I went an hour after the opening bell this morning, figuring I'd beat the Tuesday and Wednesday get-set-for-Thanksgiving rushes.

The parking lot was FULL; I joined the line of cars circling around and around. I finally followed the brave souls who parked behind the store, in the very wide posted fire lane, hoping that we wouldn't all get towed or ticketed. (We didn't. when I left, someone was waiting to take my spot, along with my grocery cart.)

I'd say it was 50/50 between people just picking up a few last-minute items (gotta love their pumpkin pies!!!) and people picking up a two-month hoarders' supplies.

I am very pleased that I shan't have to venture out until well into next week. And I offer up a heaping tablespoon of thanks to Amazon's Kindle Free (after you pay $9.99/month).


How are you all faring as we tumble headlong over the waterfall, into the whirlpool of the Holiday season?

An aunt called me last week to ask if we were going anywhere or doing anything for Thanksgiving. I told her that there was no chance of us going anywhere with the decease of my mother-in-law, and we didn't want to be on the roads burning gasoline and fighting traffic with everyone else.

Then she asked if we'd be making a big meal. Again, I told her - no, it's just the two of us, so no sense in doing up a big feast.

She countered, that of course that makes sense, so we should go out to eat to a nice restaurant. I said, once again, no, we'll just stay home and make something nice, but not fancy.


To me, my aunt pretty well summed up most people's view of holidays in the United States: you're expected to have a huge gathering; travel, no matter how splurgy, has become obligatory; gorging and overconsumption are expected; and if you're not going out of your way to make a huge dinner, you're expected to overdo it outside the house.

And all of us are expected to go through the same rituals for a bunch of made-up observances, regardless of our means to do so or their relevance or lack thereof in our lives.


I'm fine with people celebrating and doing it with family and friends and even enjoying good food and conviviality, but I do wonder how much it needs to be a rote occurrence with the same media-imposed script happening in house after house - unthinkingly, mindlessly - as with my aunt and her false default assumptions.

Tyson

I think we might have been separated at birth.

I've never cared for super-big Thanksgiving gatherings. It's often just my brother, sister-in-law, and I. We have a turkey breast, stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce, and maybe two vegetables with a pie for dessert. It works just fine for us.

We are going out!!! There is a good steakhouse here in town that does a nice turkey dinner at a reasonable price. My neighbor has gone for several years and they really like it. I am deep into card making, the house is a mess. I have to do all the cooking, dishes, put the food away, half of it we will never eat. Then before you know it, you have to do it again for Christmas. So this year I said SCREW IT! WE ARE GOING OUT! Reservations made. Our dear friend who is in her 90s always has holidays with us (her family ignores her &%^^&) and she is good with it. Hubs doesn't seem to care. Kid is throwing a fit but too damn bad. When I told him I was going to see if they did a Christmas dinner too you would have thought that I had said one of the dogs had pooped in his bed. I will do Christmas but maybe it will be an incentive for him to HELP a little.

So yeah, I have a lot of guilt about it but I am getting over it. It will be so nice just to go out and enjoy the day (and the day before and the day after).

I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but someone just gave me this morning some Nicaraguan tamales her family makes. It is very important in life to have at least one Nicaraguan friend. I have several and not just for the tamales.

I suppose my popovers and gravy might be odd with them, but hey, what the heck.

I stay away from all stores three days prior to any holiday. When I was in my late teens it was a kind of a fad for people to say "I'm a people person!" I never said that. Had to watch that "Up With People" show that came to our school. Geez. Anybody remember that?

That's pretty good.

I did not grow up with Thanksgiving unless you count July 4 (Hey its a poor attempt at humor) but must confess I do enjoy the celebration. I tend to think the typically American plate is rather bland in the sense that it looks very pale. White mashed potatoes, white turkey, pale corn, pale gravy so we do like to brighten it up a bit with roast potatoes and more than one green vegetable.

Growing up in England, churches always had Harvest Festival services in the Fall, a celebration of the successful incoming harvest. I suspect that's what the first Thanksgiving grew out of. At the church I attended people brought every conceivable item of produce and the church was decorated with the bounty. The next day, the food was distributed to needy families.

When I cook it, it is colorful. At least one green veg, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce. I count corn and potatoes as starch not veg. I am a real pain about at least one veg with every dinner. I raised kid that way and he loves them. Eats salads as a snack. Hubby is my problem lol. He doesn't eat many so we eat a LOT of broccoli, green beans and carrots. Cut the nightly bread product out for the most part too.

I think all the harvest festivals grew out of the old Pagan traditions or even earlier. Everyone seems to have them one way or another.

Can we all agree that Turkey is a boring meat? For diets and muscle-building, sure; but for a sybaritic celebration?

It's far too Puritan for me.

