TOMMY, WE HARDLY KNEW YE

Thanksgiving used to be so easy, so relaxing – my favorite holiday.

But then ‘correctness’ struck, and things got complicated…

And while every holiday is being reexamined, Thanksgiving has been given a real twice-over, beginning with ‘Pilgrim Atrocities’:

The Pilgrims fleeing England to avoid religious persecution, the anguish of cookies referred to as biscuits, and boring nil-nil soccer games, to find welcoming Indians.

Who invited the newcomers for a canoe cruise – but who wants to get back in a boat after a long boat ride?

Unfortunately, the pilgrims were terrible guests: Bogarting the peace pipe, displacing the real ‘Indian actors’ in John Wayne films, and ‘colonizing, brutalizing and raping the locals’ -try recreating that in a school play.

But the locals still willing to aid their acclimation, teaching them to grow corn, adjust to daylight saving time, sharing the family recipe for celery stuffed with spray cheese and the hidden ball trick.

Again, the Pilgrims behaved poorly: Not allowing the Indians to join their bowling league, forcing them to start their own league on Tuesdays, the least popular night.

The final straw: After giving their sports teams ‘Indian’ names, leaving only nosebleed seats at will call.

The other final straw: Changing their name to ‘Indigenous People’, which no one could pronounce or spell – forcing them to re-monogram their towels.

Yet again their hosts responded graciously, teaching their guests about day drinking, virtually every American’s favorite Thanksgiving tradition.

Ultimately being rewarded with a string of casinos.

Correctness has even come for turkey prep:

We now refer to the turkey as he/she/they, Tom a vestige of male patriarchy.

I handle turkey prep, washing, drying, and covering they with flavorful spices. And myself, wanting to be “one with they”;

They cavity then packed with stuffing, and slathered in butter – as am I, again to be “one with they”, but also reliving one of my favorite College weekends – the cooking process begins, the best part being that ‘whole house turkey aroma’.

But none of that happens until we’ve attended a Zoom seminar on ‘Respecting Boundaries: Stuffing is a form of sexual terrorism’, and obtaining a written release from the turkey…

Once the turkey is safely in the oven, we renew family traditions such as the Turkey Bowl, which ends when a quorum of the adults have pulled something.

Eventually ‘the group’ is freed from the oven – served at room temperature because we couldn’t use the gas stove or the electric air fryer to save the environment -and renounced on Twitter for they sodium content.

We then sit down to dinner: turkey with many of the trimmings – half of the fixins rejected as GMO.

But first, the most important Thanksgiving dinner tradition, when each diner responds to “What are you thankful for?”, aka the ‘Gratitude Moment’.

The answers range from: “My family, my friends”, “What they said”, “The chance to spend this time together”, to “The Buc-ees they’re building at exit 42”.     

After dinner, we head to the family room for our annual ‘food comas’. One year we discovered Uncle Frank in an actual coma, and no one’s allowed to sit in that place on the sofa, ever again.

It was a great day, full of family, traditions, and gratitude.

But I wondered “What if the ‘gratitude moment’ became an ongoing, year-round thing?”

What if we woke up every day, grateful for all we’ve been given, reminding ourselves how lucky we are for our feet to ‘hit the floor’?  

Woke up and remembered each day is a gift from God, and we do Him – and ourselves – honor by making the most of it?

This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for partially recycled content. Oh, and my family. Have a good one.