Friends and Food

As usual, there've been a few articles and emails circulating about the dark underside of Thanksgiving. I got one suggesting that we shouldn't celebrate the holiday because it glosses over (or forgets all together) the genocide of North Americans native peoples by their European invaders. The more predictable have had to do with a different kind of slaughter  -- the annual killing and eating of millions of turkeys -- exhorting readers to go vegetarian.

Last night, in lieu of saying grace as we gathered with some other Canadian-Americans to celebrate Thanksgiving, one of our company read Abraham Lincoln's proclamation establishing Thanksgiving as a national holiday. I'd never read this before; it's worth pondering and certainly debunks the idea that Thanksgiving originated on Plymouth Rock.

Of all the holidays (all with mythic roots intertwinedwith history) celebrated by our North American culture, Thanksgiving has to be my favorite, and I guess I don't feel like fussing over its origins to much - compared to other, more religious holidays, there's been so much less human carnage resulting from Thanksgiving, and somehow it's remained less commercialized - that is, if you consider the day itself, not the shopping aftermath. Getting together with friends and family, sharing a meal - and often a less gluttonous and meaty one than in years past - and taking the time to reflect on being grateful seems like a pretty fine thing to do. I like how Thanksgiving always feels less obligatory and more fun than Christmas, and how it's often cooperative rather than competitive.

We had a lovely meal last night, with everyone bringing something, resulting in many tastes and a bountiful but not obscene quantity of food - that we then shared in take-home packages. We did cook a turkey, stuffed with a mixture of bread, homegrown herbs, leeks, celery, bourbon-soaked cranberries, and apples. There were hors d'oeuvres of Quebec cheeses, then with the turkey, a green bean and mushroom casserole; corn pudding; baked beets; Scandinavian red cabbage; pureed carrots, parsnips and ginger; mashed potatoes and turnips; Hungarian fig jam; New England-style whole-berry cranberry sauce; French cornichons and American chow-chow relish; and for dessert, a dense chocolate ganache tart and a traditional pecan pie. The party broke up at 11:30 pm; a few people stayed late to help us clean up, and we went to bed at 2:30 am, feeling very grateful indeed.

Comments

[Kim]

Quite lovely.

[maria]

Not having been brought up with a Thanksgiving tradition, I was very pleased to have this holiday to celebrate, much for the same reasons you mentioned you like it. It is my favorite holiday also, and especially here in Northern California, where, most of the time, the weather around this time of the year is also beautiful, not hot, not cold, with the angle of light hitting the patch of leaves turned many colors just so.

[Dick]

Points well made, Beth. I wish that in the UK we had some direct equivalent as a counterbalance to the indulgent horrors of Christmas and, all too often nowadays, Easter.