The Magic of Thanksgiving

You always hear about the magic of Christmas, and it’s the all-time favorite holiday for many. It’s big and grand and it’s celebrated for, like, three full months (or longer depending on how long you leave those outside lights up).

My family always preferred Thanksgiving. This is largely due to my father, who preferred the quiet comfort of Thanksgiving at home with our family in Connecticut, with the wood burning stove warming the house, the unmistakable smell of turkey dinner, and the lack of pressure to buy perfect presents.

When I was in college, I used to bring my roommate Christy home with me every Thanksgiving. She lived in Florida and preferred not to fly. We would enjoy my mother’s delicious dinner, regale my parents with stories of our crazy adventures, and then head out to meet up with my high school friends at Gilly’s Bar with our fake ID’s. It was simple and not fancy. In fact, Christy found it hysterical that my mother put the cranberry sauce in a dish on the table, still in the full shape of the can. She always told me how much she treasured those memories at my house, and called my parents for years afterwards to wish them a happy Thanksgiving.

A few years after college, I was living in Atlanta, GA with a group of friends. We were like a real live “Melrose Place” in our apartment complex, minus the incomes, super model looks, and murdered villains returning from the dead. My friend Rob and I were too broke to fly home to Connecticut, so we accepted an invitation to a friend’s house for a true Southern Thanksgiving. It was a little different than what I was used to. For starters, they call stuffing “dressing”, and there were about six versions of banana pudding for dessert. They were Southern Baptists so there was no beer, and instead of football we watched videos of the family trip to Disney World.

The best part of this particular Thanksgiving was Magoo, the family dog. We were told that Magoo didn’t care for strangers in the house, especially Yankees. When Rob and I pulled up to the house, the Dad came running outside as we got out of the car, shouting, “Don’t come any closer!” Magoo needed to come out and sniff us before we were allowed to enter.

“I’m bringing Magoo out! Don’t make any sudden movements or eye contact!”

Rob and I shared a look of disbelief. “Are they bringing out a tiger on a chain?” he remarked.

The rest of the dinner was delicious and uneventful, except for the one moment when I froze in terror at the table and said, “I think Magoo just brushed my leg,” which sent the whole family into a tizzy.

Fast forward a few years, and my sister and I are married and have kids of our own, and we’re back at my parents’ house every Thanksgiving, eating cranberry in the shape of a can, sweet potato casserole with marshmallows, green bean casserole made with cream of mushroom soup, and my mother’s famous mashed potatoes. The kids are loud and rambunctious, and run around the house screaming, dancing, singing songs, fighting over toys, and knocking over antiques. It’s complete chaos. My father tells me “This is what life is all about.”

Thanksgiving was the last holiday my father celebrated, which seems fitting, given how much he loved it. He was dying of pancreatic cancer, and he had grown so tiny and frail. He was always freezing at this point, despite the warmth of the fire that filled the house. He wore layers of LL Bean flannel shirts and kept a heating pad with him at all times. He had trouble getting around, and his appetite had waned to next to nothing. The kids knew something was wrong with Pa, as they called him, but it didn’t stop them from cuddling next to him and squeezing him extra hard. Pa said grace at dinner and said how much it meant to him that we were all together, and that my mother made the best Thanksgiving dinner he ever tasted.

After dinner, my niece Faith wanted us all to play a board game called Googly Eyes. It was a really silly game that consisted of one teammate drawing a picture on a pad while wearing a giant pair of ridiculous glasses that completely blurred your vision, as the other person tried to guess what you were drawing. My son Peter was partnered with my mother, a completely mismatched pair. The moment my mother started drawing, Peter began shouting random words “A butterfly! A tree! A fire truck! A bear!” This caused my mother to laugh so hard she had to jump up and race to the bathroom. When it was my sister’s turn, she completely missed the paper and started drawing on the table. We became hysterical.

Later that evening, my father said that even though he felt too sick to join in the game, his favorite part of the day was sitting on the sofa, bundled under a blanket, listening to us all roaring with laughter.

I bet that’s a gift Christmas can’t touch.