Particularly this year, when we may not all be able to meet in person, share a meal, and enjoy family and friends, it’s more important than ever to keep thoughts of our past traditions and fond memories at the surface of our day. All of us have tales of Thanksgivings past that cause us to smile as we recall the warm memories of the holidays. I repost here some that are my favorites.
When we were young, it was our family tradition to go visit some friends of my parents for Thanksgiving, and they in turn would come to stay with us for Christmas. Jack and Berta Forbes were wonderful people that had no children and lived outside of Boston. Not only would we go “over the river and through the woods” to their house in Brookline on Thanksgiving day, but my sister and I would stay with them during summer vacation. Jack, or “Uncle Icky”, as we called him, and I would play golf – in fact it was he that taught me to play golf, while Aunt Berta and my sister would do something, I don’t know exactly what. Berta would take us to shows, plays, movies, and we’d have a grand time with them.
Berta made the traditional Thanksgiving dinner – I remember it spread out resplendently on the table. She always made a mincemeat pie for my father. He was, to my recollection, the only one that liked it. Nobody else that I recall did. It was on Thanksgiving at their house that I developed my love of pumpkin pie. It was also special because Uncle Icky had a pool table in the basement. This was before they were commonly found in family game rooms, so it was a real treat. We’d also stop to visit one of my father’s childhood relatives. It was his step-father’s son, and they were very close growing up. That too was a ritual, like my great uncle growing flowers to put on the graves on Memorial Day, which Uncle Herb always called “Decoration Day”.
In the first few years of our wedded bliss, we’d have a double dinner. My mother-in-law, a wonderful lady, made a big dinner for early afternoon. We’d then go on to my parents for another family dinner, usually around 6. Even my robust appetite was taxed a bit. If you’re a fan of the Vicar of Dibley, and recall the episode where she’s invited to four Christmas luncheons and hasn’t the heart to refuse any of them, it was something like that. This was in the days when you’d stuff the turkey the night before, then put it in the oven to roast at, like, five o’clock in the morning. We did all the things that chefs and doctors now tell you is wildly unsafe to do. My mother-in-law introduced Brussels sprouts one year because I’d mentioned in casual conversation that I liked them. God bless her – she’d make them just for me as nobody else would eat them. On a side note, she and my father-in-law would make more Christmas cookies than anyone else I ever knew outside a bakery. You’d walk into their kitchen and see every countertop, every shelf, and every flat surface covered in all manner of cookies. They’d bake dozens and dozens of them. I fully expected one year to see cookies hanging from the ceiling.
After she died, my father-in-law sold their place in Florida and moved back to New Hampshire. Susan’s sister and her husband hosted Thanksgiving dinner at their house. My father-in-law, I always called him Alfred – remarked that there were no creamed onions. To quote, “Your mother always made creamed onions.” So, my sister-in-law promised to make them the next year. Around comes next year, and there they are, proudly sitting on the table as promised. Nobody touched them. Margaret mentioned pointedly to him that she’d made the creamed onions “like Mom’s” for him. It was then that he admitted he’d never particularly cared for creamed onions and would pass. There they sat in a place of prominence getting cold, while my sister-in-law gave him a look of daggers.
One of the great family traditions on Thanksgiving was to make a “cradle” of tin foil, overlapping each side, so that we could remove the bird easily when it was done and then make gravy in the roasting pan. It was always a test of engineering skills to make sure the tin foil would hold. I have no idea why we didn’t just get those turkey lifters that look like short pitchforks, but we always seemed to rely on the fine folks at Reynolds and Alcoa. The first year we’d bought our house, we were hosting. It was our maiden foil wrap voyage, and, if you too are seeing ahead, there were not enough layers. The foil broke and the turkey slid across the kitchen floor, headed for the dining room. That was at least thirty years ago, and to this day I can see that turkey moving like lightning like it was still alive and make a run for it. We picked it up, cleaned it up, and away we went. Don’t believe anyone at dinner that day knew what had happened, and we certainly weren’t saying a word. OK, we did admit it years later. In a similar vein, I remember Herself telling a tale from her best friend growing up. It seems the friend’s father had a few too many celebratory glasses of wine and was in no condition to carve the turkey. He placed it triumphantly in the table and announced, “Everybody just pick.”
Thanksgiving television episodes bring great remembrances of happy viewing. My personal favorite was the episode of “Mad About You”, when the dog eats the turkey, so Paul and Jamie keep trying to sneak a replacement in past the in-laws. They go through about six turkeys, and that is truly one of the funnier television episodes of all time, Thanksgiving or not. There are several episodes of “Everyone Loves Raymond” that highlight the holiday. Two in particular always bring a smile when I see them. There is one where Debra is angry with Ray, not unusual. She’s buttering the turkey and it gets away from her. She’s chasing it all around the kitchen, finally getting it by the drumsticks and slings it into the oven, sans pan. The other was the year was the year that Marie was going “healthy” and made a tofu turkey, with little paper drumsticks that wiggled hilariously when she puts it on the table. There was also a memorable “Murphy Brown” Thanksgiving episode where they’re helping out at a kitchen for the homeless. Murphy’s ordered live turkeys, which really weren’t best picked up in Myles’ BMW. And we still joke about “Grammy Dial’s cranberry / prune stuffing.” If you’re old enough, you might remember WKRP in Cincinnati’s classic Thanksgiving Promotion, when they drop the turkeys from the helicopter, landing as lethal projectiles into a parking lot. Arthur Carlson, the station manager’s famous statement at the end summed it up: “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.” TV has been good to Thanksgiving viewing over the years.
So many good times come flooding back as we again prepare for Thanksgiving. Because we’re distancing, it will just be the tree of us. That’s ok. We’ll have two sets of stuffing, because the family’s traditional sausage stuffing, which we can no more do without than the creamed onions, sadly doesn’t agree with me. There are the endless controversies – jellied cranberry sauce versus, well, those whole cranberries. I like to thicken the gravy with corn starch, but Herself insists it has an aftertaste so I should use flour instead. Frozen versus fresh turkeys, and how big? The Princess wants it big so there will be lots left over. I’m trying a new vegetable – a creamed spinach that I clipped from a magazine and have field-tested – it came out pretty well. It’s always risky, as you know, to try something new in a family where food traditions are embedded like fossils. The Princess doesn’t like squash, so we won’t make a lot. But, then again, it’s a tradition. Who has Thanksgiving dinner without squash?
Warmest regards to everyone as you gather for the holiday. The parade from New York will be different this year – perhaps cut-out cardboard figures watching it and an artificial Santa going into Macy’s, any football games played by teams escaping an outbreak of COVID, and keep an eye on the turkey so it doesn’t try to get away!
I'm Thinking...No! 