Why I Love Thanksgiving
November 25, 2009
Chatting on the phone with one of my BFF’s yesterday, she, in passing, pushed one of my buttons. Maybe she was practicing for pressing her own mother’s buttons. Maybe she thought I was missing my mom and thought she’d push my button on behalf of my mom. She was explaining that she was in the midst of making her Grandma’s baked apple recipe and she that she had to bake her famous pumpkin muffins for her brother, and as she listed her wonderful traditions surrounding this holiday dinner she slipped this little bomb into the conversation, she said “Unlike you, I don’t hate Thanksgiving…” “________________ whaaa?” I said. This reminded me of yesterday’s New York Times article by Tara Parker Pope who wrote about Food, Kin and Tension at Thanksgiving.
Anyway I wanted to make sure that no one else confuses my calorie lectures and my accountability talks (about how 5 minutes of eating can cost you 5 hours of exercise) with a dislike for the holiday itself. I happen to love Thanksgiving so much that I went to Costco last night with all of the second-to-the-last-minute people and then again today to get one more $5.99 gigantic pumpkin pie with all of the official last minute peeps. Being at Costco the day before Thanksgiving is the November equivalent to being an elf at the North Pole on Christmas Eve. I didn’t mind it one bit, it made me feel anticipatory, and all warm and fuzzy inside (as long as my checkout line moved faster than all the other lines, which I surreptitiously monitored for the line contest in my mind. Once a competitor, always a competitor). Stuck in the traffic on the way to and from Costco, I enjoyed seeing all the families packed up in the cars traveling at a snail’s pace alongside my car. And even though I didn’t envy their long road trip I wished I could zap our family back to Ohio for the weekend. If we drove, it’d mean 8.5 hours in the car with three teenagers and a tailgating hubby which does not compute in my dinner vs. road trip calculation. But being a news reporter, my husband always works when a holiday falls on a weekday so he’s always worked Thanksgiving as long as we’ve been married. I do miss seeing my family and the subsequent dinner but luckily we have longtime friends (who are excellent cooks, I’m no dummy) who always have mercy on us and adopt us for dinner. So yes, you all have my permission to have the most delicious meal-to-top-all-meals tomorrow. Savor every bite and even help yourself to seconds. I will be doing the very same thing.
Of course, there’s always the calorie bill to be settled come morning. “Oh Weigh-ter! Check Please!”
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