Breaking our Thanksgiving tradition with a piece of pie
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- November 16, 2018
- 1113
I do love Thanksgiving. I fight for its right not to be merely a stepping stone from Halloween into the Christmas season. It’s become a blur, a dizzying day of protein and carbs and pie that put you into a food coma.
My house remains steadfastly autumn-themed, and as I write every single year, not one Christmas item comes out until the turkey is shoveled into a fat sandwich the day after the feast.
Mariah Carey, as well, is barred from my ears until post-turkey day.
Last year during this season we were planning for our big trip to my husband’s homeland. I didn’t have to shop for gifts, and I also decided I wasn’t going to do much decorating. We’d be gone before Christmas happened and come back long after New Year’s Day.
I put up one tiny tree with twinkling poinsettia lights and a few ornaments that had come from Mom’s house, her having just passed away that October. It was all I needed, and for the first time I felt I could breathe right on through the season without feeling the weight of commercialism.
I am considering that impact today. Is it something I want to do every year, the downsizing of Christmas, if you will? This year I’m not yet sure who will be here for Christmas Eve and morning. One will still be in Europe, one may be at their in-laws home in another state and one might be here. It’s the natural progression of things.
Traditions are important to me, but we can become so wrapped up in them that there is no room for anything new to be created. I could insist on the traditions I was raised on and never be open to something different, stifling the flow of something fresh and beautiful to take place.
It’s been nine years since all my children have been home at one time for Thanksgiving. The mashed potatoes were still buttery, the turkey still tender and most of the faces were the same, give or take new additions in the form of boyfriends, girlfriends and children growing into near unrecognizable adolescents.
This year our big family will meet in a new place, albeit a dear, old, familiar one, and we will embrace that change as well.
The inability to accept change to old ways crushes any chance for new ways to take hold. I’ll admit when I married my husband there was a clash of cultures. He didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving because it didn’t exist in his country. He questioned why we even celebrate it. Because while the Pilgrims and Indians may have had a nice meal together, they didn’t exactly get along forever.
After the Indians taught them how to survive on this land, they were pushed into near extinction, and that’s saying it nicely. I learned how to incorporate his ways, and he learned to incorporate mine, meeting in the middle while rethinking how holidays could be made our own, together.
Thanksgiving is this week. I look forward to it because of tradition yet hold back because of how highly glossed-over its origins are. I will turn on the parade Thursday morning and sip coffee as I watch my childhood meander down a chilly NYC street.
I will bake the pies for the big family gathering, having taken over that task since Mom has passed, her white tin pans nestling delectable pumpkin, pecan and possibly something new in them this year even though she only ever baked pumpkin for the day.
We long for the same tastes year after year, but if we don’t attempt a new flavor — or way — will we be doomed to run a circular path, like a hamster in a cage that never breaks?
I’ll let you know how the new pie flavor is welcomed. If it comes in Mom’s tin pie pan, the odds are in my favor. Because while tradition is good, so too is change.