Last Year Was My Last Thanksgiving, but It Was Not My Last Time Giving Thanks

Last Year Was My Last Thanksgiving, but It Was Not My Last Time Giving Thanks

Seventeen years ago today, I was given a reason besides the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade to like Thanksgiving. Fourteen minutes after midnight on Thanksgiving Day, November 23, 2000, my daughter was born. Prior to this day, I hated Thanksgiving. With the exception of the parade and my daughter, I still do. I have tried over the course of my lifetime to at least pretend I like Thanksgiving. Like answering “fine” when people ask you how you are, it is the simple, expected response. No one really wants to hear the truth.

Five years ago, Thanksgiving dinner became my responsibility. My ex-husband had left the picture and was in Missouri. I never really cooked much before I became a single mother of three, and now I was having to cook dinner every night and prepare these huge meals three times a year (Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas). One year, my dad decided to throw one of his famous fits and refused to eat the Easter meal I had prepared. I retaliated by refusing to prepare Thanksgiving dinner that year. Until this year, I had not ever really thought about how my mom did this for decades, almost entirely by herself, with minimal complaining. She had put up with him and his childish behavior for decades as well. This year, I decided I had had enough.

My kids always take off to spend Thanksgiving with their dad and his family, leaving me to juggle dinner schedules. My mom is no longer with us and my dad’s temperament gets worse and worse each day. My brother and his wife came by today to take him to dinner because I was not going to prepare one. He refused to go. He and I ended up eating burritos today. I don’t care. I was going to prepare a Thanksgiving feast sometime next week, but now I have decided that I will just save it for Christmas. I hate Thanksgiving and aside of the need to make the reason why easier for everyone else, I might as well just throw in the towel now. There’s no need to cook for an ungrateful, crotchety old man who barely eats anything anyway and children that aren’t even around.

Thanksgiving, at its core, is a made-up holiday with dubious origins. The most widely accepted account of the First Thanksgiving is that it was celebrated around 1620 or 1621 in praise of a good harvest and that Native Americans were invited. Over 200 years later, Abraham Lincoln made it an official holiday. Historical records do not indicate for certain whether the fare in the 1600’s or the 1800’s consisted of turkey and all of our traditional side dishes. It seems like these side dishes have increased over the years, as has the list of acceptable desserts. By the end of the day, we could have eaten any combination of turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, vegetables, dinner rolls or biscuits, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, apple pie, pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie and drank copious amounts of beer, wine and/or mixed drinks. Then we remark how stuffed we are while watching football and eating snacks. Thanksgiving is a celebration of gluttony at its finest. It also completely ignores the section of history where English immigrants subjugate an indigenous people, take over their land, kill their people, rape their women and begin a centuries-long tradition of continuing to treat them as though they’re the intruders.

So, here’s the truth. I will not be fixing any more Thanksgiving meals in the future. If my father wants one, he is going to have to bury the hatchet with his son and go get one. My mother was the best actress I know. She played the role for decades and never once broke character. I’m not that strong. There are only three things worth salvaging from Thanksgiving and one of them has absolutely nothing to do with Thanksgiving: my daughter. The other two salvageable traditions are the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade and the act of giving thanks itself.

All this month I have posted on Facebook things I am grateful for: people who are not part of the problem, Caramel Brulee Lattes, my wonderful mom, for getting 10 more years with my mom than my mom had with her mom, for being by my mom’s side as she struggled with Alzheimer’s, for creativity, that I have a car, that tomorrow can always be a better day, that I am not struggling like those in Puerto Rico, that music keeps me too busy for social media and makes me money, for military men and women, for good fortune at Morongo, for days of rest, that I’m not a blonde on days when I don’t have time for makeup, that I’m only a little scary without makeup, for employment, that I’m not as crazy as the cuckoo lady dancing in the street, for overall good health, carne asada, fast food restaurants who sell breakfast all day, music, hearing, ability to listen to and create music, technological progress which has increased access to music, air conditioning and my daughter, whose birthday is today. Gratitude is a worthwhile practice. We can easily get bogged down with everything that is wrong in the world or with everything that is wrong with our own lives that we forget to be grateful for the things that are good. Gratitude can ease depression and anxiety a little. Gratitude can offer hope. Gratitude can put things into perspective. Thanksgiving can be a great time to remember to be grateful, as can the whole month of November, but why wait? There are sparks of joy, fortune, blessing, etc. all year long. Be grateful for those moments in the moment and in the moments in which your heart sinks so deep into your chest that it feels like it’s trying to choke the life out of you itself. You don’t need a special holiday to be grateful for these things any more than you need a special holiday to eat turkey or pumpkin pie or to get together with your family.