Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it is purely American and it is a day solely dedicated to celebrating friendship and family bonds. Every American family can put their own twist on various long-standing traditions.
One tradition Americans could use less of is the gluttonous act of eating so much food in one sitting, their spleens and lower digestive tracts seek revenge the remaining weeks of the year. Unless a person is waiting in line at a charity for their Thanksgiving meal, there is no reason they should be consuming the equivalent weight of a large medicine ball in turkey, gravy, potatoes, green beans, Aunt Jackie’s special salad and pie.
There is an art to eating, no matter the proportions of the food eaten. People who gorge themselves and walk around bragging about it could save themselves and their families a few dollars on Thanksgiving by going to Hometown Buffet the day before. The holiday could be spent napping and preparing the jowls for the day after trip to Soup Plantation. Thanksgiving may actually be that one day of the year it is not economical to buy food at a grocery store simply because of the amount of food purchased in one or two frenzied tears through Costco with that giant cart at full capacity.
The “I consume, therefore I am superior” mentality is a little like the keeping up with the Jones’ mentality, only a little more insidious. As if these never-ending black holes of ungracious materialism and consumerism, the Jones’, are daring us to compete with them.The pitiful thing about Thanksgiving competition eaters is that this mentality extends into every facet of these people’s lives. It’s the same reason that, years ago, I began staying home on New Years Eve. I got tired of going out in public watching people who either never drink or rarely drink suddenly decide to start swigging back alcohol as if it was their lifeblood. Amateur hour in a bar or nightclub is one thing, but at a dinner table?
If the Pilgrims had behaved that way, they would have been massacred, ground into mulch and used as topsoil. When humility and self-respect are thrown to the wolves on certain special days of the year, replaced by bravado and self-loathing, a person like me has to scratch his head and wonder if the braggarts are really enjoying their food or enjoying their own sadistic egos more.
Another thing I like about Thanksgiving is that, like New Years Eve or the Fourth of July, it is not a religious holiday. No one is forced to worship anything but the food, really. That is a sacred kind of worship some of us truly appreciate without gloating about it or overdoing it.
