Borderline Thanks
Poor old Thanksgiving! Sandwiched between Halloween and Christmas, this uniquely American holiday doesn’t stand a chance these days. In hopes of drumming up a better Christmas buying season, the Black Friday specials have been leaked, and many people will spend their Turkey Day dinners watching Dallas and Detroit football games, discussing what they can buy, what they can’t afford for Christmas and who is going to get in line at 10 p.m. that night for a 2 a.m. Friday store opening. Instead of being a uniquely American day to give thanks, it becomes a day of excess planning for well, excess. It’s like a gateway to the mania that is Christmastime, filled with an array of foods, decorations, and music that we all only have once a year, and between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we stuff ourselves to the gills with all of it.Before I stand on a soapbox of any kind, I should note my family can take Thanksgiving to its excess. In fact, we’d be gold medal winners. The other night, I stopped after work at my parents’ house, and my father grumbled that “you kids” need to take some responsibility for the Thanksgiving meal this year. Never mind that “we kids” as he likes to call us, range from 42 to 48. Looking at my mother, in her recliner, I realize she’s not going to have time to plan the epic Thanksgiving meals for the rest of my life. Mom and I did a quick huddle in the kitchen.
“Look,” I say, “I can cook the turkey, if you want. Carol can do the green beans, and we can thaw out some bags of corn (fresh frozen over the summer) and whip that up, Sarah (my niece) or her mom can make their good mashed potatoes, and you do the stuffing and a pumpkin pie, and we’re done.”
I’m no fool. I realize this is like bartering at a Latin American market. I make one offer, and Mom will make her counter one, and then I’ll try to bargain it back down. She doesn’t fail me.
“Well, what about a cranberry relish? I can make that. I’ll do the turkey. It’s already here and I can do the stuffing too. And a salad. We need a good salad. I can make your dad his (elderberry or mincemeat) pie, and a pumpkin one. Oh, and we need a veggie tray. Now I can make some Ranch dip and hummus, too.”
“Mom,” I say, in an exasperated tone, “we just got done talking about keeping it simple, like making it like a normal meal. One pie. Dip or hummus. Make your salads.”
“But we need our veggies!” she said, emphatically. I won’t deny she’s right. “OK, make a veggie bowl, you know. Something simple we’ll all eat.”
The next morning, I tell my sister about my talk with Mom. “Is she crazy? We go through this every year! Every year. I’ll do the beans. You do the corn. Sarah and Linda bring something and we’re done.”
Over the past seven or eight years, our Hauenstein Thanksgivings have become a monument to American excess. Harry, my sister-in-law’s excellent stepfather, brings sweet potato casserole, corn casserole (“I don’t eat green foods,” he always says), a cherry cheesecake, to the delight of my niece and my brother, and homemade candy. Harry is a very good cook. My sister-in-law will have the other potatoes, and often a spiral-sliced ham, while Mom brings the bird, homemade gravy, stuffing, two pies, cranberry salad, and anything else she can load into the car and Dad’s arms. My sister and I show up with low-fat green bean casserole and low-fat veggie-filled stuffing which only she, Mom and I eat. This feast is for 10 people. That’s right. Ten. Never mind it could have fed all of Plymouth Plantation and the entire Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Iroquois nation, and all Eastern tribes, it feeds ten.
Mom isn’t sure if my sister-in-law’s mom and stepdad are coming this year. After our conversation the other night, I think she feels the need to fill the abyss left if Harry doesn’t come with five dishes of his own, because, you know, we will all starve to death if she doesn’t make up the difference.
This year, as I approach Thanksgiving, my world is completely different from 12 months ago. I am standing on an edge of total uncertainty, from fiscal earnings to my entire employment future. With my field experience courses done, student teaching looms in a few months, and then I must find a teaching job beyond that. I commented to my sister that I’d finally have Black Friday off, for the first time since 1993. “That’s nice. You don’t have any money. We’ll be cleaning and setting up the Christmas tree that day,” she said, without looking up from the papers she was grading. What a party pooper. But she’s right.
As I put dishes away this morning, I thought of our excesses. Yours and mine. Fifty million people in America are hungry. Every day. Nearly 20 million of those are kids. It’s a sobering thought. While we moan and groan about Black Friday ads and Christmas retailing starting in October, it’s a desperate plea for our economy to return to some form of American normalcy, which is usually filled with, you guessed it, excess of everything, save one thing.
Here’s what I need to do this Thanksgiving: be thankful, and in excess. For all of the uncertainty and doubt facing me, God has never failed me. He never will. He’s got it all taken care of. I have just enough. And how much of my praise to Him has been in excess? Instead of planning for what I don’t or can’t have, why not praise Him for what I do? I know; every year we tell ourselves we should be grateful. And we should. But do we know to whom we should be grateful and at what cost that grace freely given cost us? I’d be the first to stand up and say I know the answer, but I’m too ashamed, or too stuffed. Or both.
No one can ever doubt America’s generosity and ability to rescue those in need. That is our greatest excess. When we fire up the post-Thanksgiving Christmas rush, may we remember that which we already have, and what is just enough, and those who don’t have what they need to survive. This year, at Thanksgiving, I’ll do my best to not argue with Mom about what she thinks we must have on her dinner table. I will also do my best to spend more time in praise on that day and each one before and after, for the just-enoughs that fill my life, to excess.