Thanksgiving thoughts

I am going to come clean here. Thanksgiving is probably my least favorite holiday.
When I was a kid I loved it, just like most children do.
It was an exciting time of family get togethers, fancy tablecloths, using the nice dishes and mom's best silverware.

Thanksgiving had left such a favorable impression on me, that I was well into my late thirties before I started to notice the secret, unattractive, underbelly of this once glorious day.

I promise you that I'm not by any means on a mission to turn you against the Big Day. No, it's more of a, me feeling the need to vent, rather than trying to gather up a few followers.

One of the first things that I realized after hosting several Thanksgiving dinners of my own, was just how much money was involved. It's not that I didn't know how to delegate, because I do, but no matter how efficiently you hand out food assignments, it still ends up costing quite a lot more than I had ever intended.

The money spent isn't really the big problem for me though, more of a minor nuisance. I include it mostly, because it was the first catalyst towards my new feelings for this old Holiday.

After all, Don and I spend quite a lot on full sized candy bars for Halloween and that doesn't bother me at all. I think it's worth it because we both really love Halloween.

Around the time when I started feeling the money issue, were new feelings about the amount of work involved.

First off there is the tradition of "The Little Woman" waking up at the break of dawn to get the turkey ready to put in the oven. This early morning routine is usually due to the fact that for some insane reason, the country as a whole has decided to turn Thanksgiving "Dinner" into Thanksgiving "Brunch".

Preparing a Thanksgiving Dinner is not for the faint of heart. You may be lucky enough to have more than one oven. My sister-in-law Cindy does. I'm not sure why, but it seems like just about everything for Thanksgiving needs to be baked. I realize I'm exaggerating here a bit, maybe a little. But why is it that, so many of the traditional menu items need baking?

Pies need baking, rolls need baking, sweet potato casserole needs baking. Do you make that green bean, onion ring strips, cream of mushroom soup casserole? I never have but I'm pretty sure it needs to be baked.

All of this amounts to a pretty big problem.

Yes, yes, I realize that pies can be, and usually are, baked the night before. You can do that with the rolls as well, I guess, but I can tell a fresh baked roll from a baked the day before and quickly heated up for the dinner, roll any day.

So thus begins the huge balancing act, of, how do we get everything in the oven, the very oven that at the moment seems to be mostly taken up by that big twenty pound gobbler.

Families have been broken apart over issues like this.

For the life of me I don't understand why it has been decided that this big ceremonious event needs to be over and done with by 1:00 in the afternoon.

That is actually one of the big reasons I have become somewhat negative to the T Day.

As far as I can see Thanksgiving is a LOT of work. Just so everyone can sit down to a hopefully pleasant dinner, that if you really stretch it, might last up to 45 minutes. And then it's over.

Except for the huge task of cleaning up.

Now, lucky for me, I have a wonderful husband who is always more than willing to take charge of the, "lets clean it up" problem. He realizes that it is only fair for the men to take over the job of clean-up, since it was mostly the women who made the mess, uuuh, I mean prepared the lovely Thanksgiving Dinner.

Still though, I just can't help but feel like it was a LOT of preparation, for something that took probably a sixth of the time to eat, as it did to prepare.

My sister Janice feels pretty much the same. A few years ago she decided to do just the appetizers and desserts. I think she is really on to something.

I guess that I'm finally getting to the root of my problem here.

Thanksgiving, so we are told, is all about those early Pilgrims. There are quite a few versions of the story. I liked this one they brought up last week on the Today Show. It said that basically the "P guys" got together with the "heavily feathered ones" to celebrate the fact that they had survived their first winter in the New World.

Mostly through the help and friendship of those pesky Indians of course.

Most of the versions I have heard said that the Pilgrims, were celebrating their first successful harvest. That would put Thanksgiving right where we celebrate it. Here at the endish part of November. But if the Today show is correct, and it was more of a "Just happy to be alive after that nasty winter" kind of thing, then shouldn't we be celebrating it in early spring.

Of course that could end up clashing with Easter, couldn't it? And here in America the timing of "Holidays" is very important business. The retailers depend on this.

So we have Thanksgiving (rightly or wrongly, does anyone really care?) at the end of November. And guess what else comes at the end of November?

Football!

I don't know when Football became synonymous with Thanksgiving, but somehow it did.

This brings me to my biggest complaint about the day. It seems to be Human Nature to take anything that is considered good, and try to make it better. The fact that this almost always fails seems to go unnoticed by most people.
Here we had a Holiday whose Noble purpose was to encourage us all to be thankful for our many blessings. That was good. That was right. A day to give thanks. What could be better?

Apparently everything goes better with Football.

This really rubs me the wrong way. How on earth can you be expected to spend a day reverently contemplating all that we have been blessed with, when just a room away, some stupid Football game is turned up to maximum volume, with thunderous cheers and jeers coming from those, too busy with the game, to be helping those who are preparing the feast?

And DON"T even get me started on the retailers and media's determination to rechristen the whole thing "Turkey Day".

Thanksgiving has received the same treatment as most the other holidays where you get a day off work for. It has been cheapened. It's original purpose has been debased. In my family, as I'm sure in many others, we try to protect some semblance of tradition by going around the table and having everyone announce what they are most grateful for. This is good. It actually does help us to remember for maybe 15 minutes the REAL purpose of the day.

If I had my way, I wouldn't get rid of Thanksgiving. No, not at all. I would just like to see it scaled back to the original purpose. A day of Thanks. Go ahead and make the big dinner. But in my opinion it should be given the respect of being a "Dinner". Instead of a "let's hurry up and get this over with so we can watch the big game and have some of that pie."

I'm not trying to be judgemental here. Really. I'm just pleading for a little more respect for a day that was not intended to be one of the biggest boons to the turkey industry. And not a day for being completely focused on Football. I just think that a day given over to feelings of gratitude should be celebrated as it was intended. Gather your family together, spend some time enjoying each other, and never forget that the name of the day is NOT Turkey day.

The name of the day is Thanksgiving.