What Does Thanksgiving Mean to You?
At Serious Eats we've gone Thanksgiving wild. Each of us here in the office—and our contributors scattered far and wide—brings to the Serious Eats table ideas about the foods, recipes, and tips that will help make every Serious Eater's Thanksgiving the best it can be. We then post about them for your reading and cooking pleasure.
In so doing I realize that what we're doing at Serious Eats is what I've been doing at Thanksgiving ever since I was a kid, bringing people together by finding common ground. Finding common ground in any given group of people is really what Thanksgiving is all about, or at the very least it's what Thanksgiving has come to mean for me.
What does finding common ground mean within the context of Thanksgiving? A little family history might explain a lot.
My earliest memories of my family are from the early sixties, when my three brothers and I would eat Thanksgiving at our house with our parents. As you might have guessed, everyone in our household had strong opinions. Strong opinions about everything, but mostly about politics. Even though I was the youngest, the responsibility for finding common ground in this normally fractious group fell to me. I would try to steer the conversation to sports, not Stalin, to people, not politics, to food, not failure. Sports, people, and food were the subjects we could find common ground discussing, and discussion was what the Levine family did ad nauseam.
When I went off to college in Iowa I was forced to find common ground on Thanksgiving wherever I found myself. I remember one college Thanksgiving when a friend decided he was going to shoot pheasant for our Thanksgiving. I didn't really understand what that meant until I saw the sink full of pheasant blood when I woke up and went to the kitchen in search of some orange juice. Those college Thanksgivings were great. Many of us at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, lived too far away to go home for Thanksgiving, so friends would band together to cook a collective Thanksgiving after a serious morning touch football game amidst piles of leaves. It was easy to find common ground.
After graduating from college I settled in New York City, and even though two of my brothers lived here, I usually ended up at the home of a friend's parents for Thanksgiving. I often found myself at a table full of strangers searching for common ground. Sometimes football, sometimes food, and sometimes music, but whatever it was, it was my job to find it. More often than not I succeeded, though there was that time I was seated next to someone who idolized Rush Limbaugh.
When I met my wife and we started hosting Thanksgiving for her family and various and sundry strays, I had to find common ground with her family, which is very, very, very, different from my family. Not better or worse, just different. Vicky's family shies away from heated personal and political discussions. The Levine family takes an almost perverse pride in having the kind of discussions that lead us to the brink of destruction before we end up seeking common ground, which is most often a discussion of the insanely impressive array of pies I have assembled for Thanksgiving.
So when someone asks me what Thanksgiving is all about, I don't say it's about the food (though good food is an insanely effective social lubricant). It's not about the football games, unless the Giants are playing. I just can't get that worked up about the Lions or the Cowboys, unless they are playing my team. Thanksgiving is about bringing people together somewhere, somehow, some way. If I can do that, if every person leaves our house feeling he or she has found common ground, or connected in some way, with a few other guests, that is my idea of a perfect Thanksgiving. Of course a piece of perfect apple pie always helps as well.
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5 Comments:
My Italian American family came to this country in the early part of the 1900s. We were taught to assimilate. We were always told of the trip on the big oceanliner in search of the streets that were paved in gold. My people were glad to be Americans.
Thanksgiving to our family was always loud. The food preparations are and have always been a production. Food is love around here.
The conversations going on around the table can be catching up, football, politics or food. The tv in the background with some football game going on. I have said it before when you gather in tradition you celebrate life.
The food and the conversation are just benefits of the celebration. When I put out the holiday meal, I always take a minute and step back and view the table, people food and all. That is the moment when I hear my grandmother's voice, "It is in the giving there is joy."
I can picture her doing the same thing, stepping back and viewing her family sitting around the table, talking, eating, celebrating. Still brings a tear to my eye. We are very blessed
JerzeeTomato at 12:02PM on 11/08/07
What Thanksgiving is to me is a day set aside to find grace.
Grace, of course, is part of the word gratitude which is connected to the idea of a "thanksgiving". But grace is not just thanksgiving. It's more and it's different, for you can't just plate it up. One of the best lines I've ever read in a story had something to say about grace that strongly resonated with me: You can't summon grace with a whistle.
