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Keeping Thanksgiving Around

Poor Thanksgiving, always getting lost in the shuffle of holidays. You can jazz it up with Tofurky or turducken or a 30-quart fryer for your turkey . . . but brother, it ain’t Christmas. Even in my own family, where I’ve tried to maintain a purist November = Thanksgiving attitude, it feels like the holiday is starting to slip away from us. I don’t blame the ridiculously early post-Halloween start of the Christmas retail season, although that’s certainly a factor. But there are other factors, too.

For one thing, the kids get a two-week vacation for Christmas, as opposed to a two-day vacation for Thanksgiving, making it more pragmatic to do our Big Family East Coast Holiday Visit at Christmas every year. Thanksgiving has become our holiday for a relentlessly rainy 4-hour-drive down to my in-laws’ place in Oregon – which is nice too, but simply can’t match the golden Thanksgivings of my youth, with the Big Family Walks through Pennsylvania farmland fields waiting for the turkey to cook.

Come to think of it, all those big American holidays feel a little incongruous in the Pacific Northwest. You can’t help but remember that in 1776 or 1621, there wasn’t much local interest in the Declaration of Independence or the European colonists’ harvest. Bringing along Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates for my vacation reading last year hit it home all the more. She describes visiting the Mashantucket Pequot Museum with her young nephew, and his horror at seeing the brutal Pequot massacre reenacted in an educational film:

“Horrified, Owen tugs my sleeve, demanding, ‘Aunt Sarah! When do they have Thanksgiving?’”

Vowell explains to her nephew that the Thanksgiving he’s thinking of was 16 years earlier in a different colony, and goes on to explain to the reader:

“To the Puritans, days of thanksgiving were not annual events. Days of thanksgiving were earned. They would be appalled by U.S. calendars calling for a holiday, Thanksgiving, with a capital T, on the fourth Thursday of November every year. What if we didn’t deserve it?”

However, Vowell says, this colony did feel a day of thanksgiving was in order after their “general defeat of the Pequot,” and held one a few weeks after the massacre. Great. Pass the yams. I mean, I know this wasn’t the same “thanksgiving” that we honor on that fourth Thursday in November, but in this context the holiday still seems a little like honoring that one time your abusive boyfriend took you out for a nice dinner.

But I’m not ready to toss Thanksgiving out the window just yet. If you can manage to extricate it from its sticky colonization context (a tall order, to be sure, but stay with me), there’s a niceness to it. Unlike its flashier siblings, it doesn’t call for gobs of presents, candy, costumes, or even much decorating. Aside from the meal, there’s no shopping required. It’s simply a day of family, football, and pie in the spirit of general thankfulness. A Swedish family we know was pleasantly surprised to learn that Americans even had such a gentle, understated holiday. They held their own Thanksgiving dinner party with friends and plan to bring the tradition back home with them.

The Boy’s kindergarten class is focusing on the “things we’re thankful for” aspect rather than the traditional “Pilgrims and Indians” paradigm. We were talking about it a little bit at home the other night, and I was amazed at how enthusiastically and sincerely both kids (5 and 2) jumped into it. They’re thankful for the library, their friends, their teachers, their beds, The Boy’s finger monsters from Archie McPhee . . . heartwarming stuff.

Even more heartwarming? This is the year I finally managed to put the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special on hold at the library early enough so that it showed up before the middle of January. Good times. Just like the classic Christmas special, Charlie Brown grapples with the modern struggle of holiday rituals – throwing together a last-minute dinner for uninvited guests – while Linus finally breaks through the chaos, waxing thoughtful on the True Meaning of the holiday (with a little help from Marcie in this one).

This special is from 1973, so there are some pitfalls if you’re sharing it with the little children. Insults like “stupid” and “blockhead” abound. A lawn chair comes to life and attacks Snoopy. Token black friend Franklin is the only character with no lines, but he greets Charlie Brown with a jive handshake (?!). The Peanuts ride off into the sunset car-seat-free, packed into the back of a station wagon. And, unfortunately, now Little Girl believes that Thanksgiving dinner consists of popcorn and toast. (I really should have previewed this first.) Still, it’s witty and sweet in that Peanuts way. Definitely worth watching for the adult nostalgia factor even if you’d prefer not to expose the little ones just yet.

