Home for the Holidays

Tomorrow I’m taking the children and heading to the Big Apple for Thanksgiving which is probably my least favorite holiday, except maybe the Fourth of July — I’d write off Turkey Day altogether were it not for the pumpkin pie. Oohboy but I love me some pumpkin pie.

I’m partly not into Thanksgiving for selfish reasons — my birthday is always on or near Thanksgiving and readily gets absorbed into that holiday. Look! A pumpkin pie! Let’s put a candle in it and call it done. But I’m also not into Thanksgiving because it strikes me as such a sham of a holiday really. Let us celebrate the near starvation of the colonists by eating so much we can’t move. Let us celebrate how the colonists were so thankful that the Native Americans saved them from death that they took all their land, gave them diseases, dissed their traditions and culture and generally were pretty nasty. I get that it’s really a harvest festival with nationalistic overtones and I’d like to celebrate the bounty of our fields and the produce of our labor — except, oh wait. We’re a post-industrialized society and the most labor I had to do to get produce was drive to Trader Joe’s. It’s a holiday which feels increasingly separate from its purpose so that its purpose now is the forced communion with one’s clan and the consumption of large amounts of food before watching football.

Perhaps if I were more religious I could find the thread of meaning in the holiday which is about being grateful. Or perhaps that is really what I should do even though I’m not religious — because my rank agnosticism aside, I am grateful. Daily.

So bear with me while my sourpuss rant turns into something better.

I am grateful for my family, my friends and my neighbors. I am grateful for the sunlight falling across the computer. I am grateful for the searing fire of these early years of parenthood because I think I am a better person for it. I am grateful for the technology which connects me to all of you. I am grateful that Daniel’s school hasn’t kicked him out. I am grateful for cheese. I am grateful for the coming days of winter and the dark coziness they bring. I am grateful that even though my parents drive me ten kinds of crazy, that I know they love me how they can. I am grateful for wool and knitting. I am grateful for many many things.

And greatful too.

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