You know how that song line goes ….like Christmas. Except we haven’t even hit Thanksgiving yet. This is hardly a new reality, but every year I am always surprised by how quickly merchants and consumers pivot from Halloween to Christmas. Almost overnight orange and black morphs into red and green and the candy aisles with the little fun size Halloween treats change over to the same candy treats in different wrappings and are now billed as stocking stuffers.
What happened to Thanksgiving? It just isn’t a marketing dream, is it? How do you sell being thankful? Oh, sure, there are turkeys and pilgrims (more about those later) and Indian corn but Thanksgiving (other than food) does not bring in the dollars like Halloween and Christmas.
Yesterday Tom and I ventured out for lunch and then decided to go to a nearby Michael’s to buy the Gingerbread House kits that we have bought for at least 8 or so years for our grandchildren. We will be making the trek north to Massachusetts for Thanksgiving and since we are driving it is just as easy to buy the gingerbread house kits now. We love making gingerbread houses with grandchildren. We have been fortunate to enjoy Thanksgiving with both sets of grandchildren in different years and gingerbread houses are always part of the tradition.
As we stood in line at Michael’s (a line that was almost as long if not longer than the queues to vote just a few days earlier) it appeared that everyone was already shopping for Christmas. There were lots of Gingerbread House kits being clutched in arms (even though Michael’s appeared to have enough kits stacked high to serve the universe), tubes of wrapping paper, along with artificial Christmas trees and boxes of ornaments and Christmas lights. Did you know they now make candy canes in a flavor “inspired by the Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookies”!?!
I really don’t have a problem with this. People want to celebrate, especially after the harsh reality of the pandemic prevented a lot of us from doing this. At the height of “the covid” (as our youngest grandchild called it), we did not travel to see our children or grandchildren and gingerbread houses were made without us. I don’t mind slipping into early Christmas mode, but I just don’t want to leap over Thanksgiving.
Holidays are a wonderful time to be thankful for all that was, all that is and all that will be.
My childhood Thanksgivings were celebrated around the table which always included my grandparents. There was always turkey though my father really disliked turkey—“It’s so dry,” he would always say. What he didn’t know is that my mother insisted on putting the turkey in the oven the night before and letting it cook all night. She wanted to be certain it was done. It was indeed done and yes, it was indeed dry. But it was there. There was usually a baked ham, too. Sometimes there were country ham biscuits. My mother made a wonderful stuffing (cooked outside of the turkey not inside) that my children to this day refer to as “turkey bread.” There is very little cornmeal in her stuffing which many find unusual for a Southern cook, but I have never had stuffing that could even compare. Her recipe is included at the end of this blog post. There also had to be rolls; buttered on the top before they were warmed in the oven.
There were always mashed potatoes, giblet gravy, deviled eggs, pickled beets, sweet gherkin pickles, butterbeans (these are not the same as lima beans) and corn. Often the corn and butterbeans would be mixed together. There was always pumpkin pie (my father’s favorite), occasionally a pecan pie and my grandmother always brought one of her homemade layer cakes—coconut, applesauce or chocolate (my brother’s favorite). Sometimes my grandmother brought more than one cake . Ours was a family that tried to keep everyone happy.
I like what Oscar Wilde said: “After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.” I am grateful that there was never drama around the Thanksgiving table when I was growing up.
There was lots of food and we were not a large family. My mother was an only child. We lived too far from my father’s Pennsylvania relatives to have them join us at the feast and our family was only 5 people. Until we children grew up and began adding spouses and grandchildren around the table, it was usually just the 7 of us. Both my grandmother and mother cooked enough to make sure there were ample leftovers. They didn’t really want us in the kitchen “in the way” and my very helpful and excellent cook husband quickly learned when he joined the family that they REALLY did not want him in the kitchen!!
