) But many times, many people don’t have a friend who’d ask them to join them, or the friends who might join them are elsewhere, celebrating with someone else or otherwise unable to join them. (My regular cabbie, a really unique character, a mix of refined and rough edged, has to work on the holidays; not by choice, but because the cab company has become Scrooge. If he had the chance, he’d be welcome with me or with a couple of his friends in town.) If my grandmother didn’t have me, she’d be all but alone, locally. If I didn’t have her, well, I’d have the need and opportunity to go out and find some new friends, but I wouldn’t have much of anyone in town who is truly close. So I’m more aware of thes things than I was, say, ten or twelve years ago.
Other countries, cultures, and faiths have harvest festivals, but Thanksgiving is something special, at least for Americans (and Canadians). What a great holiday!
(I am choosing to ignore yesterday as though it was some alternate unrealized reality…one which should not have been. Thanksgiving day, however, was great.)
Heheh, one of my two cats (Goober) just decided he needs extra attention. He knows that when I’m on this strange box, I’m not going anywhere for awhile, which means he can try to monopolize my attention, along with my left arm. 😉 Because naturally, I should be petting him (or letting him sleep on it) instead of typing or point-and-clicking.
Happy Thanksgiving!
In recent years, DH and I have taken to inviting friends over who have no family in the immediate area for holiday meals. It means I can cook a reasonable sized turkey or ham and not be overwhelmed with leftovers for weeks, plus we get the fellowship with our friends.
And hugs from a host of friends here on Wave.
On the other hand, Thanksgiving has always felt like a Jewish holiday, many of which follow the theme: We were in danger, we survived, let’s eat! I hope you and yours had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Thanks for the clarification. Any holiday that involves good food and a chance to get together is a great holiday in my book! I don’t know if you were referring to me as the reader in your post. Probably not, since I’m not British. Well, whatever it is, I wish you and Jane a happy Thanksgiving and a good festive season this year!
I like to think of Thanksgiving as the culmination of the harvest celebration that begins with Lammas (aka Loaf Mass) around August 1st, to Mabon/equinox in September, through Halloween/Samhain/Day of the Dead/All Saints/All Souls at October 31st/November 1st-2nd, and finishing up with a slam-bang feast in November. This shows us that harvest doesn’t happen all in one day, gives us a chance to appreciate the hard work that goes into planting & harvesting (all those lovely farmers’ markets come to mind, too) and includes an opportunity to commemmorate those we’ve lost (who of course are also remembered on Thanksgiving).
And Steve, I think you summed it up very nicely: “We were in danger, we survived, let’s eat!” Concise and appropriate!
As I worked on a pie Wednesday evening (chocolate-expresso pecan) and mixed up a batch of sourcream rolls, I realized why I was happy despite my headcold: it’s the start of the serious baking season!!! This is also known as “time to go through 20+ pounds of white and wholewheat flour and upteen pounds of butter!” Right now I’m making stock from the turkey carcass I swiped from my cousin, whose house the family met at. And this afternoon I also strung little, colored LEDs on my bushy, potted laurel tree perched for the winter in the enclosed, front porch. I’m smiling.
Lol! Even I baked! I found a recipe for walnut oat muffins, legal for South Beach Phase II, and they’re good, even if I improvised all over the map. They call for 3/4 cup oatmeal (not instant), check, had that. 1 cup buttermilk. Check: I have it powdered, so that’s good, 4T with a cup of water. Dash of salt. TBS of baking powder. They wanted a quarter tsp of baking soda, but I didn’t have any so I ignored it. Cup of Splenda (supposed to use the brown sugar variety, but didn’t have it). TBS of vanilla. Cup of whole wheat flour, half a cup of chopped walnuts. Check, except I thought the whole wheat flour was a bit much starch, so I subbed in half a cup of ground flax seed and some Bulgur wheat kernels for half the wheat flour. Combine with a teaspoon of cinnamon. Well, there is no such thing as too much cinnamon in a recipe, so I used 3 tablespoons. Mix, but not enough to break up the oats, then put in oiled muffin cups at 425 for 11 minutes. They make a nice legal muffin! We can have them for breakfast!
There’s only one of me, so I had a microwaved frozen dinner (salmon with basil on orzo) and made a pan of cornbread (from a mix, doctored with a teaspoon or so of ‘poultry mix’ (thyme, rosemary, sage, parsley, lemon peel)).
I eat enough turkey the rest of the year; salmon is a real treat and I’m thankful to be able to have it.
Living in England, so I did an intro to Thanksgiving for the Woodcraft Folk – Pioneers; explained about settlers to Massachusetts, Squanto, Massasoit indian clans and tribes, made pumpkin pie from scratch and had a great time.