Happy Needless Turkey Murder Day: Thanksgiving

I'm sure that you were expecting the third installment of my ridiculous tribute to television, but much like my favorite shows, I'm taking a small hiatus so that I can give Thanksgiving the attention it's due. Never you fear, though, my blog is not void of TV as the title is an homage to one of my favorite aspects of Thanksgiving. But we'll get there soon. 

The truth is that it's taken me quite some time to get to the point where I could really appreciate this holiday. For whatever reason, it just hasn't always been the warm and fun-loving, belly-filling holiday that most people seem to have. For our family, Thanksgiving is traditionally spent with my dad's side of the family since they are much closer, distance wise. For those of you who know me, you know that this means anything can happen. And because of this, some of my Thanksgiving memories have been...soured...for lack of a better word. 

Now, it wasn't always like that. I loved when Thanksgiving used to be held at my Grandma's house. It was small, but oh man did we eat! And I vaguely remember there being football - I mean of course there was football, but as a seven-year-old, that hardly seemed to matter. I was eating, playing with my cousins, attached to my mother's hip and just, naive. I also, for whatever reason, remember Mary Poppins being on TV around this time of year. To this day, I associate that movie with Thanksgiving and my grandparents' small house in Burney, IN. 

So far, Thanksgiving seems to be pretty even-keel. Food - check. Family - check. Football - check, I guess! All the ingredients are there for fond memories. But something changed, and I can't exactly pinpoint when, but I know that it shifted from a holiday that I looked forward to, to one that was sometimes dreaded.  The first miserable turkey day that I can actually remember happened when my Grandma got sick and was temporarily in a nursing home for the holiday. I can't tell you how weird it was to be around 12 or 13 and to be spending Thanksgiving eating on card tables in the open common area of a nursing home. Not exactly my cup of tea - especially given my fear of institutional homes. The years following were a little more difficult, and the struggle usually centered around who would hold the meal - a burden which typically fell into the hands of my mother. And then I think she just got fed up and we came to the Ponderosa years - I'm telling you, you can't make this stuff up. For my freshman and sophomore years of college, I came home to a Thanksgiving spent at our local Ponderosa. There really isn't anything more embarrassing or awkward than coming home and having to interact with people you used to go to high school with...at Ponderosa...on Thanksgiving.


And then there is the football. For most families - it's just one part of the day. You've got two games - one early, one late so you have something to bide your time with for those off times, depending on when you so choose to eat your meal. It's background noise, not life or death. Well...that's not how it is at my house. Sure - on some years, it's like that. Last year, for example, the game had very little bearing on the mood of our day. My dad, as he does with all football games, kept an accurate account of scores and plays and the voodoo magic that accompany his fantasy football leagues (yes, plural!).  And that was it. But, sadly, most years the leisure of the day is overturned by the tension of the Detroit-Green Bay match up. 

(Let us pause here for a humorous quote from one Phoebe Buffay: "Well the Lions technically won. But it was a moral victory for the Green Bay...mermen.") 

You should probably know that my dad is crazy...crazy-awesome. Okay, but really, he's crazy about these Green Bay Packers. I get so much shit for being a Packer's fan, but I don't think anyone really understands the world of pain I would be in were I to suddenly abandon a team that was nearly branded onto my heart as a young girl. Why yes, I did wear Green Bay Packers baby gear, and toddler gear, and regular people gear. So my love the team is second-generation from the obsession that consumes my brilliant father. He grew up loving football in the late 60s when the Packers were everything you wanted in a team. And he's loyal, and loves the small-town nature of his team. And they are his - as he is a Shareholder. So you can imagine that he watches EVERY game, intently. And with much emotion - emotion that shapes the remainder of his day. This isn't that big of a deal on Sundays...but on Thanksgiving...well... Much to the chagrin of my father, the match-up makes good TV, and so for several of the past few years, we've been relegated to watching the game. Not just casually, but intensely, and with great emotion that can and has shaped the outcome of our Thanksgiving.



At this point you can surely see why this holiday is not on the list of my favorite days of the year. It was stressful, and not just the normal kinds of stress. It was a strange tension between wanting to enjoy your family and wanting to keep my mother sane. And the tension tended to prevent the formation of any kind of tradition. What will I be doing for Thanksgiving - I couldn't tell you year-to-year. It's always changing. It's void of a tradition.


And then, having proclaimed my dislike of the holiday over and over again, something changed. I took charge. Sure - I can't control the scheduling of the NFL's games. And I can't make my mother cook Thanksgiving dinner. And I can't make my relatives behave in a sane manner. But, I'm capable of making it my own. And this really started Junior year in Rio - my duplex. I'm not sure who came up with the idea, but it came about that we would come up with some kind of meal to eat together as a group, our own little family. And for background noise, we would embark on our new and my own tradition - let's spend four hours watching every Thanksgiving episode of Friends. Yes it was a lofty goal. But really - what group of college students wouldn't agree to eating food and watching a marathon of television shows - all with the umbrella theme of Thanksgiving. It was a little frustrating having to change the disc after every episode. And it was totally out of context as we went from an episode where Rachel was trying to date Tag, to an episode where she was the target of an "I Hate Rachel Greene" club, to an episode where she and Ross had a baby. But it was all in the theme of being together - just as we were together. It was pure brilliance. And then I did it again in DC. Different day, same feelings and fun. Boom! Tradition.


Suddenly this holiday was looking up...and then I just took a different glance. 

Yes - my family remains entirely too dysfunctional to solidify any sort of Thanksgiving tradition. And yes, my father will dictate the mood of the family's day depending on the team that will take on Detroit. And yes, my mother will likely make a few cute, yes exasperated, comments about the burden of hosting the meal. But it's all so comforting, in a way. The chaos and unpredictable nature of the day, the event is a standard. It will be a different day every year. It will be focused around football or family and sometimes, if we're lucky, it will be focused on both.  It will be a group effort on the part of my small families foursome to make the day what we will. 

The truth is, that I never appreciate my immediate family more than when we are staring down the prospect of mingling with our extended family. There is nothing but love for both sides of the family. They have their quirks, their frustrations and their inexplicable beliefs on the most random of things. And I love them. But I, unlike the person who can't see the forest from the trees, can pick out my mother, my father and my brother and latch onto them for comfort and commonality. 


I realize that this is a blog about happiness and that most of these paragraphs have seemed somewhat unhappy. But the point of this is that even Thanksgiving - as a holiday that has long been a source of stress in my life - can make me happy. The Packers could lose, my Mom could be knee deep in cooking a Thanksgiving meal and cursing the unfairness of it, and Tucker could remain as oblivious as he (and all teens, really) can be - and I would still look forward to pulling into my drive way and coming home to face down the holiday - hand in hand with the fam. 

So, here's to you, oh holiday of thanks. The bonds you bring are surprising, but loved. And the food you bring makes it all worth it...bring on the mashed potatoes!