The DVD includes a lesser known Peanuts Thanksgiving special called “The Mayflower Voyagers,” in which the Peanuts gang joins the Mayflower pilgrims from their harrowing Atlantic crossing through the first Thanksgiving. Charlie Brown narrates, and he and Linus serve as a sort of Greek chorus/exposition device. I was a little leery of this one, expecting it would be cheesy, dry, and jingoistic. Mr. Black, who’s something of a Peanuts purist, can’t get over the severe break in convention in this one – not only do actual adults appear in this cartoon, but they have actual voices instead of the old “wah-wah waaah.”

But we had to admit, it was actually pretty good. The kids were freaking captivated by the thing. Maybe they were just soothed by the subtle colors, gentle music, and graceful animation. But I think they got caught up in the narrative, too. Both kids are non-fiction / info-tainment fans (Bill Nye is a favorite), and this show doesn’t hold back. This version is a lot less cloying than your typical “first Thanksgiving” kids’ shows, really capturing just how harrowing and dangerous that Mayflower voyage and first winter were. There’s some comic relief with Lucy being Lucy and Snoopy being Snoopy. There’s some “connect with the audience” stuff, as children on the Mayflower talk about how they miss their grandparents and friends back in England.

This special is not suitable for everyone. There’s frank – but not graphic -- depiction of the storms, sickness, and dying. The material is a little dry at times. It’s no “Great Pumpkin.” From a historical perspective, the colonization aspect of this story is presented at face value, glazing over the stickier questions. Still, it’s a decent introduction to the history behind the holiday and a good starting point for further conversation about the deeper issues if your kids are ready for that.

And for the adults, Very Special Thanksgiving episodes don’t get much better than this one from “Dr. Katz.”

Happy Thanksgiving!

Tags: A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown, Dr. Katz, Peanuts, Sarah Vowell, Thanksgiving, The Mayflower Voyagers, The Wordy Shipmates, holiday specials, television

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Comment by StitchyWench on November 19, 2009 at 12:06pm: Happy Thanksgiving to you. We make the 4 hour drive in the other direction - from Oregon to Mt. Vernon, WA - to be with my family. It's always a wonderful trip! We watch the lame Macy's parade while all of us help in our own ways with the preparation of dinner. I usually bring some of my favorite parts of the meal up with us and Ya Ya adds her gourmet touches of Thanksgiving dinners from her youth. We never know who will show up.

The day after Thanksgiving a friend in Everett usually has a day after Thanksgiving dinner for a bunch of our friends. We cram in to their house, eat a huge feast (again) and then play games, sing songs and have a great night of drinking and friends. There are always long walks down town. This year we'll be serving a meal at the local shelter. But it is always so nice to just be with family, drinking, dancing, eating and having a great time together!

We try to avoid the shopping madness that weekend altogether - but sometimes my sister insists we wait in the ridiculous lines at Target or Fred Meyer (while Ya Ya battles her claustrophobic impulses, and I try not to run screaming from the store).

As an added bonus - this year, my husband's birthday falls on Thanksgiving.

Comment by Floor Pie on November 19, 2009 at 2:18pm: Stitchy, we should try to high-five each other as we pass the Uncle Sam billboard.

Comment by Teacher Tom on November 19, 2009 at 4:46pm: I like that we have a four-day weekend for a relatively low stress holiday. We're lucky to be our family's traditional host, so I do the 25-lb. bird with stuffing and both sides of the family show up bringing everything else. We've had as many as 25 of us, but this year I think it's a bare bones 16.

Comment by The Oracle on November 19, 2009 at 6:04pm: In the last 20 years, I've only been home for Thanksgiving four times. This year will be #5. I'm way happier about this than I am about being home for Christmas.

Earlier this year, after my brother-in-law died, I started an erstwhile tradition of "Grateful Circles" at our dinner table. It kind of got lost in the shuffle of new-baby-and-interstate-move but last Saturday, the day we arrived in Seattle, the Dragon revived it. Myself and my husband, parents, sisters, brother-in-law, nieces and nephew all started to dig into our Welcome Home dinner when the Dragon piped up, "We need to do a Grateful Circle!" He made us all stop and hold hands and tell what we were grateful for. And so we've been doing them every night since. It's great. I love that he took it on as his thing.

