Dig up your old horn-o’-plenty and toss out that liquefying jack-o’-lantern — it’s Thanksgiving time again.
Of course, there’s more to Thanksgiving than grease fires, socially acceptable pants unbuttoning and a rare opportunity for friends and family to come together and sit in the same room to stare at personal electronic devices.
Thanksgiving traces its roots to Protestant Reformation-era England, the ancient Hebrew harvest festival of “Sukkot” and an annual Dutch observance commemorating the end of the 1574 Siege of Leiden. So, you can see it’s very American.
What we consider the “First Thanksgiving” consisted of a three-day feast held by the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony in 1621. Some dishes served there — turkey and cornbread — became longstanding traditions Others — succotash and pigeon pie — have long since lost their place at the nation’s table. Sure, pigeon pie may sound gross to us, but consider a Pilgrim’s revulsion at, say, Tofurkey.
Today, the United States celebrates Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November; in Canada, they celebrate it on the second Monday of October. I’m guessing that’s because they use a metric calendar over there?
Another interesting tidbit: Originally imported by visiting American whaling ships, Thanksgiving is also celebrated on Norfolk Island in Australia, where, presumably, families sit down to “turduckaroo” — that’s a de-boned duck stuffed inside a de-boned turkey stuffed inside a de-boned kangaroo — giving thanks for INXS, Billabong and Paul Hogan’s decision to stop making “Crocodile Dundee” sequels.
In the U.S., Thanksgiving ranks as one of our oldest holidays. President George Washington proclaimed the first nationwide celebration on Nov. 26, 1789. (Can you imagine how hard it must’ve been to unstick marshmallow topping from those wooden teeth?)
Despite religious origins, Thanksgiving has since grown into a secular federal holiday along the lines of the Fourth of July, Memorial Day and Oscar Night. The centerpiece is, of course, a large festive meal generally centered on a turkey — what U.S. holiday would be complete without a steaming hunk of meat?
Other Thanksgiving traditions include watching football, waiting in airports, sitting in traffic, sneaking picks of fried onion off the top of the green bean casserole, freebasing Pepsid AC, guilt tripping your adult children about why they don’t visit more often and tasering anyone who gets between you and the new Xbox when Wal-Mart’s doors pop open at midnight.
Indeed, Thanksgiving weekend is one of the busiest times of year for retailers. The day after Thanksgiving has long been known as Black Friday. Now, it’s followed by Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday and When-the-Eff-am-I-Getting-my-Own-Day? Wednesday.
No wonder Americans rate Thanksgiving their second favorite holiday after Christmas. Let’s face it: Nothing can compete with American Christmas (and I should know; I’ve been sending Hanukkah up against it every year since I had kids).
Still, the day isn’t without controversy.
In 1863, Abraham Lincoln officially designated the last Thursday of November as the national Thanksgiving Day. However, in 1941, FDR signed a resolution changing the national Thanksgiving Day to the fourth Thursday. Calling it an affront to Lincoln’s memory, several Republican states defied this order and continued celebrating “Lincoln’s” Thanksgiving in years with five Thursdays in November (Texas did it until 1956). Can you imagine? Even in our modern era of political gridlock, at least we can all can reach across the aisle and agree about which extra-long weekend to give ourselves.
This year, Thanksgiving falls on Nov. 26, which also happens to be the celebrity birthday of Johannes Sebastian Bach, the bass player from Fleetwood Mac and “New Yorker” cartoonist Roz Chast, all of whom I’m thankful for.
This brings me to my favorite Thanksgiving custom: Going around the table and expressing gratitude. Since I probably won’t be at your Thanksgiving dinner — unless you also happen to be going to my in-laws,’ in which case please don’t bring yet another pumpkin pie (there’s only so much cinnamon and nutmeg a man can take) — I’ll close with my own brief list.
This year, I am thankful for: Reflective outerwear; 50-50 bleach-water solution; bulk rice; tarps; Sriracha; automatic cloud back-ups; “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” still the greatest Thanksgiving movie of all time; Coffeemate; RainX; the near-constant airing of the third Hobbit sequel on late-night premium cable, thereby enabling me to finally finish the trilogy, albeit in 20 individual non-sequential chunks; snow, of any accumulation; WD-40 and, while we’re at it, Liquid Winch; pre-mature male pattern baldness, which, despite being a total bummer during my 20s, now spares me the rapid greying that suddenly seems to afflict all of my contemporaries; hoodies; Netflix, which, at $7.99 a month, remains the cheapest babysitter I’ve found (not to mention the only one I can call at 6:30 on a Saturday morning); good drainage; conscientious pedestrians; conscientious motorists; vitamin D, however I can get it; Brussels sprouts, for providing an alternative to kale; well-marked address numbers; carabiner clips and the failure of skinny jeans to replace Carhartts in Southeast Alaska … so far.
Happy Thanskgiving, Juneau. Let all your gravy stains be easily removable.
• Follow Geoff’s daily Twitter feed @geoffkirsch.com.
