Home » Posts tagged 'thanksgiving'

Tag Archives: thanksgiving

Devoirs

Posted on by

Yay! I Survived Turkey Day!

Of course, it was nowhere near so bad as I imagined it would be. I tend to get a bit crotchety about holidays. They tend so often to make for bad feelings because there are all those things one has to do to make for the perfect holiday. If it turns out to be less than perfect, one is floored by feelings of inadequacy.

The French have a word for it: devoirs. Check out the Alpine French School website for a discussion of the different meanings of the term, particularly the second meaning. The devoirs for Thanksgiving include:

  • A turkey dinner with mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, etc etc etc
  • Getting together with as many of your family that you can sit around your dining room table
  • Discussions about politics with that uncle with whom you do not wish to converse

If you think that’s a lot, let’s take a look at thge many devoirs pertaining to Christmas:

  • Expensive and thoughtful gifts for everyone
  • A tree in the living room with ornaments, tinsel, and lights
  • Multi-colored lights festooning the front of your house
  • Maintaining harmful myths about Santa and elves to your underage children
  • Sending Christmas cards to family, friends, acquaintances, and just about everyone else

Just remember one thing: You don’t have to buy into all the “oughts” connected with the holidays. Your more conventional friends will probably think you a bit of a Grinch. Note, however, that it is better to be thought a Grinch than to be depressed and broke.

I took Martine out to Cafe 50s so she could have her Thanksgiving turkey, while I, of course, ordered something other than bird. She also had her favorite Hawaiian Tropic milk shake, so she is quite pleased with our quasi-celebration of the holiday.

The Man Who Killed Thanksgiving

Posted on by

The Famous 1975 Cartoon by Ron Cobb About Thanksgiving

Even back in 1975 when I saw the famous R. Cobb cartoon depicting a family saying grace over a Thanksgiving turkey while the ground beneath them is littered with the bones of massacred Indians. Of course, even back then I didn’t like Thanksgiving. I had too many memories of dry bird carcasses drenched in fat to make them palatable.

Curiously, we never had Thanksgiving turkey at home. Turkey just wasn’t a Hungarian meat; and my father, like me, didn’t want my Mom to ever cook any. So we always went out for Thanksgiving.

The whole nonsense about the Pilgrims making nice with the Indians before wiping them out in King Philip’s War and other conflicts. The holiday is based on a myth designed to make us feel good about violently supplanting the indigenous peoples of the New World. If you want to get a more balanced picture of what happened, I suggest you read Eduardo Galeano’s trilogy entitled Memory of Fire. I read all three volumes in the 1980s, which served only to solidify my dislike of the holiday.

On this and many other issues, I find myself in the minority. So enjoy your dry bird. And think of all the football games you can watch this weekend!

By the way, Martine loves turkey; so I’ll be taking her out for a turkey dinner tomorrow. Needless to say, I will order something else.

Halloween vs Christmas

Posted on by | 2 Comments

Display at the Grier Musser Museum

At first, Martine and I liked visiting the Grier Musser Museum because of the of the interesting holiday related displays. We still like the displays, but in the meantime, we have become friends with the owners, Rey and Susan Tejada. Re-visiting the museum and chatting with the Tejadas has become part of the fun surrounding holidays.

Speaking of holidays, it is becoming ever clearer to me that celebrating Halloween is becoming more of a thing, and that celebrating Christmas is becoming less of a thing. Perhaps because it is so associated with guilt trips: so many things that have to be done, some many unrealized goals that remain unrealized, so much expenditure of cash and effort.

Halloween, on the other hand, is cheaper and more fun. And it is not tinged with guilt. It involves pretending that you’re a ghastly monster (no difficulty for most people), attending fun events, and eating a ton of candy.

So even if we don’t get any trick-or-treaters this year (they don’t like climbing stairs), Martine and I feel good about Halloween. Martine got her annual pumpkin pie from Marie Callender’s, we stockpiled candy in case some trick-or-treaters do ascend the stairs, and I’ve read some good scary books this month.