We said a blessing before we ate but we were not the family that went around the table and named something we were thankful for. That is a nice tradition but it just wasn’t ours. We also were not a family that went outside and tossed a football around in the yard, but knowing my father’s love of sports, surely there was a football game being watched on the television. I don’t really remember.
I do remember how much we loved watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I dreamed of being there in person one day, though I no longer think being there in person would be as much fun as watching from the comfort of our living room. Where do those people go to the bathroom? Can you really see anything if you don’t get there and camp out the day before? What if it rains? There are some things you just need to do when you are younger. I must say we were super excited when two of our friends got to be balloon handlers last year so there still is a certain magic about being at the parade in person. Perhaps if a grandchild winds up playing in one of the marching bands, we will brave the port-a-potties and be there in person.
When our children were growing up we had these paper pilgrims that folded out into a three dimensional form and sat on the table. They were dressed in blue outfits, the male pilgrim holding a musket and the woman pilgrim holding a pumpkin; they looked like the pilgrims portrayed in 1950’s storybooks even though we were celebrating in the 1970’s. Some things are slow to change. One thanksgiving not too long ago my daughter informed me that the only reason she displayed those pilgrim foldouts was to initiate a conversation with her children about the horrific diseases that the pilgrims brought to the shores of New England and the native American population. And she is right. It’s not just that my grandchildren are “woke,” they are truly more educated and see the world through a more realistic and truthful lens. I applaud that.
It is a wonderful practice to remember happy times that we shared with our families and friends. It is important to remember that not everyone has these happy memories. But whatever the past was, it is important to remember to be grateful today.
It is easy to skip over gratitude. Many wise people suggest keeping a gratitude journal or simply making it a practice as you climb into bed each night to name three things you are thankful for that happened that day.
As the monk and mystic Thomas Merton wrote, “Those who are not grateful soon begin to complain of everything.” And let’s face it—nobody really likes to listen to complainers, even justified complainers.
So before you start standing in line for Christmas, take a few minutes and remember a Thanksgiving of the past, give thanks for the one you will celebrate this year and plan how you might like to celebrate gratitude in the future.
Happy Thanksgiving, dear friends.
We will be traveling the next two weeks so I will be back to blogging here December 3rd.
GRANNY’S TURKEY BREAD
1 loaf of white bread, torn into pieces
3/4 cup cornmeal (preferably white, stone ground)
1 TBSP. Poultry Seasoning
Enough broth to mix (preferably broth from cooking the giblets for the gravy)
1 egg
1 or 2 tsps. of celery salt (optional)
1/4 cup margarine or butter
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Put the bread pieces in a large bowl and pour the hot broth over. Not too much but enough to moisten it very well.
Add egg and cornmeal and seasoning. Mix well.
Add more broth to make it soft. If you need you can add a little hot water.
Melt 1/2 stick margarine or butter in one or two pans
Add the melted butter to the dressing.
Pour/press the dressing into pans.
Bake at 350 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes until light brown on top.
I think Dwayne was head over heels in love with you, Sara!
Thanksgiving dinner is my favorite meal, to cook and to eat! It pretty much mimics the meal my mother cooked because I learned it from her. The changes I have made are strictly to accommodate my husband’s palate but I don’t make anything that I don’t love, too: Turkey, roasted in the same pan she used 70 years ago, or longer. I can only remember that far back. Giblet gravy, mashed white potatoes, green beans, green peas, cranberry sauce from the can, brown and serve rolls, and pumpkin pie. To this feast I add sweet potatoes and substitute pecan or apple pie. Mom used to dry white bread for a day or so, crumble it up, and mix with celery, onions (definitely not in Jeanne’s stuffing), and a little milk. It was always stuffed in the cavity. We skip all that trouble and make Stove Top. Much better, in our opinion. The Thanksgiving I remember most vividly was 1990. My first trip to Texas to meet my new in-laws. Before we left Asheville, Dwayne called his mother and informed her that Sara was going to cook the Thanksgiving turkey for the family when we got down there because “her turkey is so much better than yours.”