Well, I passed on Thanksgiving with friends this year because I had just endured a medical test and wasn’t up to an afternoon social affair. As always, there is the grand tradition to celebrate and gather with others, but there are plenty of good reasons―like mine―to stay home.
I don’t much like the holiday anyway. Does Thanksgiving mean giving gratitude to God? To the Pilgrims? Who cares, let’s eat. What kind of gratitude (there are two kinds) and gratitude for what? Stay home but avoid the ravenous Black Friday sales.
The other reason to pass on this event is the mushy food, gooey sweet potatoes, dry turkey fragmented in the carving, green beans with almonds (I am allergic). A friend I visited once cooked a turkey and, in basting, it fell out of the oven and onto the kitchen floor. We wiped it off and told nobody.
Today I avoided a few people I didn’t care to know and ate a delightful meal solo: shrimp and steak, fried potatoes, bleu cheese salad, some mediocre red wine, and ice cream―how sickeningly American is that?―all while listening to Beethoven and watching football with the audio turned off.
Writer Adam Gopnik invokes Ben Franklin on turkeys and feels that they are much better eaten as leftovers. “Many of those turkeys will be dry, and most, truth be told, would be disappointing without a bolster of stuffing and cranberries and creamy gravy.” Not to mention the horrors of how they are raised and sacrificed. A few years ago I was put in charge of making the gravy, which I am pretty good at, and got into a dispute with a regular guest who preferred giblet gravy, a poor choice. I gave way, poured another drink, and it’s been her giblet gravy ever since.
You know it’s hard to buy into a fabricated tradition of thanks when you think about what’s going on with Trump, the perpetual Middle East violence, the hungry children, the climate. It does seem rather self-serving. Well, we hope you enjoyed your lumpy mashed potatoes and giblet gravy anyhow.
Oh John,
I am sorry to hear your sad story of Thanksgiving. We enjoyed a moist turkey as well as well prepared food we like and gave thanks, not to the terrorism or terror in the world, but that we were all healthy enough to spend time together laughing, playing games, enjoying good conversations as well as sharing fond memories from all of us who had spent times elsewhere at this time of year. Yes, the world is a pretty tragic place just now, but I, for one, am going to try to concentrate on whatever good news or goodness I see around me. I hope you can be thankful that you apparently had a good enough result from your test to enjoy some typically good food.
We went out for delish Mediterranean food. I reflect on what I’m grateful for daily.
As far as Orange Julius…”The only way out is through”