We might be able to have a traditional turkey dinner
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- November 13, 2021
- 1042
To rephrase the song: mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be ill mannered. I am not the first boring, old fart to lament the loss of good breeding and decent manners, but at the risk of seeming a Luddite, let me make the case for teaching young people how to navigate the waters of life’s social requirements.
That’s all etiquette is, at the base of it. You want to be able to handle yourself in any situation without being embarrassed or feeling lost. If you know the right thing to do wherever you find yourself, it brings confidence, and confidence is a very attractive trait to cultivate early on.
Many of us who were Dover High School students owe a debt of gratitude to history teacher Jim Nixon, who passed away recently. There was an awful lot to like and admire in this man, and it is hard to imagine anyone who set a better example of empathy, kindness and compassion, which tempered a remarkable mind and innate ability to share his knowledge in a captivating way.
That is likely the reason he was able to get a classroom of sweaty teenagers to pay rapt attention once a week to his lectures on etiquette. He thought we ought to know a thing or two about manners, and when his name is mentioned to former students, most of them bring up this regular, off-topic part of his classes devoted to Russian history and express their gratefulness that he took the time to do it.
I don’t know what to say about Thanksgiving gatherings this year if your family is vaccine reticent. Looks like you’re going through another holiday apart, or you should, if you’re choosing to not get the stick.
For the rest of us sensible folk, we might just be able to have something approaching a traditional turkey dinner with family — with a few precautions of course.
To belabor the point, most of the problems with gathering are covered if you know enough to cover your cough, not share spoons, maintain respectful personal space and wash up often — in short, manners.
I’ve been to a lot of Thanksgiving meals over the years, and some stand out in memory for differing reasons.
When I was a young man, I enjoyed the chance to spend time with the family of my then girlfriend, who liked to do the whole show to the hilt, reviving the traditions they began when their children were infants and which continued into their adulthood.
Out came the bone china so thin you could read through it. There was an array of ringing crystal, polished sterling and white damask everywhere, and it was then I bought some books and made it my business to learn which fork to use when. It was all magical and glorious, and I loved it.
More recently, the Thanksgiving dinners with my late sister will always be the gold standard of warmth, good food, comfort and the feeling of being part of a family with plenty of love to go around. The setting wasn’t at all fancy, just some unbreakable Correlle plates and Anchor glassware, and we ate at the round kitchen table, but it was the absolute best.
There have been a few I’ve attended where the turkey was served on bendy paper plates with plastic forks balanced on your lap at 2 p.m. with everyone crowded around the television.
I’m not going to criticize your family traditions, but the whole thing seems contrived to appease uncurbed family testosterone poisoning and avoid good catch-up conversation.
Come to think of it, those were instances where it was probably better to avoid any kind of conversation held over the din of yelling at the football game.
If any year called for being grateful and leaning hard into our traditions, this is it. By the grace of God, we are still here and have survived the things life has pelted us with.
While many families including mine have experienced terrible loss and jarring changes, we must always look to the things that bring our lives meaning and hope, the things that remain that are to be cherished with gratitude.
You don’t have to have translucent Haviland china to pull together a beautiful Thanksgiving, but getting everyone around an actual table and sitting on actual chairs and catching up on each other’s lives without phones and TV is important, if only to shout out into the universe that you are still finding joy in life, and the trials of the last couple of years be damned.