I buy ground turkey. To make turkey/veg burgers for the dogs. I cook up the batch then freeze them. They go insane while I defrost them one at a time. I used to make beef stew for the Border Collies but one of my little ones can't eat beef. Yup, I am more concerned about home cooked meals for my dogs than I am for the people : )

> Yup, I am more concerned about
> home-cooked meals for my dogs
> then I am for the people : )

Which is how it would be if I were Ruler of the World!



(apologies for allowing Grammarly to correct you...)

Turkey is my favorite meat.

kentish Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I did not grow up with Thanksgiving unless you
> count July 4 (Hey its a poor attempt at humor) but
> must confess I do enjoy the celebration. I tend
> to think the typically American plate is rather
> bland in the sense that it looks very pale. White
> mashed potatoes, white turkey, pale corn, pale
> gravy so we do like to brighten it up a bit with
> roast potatoes and more than one green vegetable.

You're missing the cranberry sauce (bright red) on every plate, the sweet potatoes (bright orange), the dark purple and/or black olives used as garnish, and the (bright orange) pumpkin pie for dessert.

American Thanksgiving dinners tend to be very colorful, and for some families (I'm thinking especially of Hispanic families here), there are other traditional foods (like chilies of all colors) which add even more to the multi-colored painting effect.

The Pilgrims, in Massachusetts in 1621, had NO IDEA what they were creating when they invited their local Native American neighbors over to sup with them at America's first Thanksgiving dinner.

Today, there are countless local food variations for different geographical areas and ethnicities (think Hawaii, for example), but four hundred years on, we're still seriously recreating annually what they did first.

kentish Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I tend
> to think the typically American plate is rather
> bland in the sense that it looks very pale. White
> mashed potatoes, white turkey, pale corn, pale
> gravy



Kentish, at our house, we call that "Non-Distinguishable Food." --We can't tell one from the other, except by its state of being thick, sticky, and semifluid in consistency, due to internal friction.

Yeah , but did they have any toilet paper ?

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yeah , but did they have any toilet paper ?

I think they used corn husks?

I’m one of those folks that love Thanksgiving and enjoy hosting dinner at our home.

Our family is small compared to many other families but we have a great time.

It is a lot of work, but I think of it as simply cooking an overgrown chicken with some side dishes.

When we were first married, we were invited to my husband’s friend’s place for Thanksgiving. When we got there the turkey was still frozen! They didn’t understand that you have to thaw the turkey first. All we could do was put it in the oven at 450 degrees for a few hours: it turned out to be one of the best tasting, tender turkeys, ever! It steamed up the windows a lot while it was roasting, but it turned out good, anyway.

The first year Hubby and I were together he volunteered me to do the turkey because he was getting one from work. Came home on Wednesday night with a rock solid one. I disinfected the tub, filled it with warm water and thawed that sucker out by dawn. Then cooked it. Around 2am while Sammy the Swimming Turkey was still swimming he pulled the rack out too fast and my two cheesecakes went top down into the oven. He ran to the store, I remade them. We didn't get a lot of sleep that night! First holiday with my in-laws, at least it was a memorable one!

Beautiful story Susan, great how you overcame the basic everyday emergency in almost all restaurants when trying to get through another busy hectic day. Innovation conquers almost anything, that and perhaps some much needed additional luck.

Can't imagine, here we are again already. Another stressed out major holiday event and this time nobody is in good shape psychologically.
Makes for quite the predictability of how things might fare.

Tomorrow I'll have the nicest turkey and gravy blue plate diner meal I can find.
Getting that over with and having almost complete control over such an ordinary dinner gets a lot of the perceived expectations immediately out of the way. With this little gem, the whole T-Day thing can get as complicated as it likes and I've already had mine, but it was early.
Didn't have it set up for change and possible disappointment by adding 364.5 days of waiting.

My little secret tradition, coming out of the whole LDS game of predictability. Nothing that always happens, surprises me anymore.

Many years ago we had five-point-something earthquake on Thanksgiving Day. I took that as an omen that I must Never! cook on Thanksgiving.

Ah, yes! Ye olde, “The ghawds would be angry!!” approach . . .

Talking of Costco...my least favorite "store" to go to. Makes me feel like one of those creatures that follow each other over the cliff. I would use the name but my tablet keeps changing it to lemony.

Lemony Snicket at Costco. That I would like to see.

We have to drive to Ogden to go and my boyfriend and I go once or twice a month, but since he retired and is traveling ALL THE TIME, we haven't been. My daughter has a membership and I'll go sometime in the next few weeks. He will be gone to CO for the naming of his granddaughter (first grandchild at 68 and I don't have any) and then he leaves for Canada to his daughter's for three months. Maybe I can get something done. He'd like me to go, but I like his kids to have him to themselves.