Of course, coming up is my least favorite holiday. I really dislike Thanksgiving. And I’m not overly fond of the traditional food items associated with it.

Talking Politics

Posted on by

As Thanksgiving Day approaches, millions of families will confront their weird uncles whose political beliefs are 180° away from yours. What makes it worse is that we are living during a period in which people take a position and vociferously defend it, thinking it is right because, after all, they believe in it. And their beliefs are, of course, sacred.

Looking back over my life, I do not recall ever having been convinced by anyone’s contrary political, religious, or other opinions. It seems that our times are not conducive to producing facts or cogent reasons. We can produce a great deal of heated discussions full of vituperation.

I have always been close to people whose opinions were contrary to mine. It began with my father, who supported George C. Wallace for President and voted a straight American Independent ticket. (I got back at him by dating a pretty young Black pediatrician with a Harvard MD).

Now I live with a woman whom I love, but who is a Republican who listens to right-wing shock jocks on KABC Radio and who, in all probability, votes for Donald Trump. (If you do not know me, Trump is a candidate I would have no compunction about stabbing in a vital organ with a knife liberally smeared with dog shit.)

Do I talk politics with Martine? No. Do I talk politics with my friends? Not if I can help it, even though my friends have similar beliefs like my own.

Life is too short to wreck it by engaging in political discussions that go nowhere. And nowhere is where most of them go.

So eat your turkey and mashed potatoes and present a smiley-face to relatives who want to establish a new Reich in Washington.

The Selkirk Grace

Posted on by

Here is a very short poem by Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796) just in time for Thanksgiving. The “Selkirk Grace,” as it is known, is usually recited before the first course is served at a Burns Night celebration.

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.

You might want to say these words at your own Thanksgiving feast as you remember those whose hunger continues unabated, holiday or not.

Welcome to HallowThanksMas

Posted on by

Display at the Grier Musser Museum (2015)

It didn’t used to be this way, but now Halloween is now a portal to a ten week holiday season that includes Halloween, the Day of the Dead (All Souls Day), Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years Day, Martine’s birthday, and my birthday. Fortunately, I don’t take it as seriously as most people do; and I even try to enjoy bits and pieces of it.

In past years, I spent much of October reading horror stories and watching horror films. This year, I’ve not been feeling well, thanks to a hideous attack of bronchitis and asthma. Fortunately, I am feeling better now. And the only horror stories I’ve read were in a collection by Robert Aickman entitled The Wine Dark Sea. I particularly recommend the short story of the same name that opens the collection.

Tomorrow I get my Covid and flu shots, to be followed in two weeks by a vaccination for RSV. I know that the whole issue of vaccinations has become politicized, but I just don’t feel like dying of negligence.

Anyhow, I wish you well during he upcoming HallowThanksMas season. Just don’t let it weigh you down.

The End of HalloThankMas

Posted on by

Our End of Year Holiday Ordeal Is Now Over!

From the beginning of October to the end of the Tournament of Roses Parade is one unending holiday, which I call HallowThanksMas, but others shorten (not by much) to HalloThankMas. It’s supposed to be a time of family closeness, warmth, and happiness—but isn’t, not by a long shot.

This is why I love the whole idea of Festivus—a holiday for the rest of us—as introduced by the Seinfeld show in 1997. It consists of the following:

  • A vertical, unadorned aluminum pole
  • A Festivus dinner, during which there is an “airing of grievances”
  • In response to pushback from the diners, there are “feats of strength,” during which the whiners are wrestled to the ground
  • “Festivus Miracles” are easily explained coincidences

I actually like Halloween, though I never attend Halloween parties, nor would any of my friends be so unwise as to invite me to one. But Thanksgiving and Christmas could and probably should be replaced by something like Festivus. It’s cheaper, does not involve the consumption of dry birds, does not involve greeting cards or gifts, and airs out all the hidden aggressions behind the holidays.