Thanksgiving, to me (as someone raised with no formal religious tradition) has grown along with me over the years into a secular holiday that holds the possibility of the truly sacred act of summoning grace. No whistles, no bells. Just a quiet internal search.
The past six years I've spent Thanksgiving Day itself alone, by choice in a way though not by choice originally. My children who live with me who I am allowed, privileged really, to care for and love every day and night of the year except for major holidays, go visit their father, stepmother and stepmother's big family on Thanksgiving. Yes, I've received invitations to join other Thanksgiving tables and yes it is possible I'm more than a little nutty - but the day Thanksgiving has become a time for me to be pleasantly alone - to think and feel deeply about many things - about what they mean, finally, and about the grace - the very true spark of grace that does reside in so very many things (if you can find it) whether they be large or small, surrounded by people and excitement or not.
And within this I do feel thanks, though often not an easy or quick one, and that thanks is brought to me through grace, that mysterious thing.
And when the day is over, life starts its usual self right back up, my children come home and we have "Thanksgiving" on another day - an altered time, a non-traditional thing, yet Thanksgiving for sure whether it was on the right day or not. :)
Karen Resta at 1:42PM on 11/08/07
Oh yes. Almost forgot.
There often is pie too.
Karen Resta at 1:58PM on 11/08/07
The holidays are so special to me, so I read your Thanksgiving stories with rapt attention. Thank you so much for sharing. It's so nice to know that Thanksgiving is full of meaning for others too. I feel like sometimes people feel like the holidays are a chore, go hang out with your crazy family, eat a lot, do it all again next year. But I really treasure that community that it creates. Even though my family isn't always on the same page, I love being thrust together for that day, and looking back and realizing that even everyday things like football games are different on Thanksgiving - there is a different energy.
Last year I wasn't able to be with my family. I ended up having Thanksgiving with my best friend at her dad's house. He has two other, young children who are really picky eaters - and all three are vegetarian (I was too at the time). Because they don't have family in the area and her dad doesn't cook, I ended up cooking the whole meal at his house, bringing all my knives, baked goods, etc etc with me. Even though I missed my family, it was so wonderful. It was a rag-tag bunch, a turkey-free meal, and we still ended up taking pictures and acting like a family. I will always look forward to this day as community trumping everything else.
Littlebluesiren at 10:46PM on 11/08/07
Thanksgiving, man what a great holiday. What does thanksgiving mean to me? Well three things come to mind; the start of my favorite time of year (the holidays), the gathering of family and friends and FOOD.
I grew up in smalltown eastern nc and the holidays there were awesome. On thanksgiving day my entire extended family would gather at my grandparents house at around 11a until about 3-4p for dinner and comradery. All the grandchildren (6 of us) would be outside playing in the woods or football in the front yard, the men would be in the den with a bourbon drink (or syllabub made from my great grandads homeade wine) watching football and all the women would be in the kitchen working it out. By woking it out I mean cooking the most impressive spread of thanksgiving fare that you could ever imagine. The staples were turkey, ham, giblet gravy, oyster dressing, mashed potatoes, the best collard greens on the planet, dumplings, yeast rolls, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, mac and cheese, chocolate pie, and pecan pie (pronounced pee-can), which were all homeade. After about an hour of eating we would all gather in the den and just hang out, talk and nodd off from happy bellies.
Now I live in Wilmington, NC with my wife and two kids (i'll have my third before this thanksgiving). I'm still Mr. Giddy when it comes to the holidays although I don't get to spend it with my grandparents and my extended fam. My only bro lives here in town, my folks come down and we have the same tradition we always have. Now, opposite as it may be from ealier years, the men do most of the cooking but my grandmother still sends her famous collard greens and dumplings. I've got the turkey and mashed potatoes perfected, my mom still can cook a mean oyster dressing and giblet gravy and we still nodd off watching The Christmas Story on TBS. Man what a great time and Christmas is right around the corner!
jonestripp at 2:14PM on 11/11/07