Is there a better holiday than Thanksgiving? I don’t think so. I actively dread Christmas and Halloween lost its attraction for me years ago. We have bogus holidays like President’s Day, and Hallmark holidays like Valentine’s Day, but Thanksgiving beats them by a mile.
There’s a lot to be said about a holiday during which overeating is not only tolerated but encouraged. Thanksgiving is the last “no-frills” American holiday. You simply invite family and close friends over for a meal that, while not necessarily good, is often memorable.
Thanksgiving moved to our house 10 years ago after my mother stopped cooking and my two sisters stopped trying. Since it is impossible for me to host a dinner party without a disaster, the disasters themselves have become part of family lore.
I cook dinner in a surgically sterile kitchen, where I worry that a drop of turkey blood may splash on a wood cutting board and kill us all, but I remember that my mother would stuff the turkey the night before and, because it was too big for the refrigerator, leave it on the back porch all night. In South Florida. I still marvel that not only did none of us die, but we never even got sick.
The bird is always trouble. There was the Thanksgiving that I cooked it in a foil roaster but neglected to see the instruction that said “Support roaster from the bottom.” I took the bird from the oven and it promptly fell through the pan onto the floor. After a horrified moment my partner and I scooped it up, brushed off the cat hair and started to carve it. Again, no one died.
We were almost not so lucky a couple years later when my younger brother finished dinner and almost immediately began to experience chest pains. The paramedics declined a piece of pumpkin pie in their haste to get him to Holy Cross Hospital where several hours later my brother asked me if I had brought any of that pie with me.
The doctor put my brother on a strict diet but by the next year my brother convinced me to deep fry the turkey. This produced both the best turkey I have ever eaten and an impressive grease fire that almost burned down the house
I remember the first sad and stressful Thanksgiving after my Dad died when my older brother, when asked to pass a roll to my sister, literally passed one to her. But his aim was faulty and the roll landed in the gravy boat with a surprisingly large splash; my sister fished the roll out and threw it back at him, initiating the first all-out food fight this family has ever had.
I remember the Thanksgiving after Hurricane Wilma when we were all still shell-shocked and exhausted. We had been without power for almost 30 days and the power came on barely a week before the holiday. We ate next to a greenish pool surrounded by broken palm trees but we were together.
And therein lies the beauty of this holiday. Although we ostensibly gather for a great meal, the meal is often not that great. We’ve had lumpy potatoes and undercooked turkey, pie crusts that have refused to brown and stuffing that burnt for no apparent reason. We’ve had cats that coughed up a hairball just as dinner was served and babies who projectile vomited during desert. We had elderly Aunt Rose laugh so hard she literally dropped her false teeth on the table.
Anyone can enjoy a good meal; for our family Thanksgiving is a memorable meal.