Let's try to reclaim, and savor, Thanksgiving

By CAROLE E. BARROWMAN
First Published on Nov. 17, 2007, in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

I'm in trouble. I believe I've lost time. I went to bed on Halloween and when I woke up Nov. 1, it was already Christmas. Everywhere I turned, witches, bats, ghosts and goblins had morphed into Santas, snowmen, twinkling lights and tinsel.

What happened to Thanksgiving?

Did I pull an H.G. Wells and miss the entire month of November? I've always thought that traveling in a time machine would be pretty cool, but I'd hoped that when I did I'd wake up with fewer wrinkles, lots more money, and a pair of perkier - well, you get my point. What I didn't want to happen was to skip directly from scavenging the good candy from the bottom of the Halloween bowl to facing cranky shoppers and more credit card debt.

It's a mystery to me where Thanksgiving has gone. I know it used to be the holiday directly before Christmas and I know that to many, Thanksgiving was simply a full day of rest before the mad rush to Toys "R" Us or Mayfair Mall, but to me Thanksgiving was the holiday that defined what it meant to be an American.

I loved everything about Thanksgiving, with the exception of pumpkin pie. In my opinion, the pumpkin as a dessert has got to be the most overrated culinary con since Rachael Ray. A pumpkin can be a ride to the ball or a scary lantern, but it is not a sweet treat at the end of one of the best meals of the year.

In Scotland, where I grew up, Thanksgiving didn't exist as a national holiday. Why would it? When the Pilgrims packed their stuffing recipes with their Puritan ideals and set sail, we British said "cheerio and behave yourselves."

In Scotland, we do have all the other biggies, though. We have Valentine's Day, Easter, bank holidays, our own versions of Memorial and Labor days, and, of course, Christmas, which begins in December and encompasses a few of weeks of frenzied family gatherings, parties and pantomimes, all culminating in the biggest celebration of the season, New Year's Eve, or Hogmanay as it's called. In some parts, Hogmanay celebrations can make Mardi Gras blush.

Consequently, when my family immigrated to America in 1976, we embraced all things American. Our first Thanksgiving was our chance to celebrate a holiday that only Americans celebrated. To us it was a quintessentially American tradition, born out of the nation's peculiar past, albeit a messy and not nearly as romantic as we'd like to remember past, but unique nonetheless. My family wanted to embrace all of it, families and friends gathering to celebrate nothing more than one another, rejoicing that all have survived another year, no matter how battered or brilliant, no matter how tremendous or trying. At Thanksgiving none of that mattered.

In those first few years when we seemed so far from home, Thanksgiving gave us a chance to think about all the reasons we'd come to America in the first place. It seemed to me then as an outsider, and it still does now after 30 years, that Thanksgiving is the one holiday that we all truly share. No matter where we live, what we look like or what we believe, on Thanksgiving we all share a meal together. Thanksgiving gives us all permission to pause and nourish ourselves.

So I'm troubled about what has happened to Thanksgiving, and I really hope we can find it again. Until then I will not be dragged into the holiday sales, I refuse to recognize the presence of decorations, and I certainly will not listen to radio stations prematurely pandering the season. During December, I'll give and receive with the best of them, but not right now.

It's not that time yet.