Thanksgiving: Why I Have Come to Loathe It

Today I ponder Thanksgiving. How many of you celebrate? Or something similar? And do you love it? Or do you loathe it, the holiday of American gluttony? I know many of my American friends love it: Football, feasting, family, and all that jazz. But for me, it’s hard to pinpoint when I started to hate it so much, this obligatory holiday, where we celebrate things we really shouldn’t be (I won’t go all politically correct on you, but you have seen Peter Pan, right?), and where most have come to celebrate it as just a simple time to be with family and friends and pause and breathe and reflect on the gratefulness of our cornucopias aplenty.

I think I can pinpoint it a few things. One was the realization of what a turkey is. Interesting, the birds are still called what they are whereas beef and pork are not. I get it, you can’t lie down and snuggle with a pecking chicken, but you sure can with a baby calf, and even the most enthusiastic meat-eater agrees. There’s something unethical about that eating that with which you can love so tenderly. Still, friends of mine who own farms now will tell you that you can, in fact, hang and enjoy the company of our feathered-friends, even the ones  you choose to eat. Either way, it’s a very difficult time in most children’s lives when they learn the truth.  Most can get over it, having been raised to enjoy its flavor and not having to do the deed him or herself. I just couldn’t seem to.

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Of course, no one says you have to eat any meat. There are plenty of options, make no mistake, from gourds to cranberry sauce to pies, no one is forcing us to wear sweatpants and unbutton our pants. And I do have very fond memories of being with my Nana, the woman I derived my name from, my tea-drinking buddy, the woman who introduced me to Twinings and Darjeeling and quiet moments where we’d go sit alone out on her enclosed porch and just talk and sip and where she told me I was beautiful, and I almost believed her.

So I think I’ve pinpointed it to being an adult. There is something "unmagical" about Thanksgiving for me. It screams time-honored tradition of stereotypical roles, where the women cook and the men watch football, and where the main chef doesn’t rest, rising at 4:00 am to stuff and cook a bird so everyone can gorge and complain later about how full they are, and where she must clean up the mess everyone has made afterwards, barely having a moment to eat herself, all her hard work, cold and dry, by the turn of the setting sun as everyone leaves ‘grateful’ to be full.

And really, it reminds me of my mother. My poor mother, the cook, the forever-traditionalist who refused paper plates or plastic, slaving for the happiness of everyone else around her. And then I begin to miss her and lament at all the times I stayed at my high school football game with friends, procrastinating, not grateful at all for what she was doing, but complaining with my friends, and doing things I shouldn’t have been doing. Then comes the guilt, at not only that, but at the fact of how much I had to be grateful for in her when she was alive. And then I just get sad…because I miss her. And though I respected her greatly, I didn’t appreciate a lot of things she did. Sigh…
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I cooked Thanksgiving dinner once. After that, I refused. I won’t do it again. If someone else doesn’t host it, my brother and some family and close friends go out to a restaurant, come back somewhere to play games, and to have desserts only. But we don’t need a made-up holiday to do it. Or to say what we’re thankful for. Or to drive or fly on the busiest, most inane holiday there is. And so, we don’t. Often. And I? I--am thankful for that. And I wonder if someday, I realize how much I wish I had the people I love surrounding me on the Thanksgiving I once loathed. ​