Comment by Daria on November 19, 2009 at 6:10pm: I'm kind of bummed about my Thanksgiving this year. I think it's the downside of having a kid--i seems to require extra family visits. We are going to the home of the uncle who can't cook. I hate to be a food snob, but it is sort of a bummer to the home of someone who can't cook on the holiday that seems to be more about food than any other. I think next year I'm speaking up early to say that I'm hosting (and cooking). I also always loved T-giving as a friend holiday and I don't know when it will get to be that again.

Comment by StitchyWench on November 19, 2009 at 7:13pm: The bummer about kids having school on the Wednesday before is that we have to leave at 3pm. But I will so think of you as we pass the crazy Uncle Sam sign. And the freakish monument lot thing near Vader/ Ryderwood, too!

Comment by Floor Pie on November 19, 2009 at 7:13pm: Oh, Daria, I hear you on that one! I try to bring some nice cheeses and a homemade soup or something nice. And I'm always the only one who ends up eating it. Oh well.

McG, what do you question about Sarah Vowell's scholarship? I'm not an academic historian extraordinaire like yourself, but her research always seemed pretty thorough to me. Is it the tone?

Comment by Mamawho on November 20, 2009 at 11:07am: Sarah Vowell's an Okie, and from the same small town my in-laws are from, so of course I'm a huge fan. We think that her grandfather was my MIL's high school principal.

We went to GW's Thanksgiving lunch at her school yesterday. DW's and my jaws dropped when the kids tromped into lunch in construction-paper Pilgrim hats and Indian feather headbands, which had both the requisite paper feathers and laminated photos of eagle feathers. And of course, the whooping war-cry. DW swears he's going to show up at a Thanksgiving thing at school in his full ceremonial dress.

GW only gets Thursday and Friday off. For Christmas, she gets out on the 23 and goes back the first weekday after Jan1. It's too short of a break for us to travel, and the rest of the family doesn't want to travel here. But we're cool with that. It is kind of weird that we don't do *any* holidays with family.

This year will be the most relaxed Thanksgiving in a while. Last year we weren't even unpacked. DW was digging through boxes, looking for various kitchen implements. The year before we were still kind of reeling from my step-dad's death 3 weeks prior. I think we went to my in-laws.

We hate turkey. We have duck. It's our new tradition.

FP - have you ever read Alvin Plantinga's Great Pumpkin Objection? It's an argument about belief in god and knowledge, but he actually references the Great Pumpkin. Good stuff.

Comment by hermit crab on November 20, 2009 at 4:39pm: Thanksgiving is American Jewish Christmas, despite all the Hallmark effort around Hannukah. I'd say there's no ideological component in our family's Thanksgiving, no especial gratefulness even, but we are heavy on the harvest imagery in the centerpieces and place-cards. In addition to whatever bird my parents make, dinner always features a lot of different root vegetables. (Which reminds me of an awesome parsnip dish I made last year and now have to go track down...)

The "story of Thanksgiving" is one of those mind-blowingly interesting things for me that I would love to read up on one of these days. How is it that elementary American history continues to cement this weird mirror image of what everyone knows colonization is all about? I mean, the psychological logic totally makes sense -- take something too awful to contemplate, like your ancestors killing people to make your home, and make a story that removes the blood from your family's hands -- but you'd think that over the centuries people would at least start to become a little self-conscious about it.

Comment by Daddy Geek Boy on November 21, 2009 at 2:10pm: I don't know if it's because I'm Jewish or because my mom is fanatical, but Thanksgiving has always been a really, really big deal in my family. In fact, we are required to migrate east every year to spend it alternately with either my wife's family or mine. It's because of this that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Ever. The fact that Christmas decorations are here is a reminder that Turkey Day will come first.

I'll have to check out the Peanuts specials. I know I've most likely seem them both. But it's been a while. Maybe in a few years. We're still reeling from the liberal use of "stupid" in Great Pumpkin.

A great post.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Keeping Thanksgiving Around

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