Once again, Thanksgiving is upon us. To me, it’s always been a time of warmth and pleasant smiles, when we look back on the year with some fond memories, perhaps some not so pleasant. Not really a champagne cork popping time, but very rewarding, all the same. All in all, a good year. Some of this I’ve written before, and perhaps some readers won’t have seen it. If you have, maybe it’s worth repeating.
We’ll try, just for a few days, to pause the Christmas preparations. In Canada, Thanksgiving happens in October, our Columbus or Indigenous People’s Day. That seems more reasonable, spreading out the holidays. Because Thanksgiving doesn’t always receive its fair share of recognition. Of course, there is the Macy’s Parade in New York. Always fun to watch, but of course, Santa shows up at the end. There’s that pesky Christmas theme again. Sometimes, poor Thanksgiving is treated like an introduction to a good book about Christmas.
People are traveling, and the airlines struggle to keep up. It’s reported that this is the busiest travel week of the year. Bigger than Christmas, New Years, Easter, Mother’s Day, and July 4th. Some guy’s loaded handgun went off during a luggage inspection in Atlanta a few years back. Don’t you wonder what kind of family gathering he was heading to? The pandemic of a few years ago is now a distant memory, things are returning to normal, and families can safely gather again. Bouncing back to our normal insanity. While I write this, there’s a huge wild turkey poking its way through the back yard. I look at it, and it looks back at me with a certain interested yet defiant attitude. It’s perfectly safe because we’ve already got a Butterball in the fridge. Honestly, I can’t imagine the process in colonial days, capturing and defeathering a turkey. By all reports, wild turkeys aren’t particularly good either – rather tough and gamey. So, yes, we’ll stick with the Butterball. I’m reposting some of my favorite Thanksgiving memories because it seems ok to do this time of year – it’s appropriate, and I’m too lazy busy to start from scratch.
When we were young, it was our family tradition to 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 Chestnut Hill 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 fun for them. Berta would take us to shows, plays, movies, and we’d have a grand time with them, staying about a week. Berta was an artist, and several of her paintings hang in our house – a portrait of me at an early age, and a beautiful watercolor of valley where we grew up.
Berta made the traditional Thanksgiving dinner – I remember it spread out impressively on the table. Aunt Berta’s mother was often with us while she was still alive. We called her “Granny” Clark. Berta always made a mincemeat pie for my father. He was, to my recollection, the only person in the assembled group that liked it. It’s like fruitcake or asparagus – you either really like it or you don’t. It was on Thanksgiving at their house that I developed my fondness for 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 had been very close growing up. That too was a ritual, like my great uncle, Herb and Warren, growing flowers to put on the graves on “Decoration” Day.
In the first few years of our marriage, we’d eat twice. I know, but fortunately, I had an appetite in those days that could almost handle it. My mother-in-law made a big dinner usually aimed at noon to early afternoon. Most of the time, it went off as scheduled, but sometimes not. We’d then go on to my parents for another family dinner, usually around 6. If you’re a fan of the Vicar of Dibley, and recall the episode where Geraldine is 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.
This is one of my favorite Thanksgiving dinner stories. The first year after my mother-in-law passed, 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.” My sister-in-law, in a tone suggesting slight annoyance, because the table was practically groaning from the load of food, promised to make them the next year. Fast forward to the next year, and there they are, proudly sitting on the table as promised. Several of us took some, for old time’s sake. 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. Her response can’t be printed here, because this is a family-friendly blog, but to this day, someone will remark on the lack of creamed onions. Another family tradition is celery stuffed with cream cheese. It looks lovely, and remains largely untouched on the table.
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. This was before the days of the roasting pans with racks to life the turkey out easily. In the past, it was always a test of engineering skill to make sure the tin foil had enough layers to hold. 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 more than forty years ago, and to this day I can see that turkey moving like it was still alive and making a getaway. We picked it up, cleaned it up, and away we went. I don’t think anyone at dinner that day knew what had happened, and we certainly weren’t saying anything. 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 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 Miles’ 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 for Thanksgiving viewing over the years.
So many good times come flooding back as we again prepare for Thanksgiving. We’re hosting a smaller family this year, as our nephew and his family will be with their in-laws. 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. How big should the turkey be? Some years, we’re cooking a second turkey over the weekend so the Princess will have lots of leftovers. What vegetables to make. Sometimes it’s a new recipe the Herself has found online. It’s always risky, as you know, to try something new in a family where food traditions are somewhat embedded for generations. 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? Even the Native Americans and the Pilgrims had squash. It’s right there in all the original photos. Turkeys, ducks, geese, fish, and squash.
Warmest regards to everyone as you once again gather for the holiday. Remember a few years ago, when the Macy’s Parade was cardboard cutouts? One of the things we can be thankful for is that it’s back to humans and balloons, and Santa is live as well. There will be football games again in most communities, and I’ll just say “hello” to the gobbler that’s sure to walk past.
I'm Thinking...No! 