My sister is making TG pretty much. I'm making pumpkin pie only and the green bean casserole, which I had never had until she was married to her second husband and I'm not a big fan and she assigned me to make it. Need to find some YAMS for myself so I have some leftovers of them. We have 2 disabled brothers and so we try to do something for them. We are a divided family though. None of the niece and nephews (yes, one niece) including neither of my kids. My older sister and younger sister don't speak. My youngest brother won't come. I go just for my 2 brothers. It will be 5 of us. Better that way.

I'm very much not into holidays this year. Putting up the bare minimum for Christmas. I'm actually glad the bah humbug boyfriend will be in Canada since he is Jewish. I've never figured out why he feels he has to share Christmas with my kids and I. I guess because he wasn't Jewish until he got married, so he has a lot of memories of Christmas, but he is such a grouch.

cl2notloggedin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm actually glad the bah humbug boyfriend will be in
> Canada since he is Jewish. I've never figured out
> why he feels he has to share Christmas with my
> kids and I. I guess because he wasn't Jewish
> until he got married, so he has a lot of memories
> of Christmas, but he is such a grouch.

Adult convert to Judaism here....and a near-to-lifetime Christmas grouch. Growing up, Christmas was always such a big deal in my extended family, and if you'd had a silent camera filming the "festivities," you would likely think I grew up in a blissful Christmas wonderland.

It always, every single time, started off that way: like the opening scene in an appealing, and warmly idyllic, Christmas family film from MGM.

By the time afternoon Christmas dinner was over, though, there was always angry (alcohol-fueled) shouting, with everyone mad at everyone else, and everyone (minus my paternal grandparents) blaming ME for "ruining Christmas [yet] again." No matter what I said, or what I did NOT say, or HOW hard I genuinely tried to be as invisible and silent as I could possibly be, everyone in the family knew that it was ME who had ruined everyone else's Christmas.

[I wouldn't find out for about thirty more years that I had been conceived by the "wrong" brother.]

It was always such a mystery to me. How could *I* be responsible for "ruining everyone's Christmas" every year when I was trying my very, very, VERY best to be as amiable, and as invisible, as possible?

Long before I ever reached adolescence I loathed not just Christmas, but the holiday season in general, with every atom in my body.

When I finally (decades later) became a Jew, my first thought at the exact moment when I became a Jew was: "Now I never have to 'celebrate' Christmas ever again! Yippeee!"

I wonder how many of us "Jews by choice" [translation: converts] feel the same way?

It's not an actual reason to make the very deeply serious decision to become a Jew (Jews get killed a lot, and this is, unfortunately, a continuing fact of Jewish life), but "losing Christmas" sure can be a greatly-valued perk of the process.

I can't imagine someone being made the scapegoat for everything that went wrong on a holiday - and to find out the real reason they blamed you, just wow.

I'm glad that that's behind you.


As an aside, my husband and I may be spending Christmas eating Chinese food with our Jewish friends in DC at their invitation, and as I told them, it's likely to be the pinnacle of our holiday season.

Tyson

Tyson Dunn Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I can't imagine someone being made the scapegoat
> for everything that went wrong on a holiday - and
> to find out the real reason they blamed you, just
> wow.
>
> I'm glad that that's behind you.

I very much appreciate your kind words, Tyson. Thank you. :)


> As an aside, my husband and I may be spending
> Christmas eating Chinese food with our Jewish
> friends in DC at their invitation, and as I told
> them, it's likely to be the pinnacle of our
> holiday season.

For American (and possibly Canadian as well?) Jews, Chinese food on Christmas day is a century old Jewish tradition!

:D

I gave up my Costco membership many years ago, I was spending too much money saving money

They due tend to offer more savings than I can afford!

I made the casual acquaintance of a lady who ruled over one of the cosmetics counters and sometimes stopped to chat. She once confided, "I hardly ever take my paycheck home. I'm a shopaholic ("shopahaulic?"), and I can't resist the employee discount. I'm saving money into bankruptcy!"

Edit: NOT scene at Costco:

https://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-24-at-9.26.47-AM.png?w=960&ssl=1



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2021 08:02PM by caffiend.

We gave up our Costco membership a decade ago and the last few years we shopped there I sat in the truck while my wife went in. I hate crowds so I don't miss it a bit.

Look into the eyes of the shoppers they are zombies. They think they are superior to Target shoppers because they pay for the privilege of entering the front door. How exciting to buy a cart load of toliet paper and a gallon of dried beans and two carts of bottled water.

Glad to see I am not the only one puzzled at seeing people with a cart full of toilet paper, and another cart with five cases of bottled water. For god’s sake, this is America. The tap water (with a few exceptions) has been safe to drink since about 1890.