I have never been a fan of Thanksgiving. I know, it’s heresy, right?
So many reasons.
As a Mayflower descendent, I grew troubled over the years with the fairy tale that we’ve told our children about Pilgrims breaking bread with the indigenous people who saved the colonists’ bacon their first harsh winter in what’s now Massachusetts.
The indigenous Wampanoags have a different version, supported by their history and experience of that shared meal and the subsequent encounters and conflicts. I’d recommend reading this article: The First Thanksgiving: How a Native Woman is Setting the Record Straight. Then dig a bit deeper. Do your own research.
I don’t like the food at Thanksgiving either. As an Army brat, I had many a Thanksgiving meal in a mess hall (now called a DFAC in Army vernacular, as I learned as a journalist in Afghanistan.) It was important to my late father, as a leader, to break bread with the soldiers under his command and bring his family with him. He lead by example. A military family. It’s a thing. It’s my heritage as much as the legacy of my Puritan ancestors.
We were a family raised to have dinner together every night. My mother did it with four young children under foot and often with a husband/father absent from the table–and home, whether he was overseas or in the field. I marvel to this day at the resilience and resourcefulness of my mother, since she had to stretch Dad’s meager salary like Silly Putty to feed and clothe us.
So that meant canned vegetables, SPAM (sorry, I just don’t like it) peanut butter (I love it to this day), hot dogs, applesauce. Meals prepared in a frenzy yet with profound love for her family.
We gathered for Thanksgiving over the years. I would come back from my undergraduate West Coast university for Thanksgiving, which meant two days of travel for two days with my family. I came back from Africa when I worked overseas. I returned home–a not-so prodigal daughter–to break bread with my family at Thanksgiving. It was that important to my parents.
And still I didn’t like the fare, the food or the folly of conversation. We tried so hard to come together around that bountiful table, with the perfectly basted and stuffed turkey, the green bean casserole, the mashed potatoes, canned cranberry (my father loved it!), finished with my mother’s pumpkin pie and apple pie, baked using her mother’s recipe.
Yet our political, religious and life choices and beliefs varied so broadly. There were almost always escalating arguments and tears, resulting in someone leaving the table in distress and anger at some point in the meal.
And then we’d return to the table and gather again. We’d play board games, challenging our intellect and wit. We’d compete and laugh with abandon.
This year, this pandemic year, my father won’t be at the Thanksgiving meal. And I’ll be solo, in keeping with the public health recommendations. I’ll set a table for one, light some candles, remember those who are missing and those who are suffering. Then I’ll count my blessings.
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