Ah, the holidays are coming. It doesn’t matter what holiday, there’s going to be a sale to celebrate it, a parade to commemorate it, and fireworks to cap it off. Except Thanksgiving.
Poor Thanksgiving has gotten squeezed out. In the real world it seems that Thanksgiving is the signal to begin work on our Christmas projects. Christmas decorations go up the weekend after Thanksgiving, Christmas cookies get baked and frozen the weekend after Thanksgiving, Christmas card lists are reviewed and amended the Sunday after Thanksgiving, Christmas party invitations are sent the day after Thanksgiving, and Christmas shopping starts at midnight Thanksgiving evening.
Even in the fantasy worlds of television and movies, Thanksgiving is not held in very high regard, and usually in quite less than the best light. Steve Martin and John Candy celebrated the lengths that one will go through to be with family on Thanksgiving by driving halfway across country in a burned-out car and the trailer half of a tractor-trailer combination. We will never forget WKRP’s Mr. Carlson covered in feathers declaring in all seriousness, “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.” And it’s ok to admit that we wish every year to be sitting down to a feast of toast and popcorn if Snoopy is serving it. Isn’t it funny that one of the most enduring images of the most American of holidays is as dysfunctional as mistaking turkeys for birds of flight? Yet on the other hand, it is a suitable symbol of its love to want to create a Thanksgiving feast for one's friends and family even if all you know how to make is popcorn.
Thanksgiving is for families and friends to gather. A time to be thankful for the friends who are as close as family and to be thankful for the families that we wonder if they would make the cut as friends. Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful that we have those friends and that family to share ourselves with and reflect on the year’s accomplishments, vacations, fun weekends, and all that went into getting almost all the way through another year.
Thanksgiving isn’t a time to celebrate a year travelled on the perfect path to great successes. Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful you have a life worth celebrating. Life isn’t perfect. Life is a celebration, even a life with its occasional failures, the never-ending projects, the worked weekends, and all that we still have in front of us before this year is over. Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful that we can be as loving as Charlie Brown is to his friends, to be always wanting to do something special for them, sometimes failing but still always accepted as a valued and loved member of the inner circle.
Thanksgiving is a time of love and dysfunction. It’s ok. They really do go together. If it wasn’t for the one, we’d never try to extend ourselves risking the other. And if it wasn’t for the other, we’d never truly appreciate the one. They go together like friends and family, joy and happiness, and toast and popcorn. Our houses may be crowded, the tables overly full, and not all the plates match, but we squeeze in, give our thanks, and sometimes maybe wish we could be anywhere else but always thankful we are where we are.
There’s always room for more, there’s always enough love for extras, and there’s always just enough wrong to give real thanks for all that is right.
Life is messy, and you're so right to declare that this is the time of year, in the midst of all that's wrong, to celebrate all that's right. I love the thought of wondering if family would make the cut as friends--but at this time of year, we can be grateful for those family members that are a bit prickly but still very much a part of us. Life is worth celebrating--every day is a new opportunity to begin again, to move toward kindness and care, away from mistakes of the past. Love and dysfunction--they do sound like an oxymoron but are absolutely paired in life. One makes the other doable, the other makes the one necessary. Happy Thanksgiving, you…