Thanksgiving

I am grateful for what I have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.

~ Henry David Thoreau

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I love Thanksgiving. It is my favorite holiday. Leslie doesn't love it because you spend three days preparing a meal that people eat in fifteen minutes. First of all - whoa! Slow down! Why are people eating so fast?

Second, for me part of the fun of Thanksgiving (now that I am allegedly an adult) is the preparing of the food. Planning things out. Actually, I'm usually more of a helper than the planner. That said I do like to baste the turkey and one year I made pretty good gravy.  And I have an awesome sausage stuffing recipe - of course I never get to make it because everyone already has the "right" kind of stuffing they have to have at Thanksgiving.

Moving on... Third, having good food prepared for people you love with people you love is nice. Food brings us together - first for eating then for falling asleep all over the house. Even if the food is pretty heavy and the desserts maybe get eaten too soon when people should take a break first. Oh and if you use lard in your pie crust, please make sure to use prime lard - composite lard just won't do. (Yes, that is a gratuitous mention of lard to connect the image to this post).

Fourth, I love the idea of a holiday centered on gratitude. I don't love the mythology around Thanksgiving given what the immigrants (we do remember that most of us are immigrants, right? I bet the indigenous people would have done that Trump wall thing a few hundred years ago).  Anyway, given what the immigrants did to the indigenous people and how that gets twisted into a mutually beneficial relationship during the Thanksgiving season instead of genocide is misleading at best (revisionist history is closer to what it is). But then I probably wouldn't want to participate in a holiday that celebrates genocide.

My point is that I approach Thanksgiving as a time of focused gratitude, caring, generosity and love. I'm not thankful when people who didn't do anything to help complain about what's missing from the meal. Or when they don't help with the gazillion dishes afterward. Or some of the gendered history around food preparation and cleanup and football.

(pause)

So there are some negatives to Thanksgiving.