Was—or is—Thanksgiving a special family day in your family? The popularity of Thanksgiving isn’t surprising when one ponders its advantageous preconditions: nonsectarian (believers and atheists accept a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on religious matters), no holiday gift-giving (or raised eyebrows about comparative generosity/miserliness), and relatively brief (just a weekend with no big month-long run up), plus a nonpolitical sentiment hard to argue with (“More gratitude all around? Sure, I can manage an extra helping of that! And hey! Pass the pumpkin pie!”).
Indeed, I’m reminded that my dogmatic atheist friend, the dearly departed Christopher Hitchens—who became an American citizen not long before his death a decade ago—once proposed that all religious holidays be abolished and that Thanksgiving be put in their place, along with permanently grounding “that arrogant bald predator” as the national bird in favor of “the thrifty and industrious turkey.” The national motto on our legal tender, added Christopher, would also get a makeover, though he was divided over whether he preferred the rather poetic “On Wings of Turkeys” or the more prosaic yet official-sounding “Legal Turkeys.”
Yes, Thanksgiving! A holiday for hope! If Pilgrims and Indians of the 17th century can sit down together, maybe tribalized, algorithmically challenged ideological adversaries otherwise gridlocked in digital islands can put aside a day in the year to talk turkey—or at least dine on it—together.
That’s the hope for 2022. And your Thanksgivings of yore?
Admittedly, the world of a half-century ago seems now like a simpler place—and a simpler time when such miracles really occurred and no universal bans on adversaries’ smoking peace pipes together prevailed.
Even when statecraft and soulcraft did not harmonize so wondrously, I nonetheless have warm and happy memories—like countless Americans—of numerous Thanksgivings that included extended family and friends. Our little rowhouse in northeast Philadelphia was the scene of many feasts. Although my mother reported that she’d never even never heard of a Thanksgiving holiday before coming to the USA, she spared no effort in her drive to celebrate the day, including turkey with all the trimmings, cranberry sauce, and of course, mashed potatoes and gravy. Aside from the mashed potatoes, none of that was Irish fare. She once told me that she’d never eaten a bite of turkey before her arrival after World War II. For neither the holiday of Thanksgiving itself nor roast turkey suppers were part of any tradition that she had ever experienced in County Donegal. And maybe that was the driving force for her gala effort every Thanksgiving. Like the original settlers from Plymouth, she had made her own pilgrimage to the “land of opportunity” and remained forever thankful.
How to “give thanks”? To express her “thanksgiving” she would “do it the American way.” Our family would be “as good as the Yanks.” We would become—at least for a day—that idealized Ozzie and Harriet combined with My Three Sons (four, in her case) American family on every evening sitcom of the 1950s and early 1960s.
None of this was expressed in words. Yet her four sons got the message and supported the mission, starting with joining Dad in a good hour-long snooze on the living room rug after a sumptuous dinner, and followed up with several hours of aggressive channel hopping (not “surfing,” you young’uns) of Thanksgiving Day football—especially if the TV schedule included a game with the hometown Philadelphia Eagles. (Or was it “Turkeys”? Given their history of losing seasons in those days, that was certainly their frequent sobriquet among us fickle fans.)
I state today without fear of contradiction—though I believe that many are long-deceased, neighbors and relatives would rub their tummies in a chorus of approval—that my dear mother Rose (or may I say “we”?) succeeded grandly. At least on that day, her Irish brogue and Gaelic expressions notwithstanding, she “passed” with flag-flying red-white-and-blue colors as an American—at least for day. And so did we all. That, too, was cause for thanksgiving.
Yes, I stand by those fond boyhood memories. If I roll them together in a bouquet—a cornucopia of thank-yous to her (and Dad)—they form my answer, collectively, to the question of “my most thankful Thanksgivings.”
Decades later, however, I might also give another, more specific and certainly more eccentric and perhaps more amusing, answer.
Thanksgiving is, of course, a quintessentially American holiday. No other country does it quite like we do—and other immigrant families, of diverse backgrounds and ethnicities, have had—and surely still do have—the same aspiration to “do it the American way” as we did during my boyhood. While I had long known that there was no such day in Ireland, I had never much bothered as a boy to ask about other countries. When I asked a couple of much older cousins during one Donegal visit “if you celebrate Thanksgiving,” they replied:
“Aye, sure we do, Johnny. Why wouldn’t we, Irish farm people living in Donegal, honor and commemorate a dinner centuries ago and thousands of miles across the ocean that a band of Englishmen sponsored? The same Englishmen who have exploited and terrorized our country for 900 years and never so much as let us keep our own spuds, let alone gave us a turkey dinner? Makes perfect sense. Yes, why wouldn’t we set aside a random Thursday for that—we’ve got nothing better to do! Righto, lad!”
Did I detect a note of sarcasm? Yes, even at the age of 8, I do believe so. No doubt I refrained from mentioning how I often watched the Macy’s Day Parade in New York and cheered happily as the dancing clowns and baton-twirling cheerleaders marched through the freezing streets, alongside the colorfully decorated parade wagons, followed by Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Batman, Spider-Man, and even Ronald McDonald. (Even to this day, I feel a slight urge to wave and cheer as my old cartoon and comic book heroes strut their way down Sixth Avenue before thousands of delighted school-age children—and their adult counterparts.)
Yet I didn’t let the ridicule of the big boys stop me—though I inadvertently shifted my comparative frame.
Fast-forward a quarter century. I happened to be in Germany one October—on a break from my fall semester teaching duties—and I discovered Erntedanktag. A typical German mouthful, yes, with or without mouth-watering cranberry sauce, but every syllable can be savored: “Harvest Appreciation Day.” Erntedanktag is not an official national holiday—and it has nothing to do with commerce—whereas Black Friday does indeed threaten to overshadow Thanksgiving, which—along with Christmas Days of yore—had long stood as the only day when many (most?) Americans didn’t revere the Almighty Dollar above all.
For years thereafter, whenever possible, I arranged to be in Germany on that special day—the first Sunday in October—when the churches are filled with a true cornucopia. At the foot of the altars, in Catholic and Lutheran churches alike, sit baskets of vegetables and bowls of fruits and assorted spices, God’s largesse bequeathed us through the good graces of bountiful Mother Nature.
So now I had not just one—but rather two—Thanksgivings! One of them a simple day of gratefulness, blessedly free of the dollar deities. And the other one, my American Thanksgiving, still imbued with its original sentiment of thanks for the harvest of all our blessings, even if shadowed by the “blackness” of the following Friday frenzy.
When I added Canadian Thanksgiving to my itinerary five years ago in 2017—it falls on the second Monday in October—I registered a triple play. Whereupon I graciously (and gratefully!) accepted the Triple Crown. And that was my banner year of “most” thankful Thanksgivings!
Granted, it was providential timing—and would have been even more impressive if it had been deliberate. Nonetheless, to experience German Erntedanktag on Oct. 1 and then Action de Grace in Quebec on Oct. 9 was not easy. Both of them were topped off, as always, by Thanksgiving State-side in November, and the chance to cheer Mickey and Snoopy and Spidey all the way down Sixth Avenue—after a blissful post-turkey snooze.