Think about it.

Family Life in America

Posted on by

What’s wrong with this picture? Well, first of all, it’s a big family dinner with all the trimmings in which all the participants are openly delighted with one another. And they’re actually listening to one another. Where’s the strange uncle wearing the red MAGA hat? Where are the scowling teenagers? On the plus side, there isn’t any food on the plates yet, though there’s a big turkey at the far end of the table waiting to be carved. So perhaps there’s still time for the expression of discontent.

Martine and I both agreed that we liked Halloween better than Thanksgiving or Christmas. There was no need for any pretense of a closely-knit family. One just pretends to be someone else and pigs out on candy. Americans don’t do family well. We talk about it a lot, but most families at best have the appearance of an armed truce.

Read J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy or Tara Westover’s Educated to get an accurate picture of family life in America. Oh, I’m not saying that the disaffection is universal, just that it’s dismayingly prevalent.

It wasn’t that way for my own family: but, being Hungarians, we did not care that much for American holiday traditions. Except my brother and I really got into the Halloween sugar rush. We never had turkey for dinner in Cleveland, as both my father and I did not like it very much, and I still don’t. We usually had Christmas dinner with my aunt and uncle in Novelty, Ohio, but it was usually as much Hungarian as it was American. Come to think of it, back then we enjoyed the holidays without feeling in any way obliged to grin and bear it.

We now usually go out for Thanksgiving with friends. But over the last several years, Martine and I celebrate Christmas with home-cooked beef stew served with a Hungarian red wine, preferably Egri Bikavér (Bull’s Blood of Eger).

Pilgrims and Indians

Posted on by

I have always had my suspicions about the first Thanksgiving feast in 1621. There is no record of what was on the menu, only a few words by Governor William Bradford about the preparations for the feast:

Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week.

Were potatoes served at the first Thanksgiving? Not likely, as potatoes were a South American tuber originating either in Peru or Chiloe Island in Chile. And it is highly unlikely that the Spanish conquistadores made any contribution to the Pilgrims’ harvest feast. Were green beans available to the colonists in Massachusetts during November? I doubt it.

Cranberries and pumpkins might very well have been at the feast, along with various types of squash and beans.

Turkey may well have been among the fowl served, though there probably were a number of other types, not only of fowl but other types of meat as well, including, perhaps, venison.

Whatever you choose to have at your family’s gathering tomorrow, I hope you all have a good time. Just remember one thing: Do not, under any circumstances, discuss politics, even if everyone is likely to be more or less in agreement. As with religion, everyone has his own bête noire where governing is concerned.

Politics in America is one thing for which we have scant reason to be thankful.

Reinventing Thanksgiving

Posted on by | 5 Comments

This Is Not What My Thanksgiving Will Look Like

In a way, the coronavirus seems to wreak the most damage on people who are intent on going on with their lives the way they were before. The big danger points come around the major holidays, when people risk everything for the appearance of normalcy.

But what if, like me, you don’t really give a hang about the holidays? No, I’m not a Jehovah’s Witness: I just don’t like the idea of holiday-induced stress. Whenever I think of Christmas and Thanksgiving, in particular, I think of a custom among certain Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest of “an opulent ceremonial feast at which possessions are given away or destroyed to display wealth or enhance prestige.”

Plus I don’t really like turkey. For the most part it is a dry bird that has to be well-greased before imbibing. For my Thanksgiving, Martine and I will have a more simple feast (though, in her heart of hearts, I know Martine would prefer the turkey): A good beef stew accompanied by a bottle of Egri Bikavér, or Bull’s Blood of Eger, a pleasant Hungarian red wine.

Knowing how much I prefer to avoid poultry, Martine can understand that it wouldn’t help to have me cook something I don’t like—and I do all the cooking in the household.

We will probably do something similar for Christmas. Why not? We are not afraid of offending the Yuletide Police.