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bourbonneatAlthough most years I love cooking up a storm for Thanksgiving, the nicest part of my parents offering to host this year is readily apparent today. My husband and I do not have mounds and mounds of dishes still left to do in a kitchen hastily put only to barest rights the night before! Oh delicious, lazy Friday off!!
I love Thanksgiving – getting together with family for an elaborate meal with a chance to relax, chat and just enjoy one another’s company. It’s like all of the best parts of Christmas in a warmer, more casual configuration. But I can’t help but feel the holiday would be better if more folks would drop the weird, borderline fetish with an overly rosy revisionist history vision of the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving.
I have been to Plymouth Plantation, site of the Plymouth Colony, around Thanksgiving and while the view out over the sea is stunning in its rough beauty, at this time of year the land itself is stark, inhospitable and really farking cold. I mean icy wind cutting through every layer of coat, sweaters, scarf, hat and gloves you have piled upon your body to forcibly pull up gooseflesh on your extremities so tight is actually hurts cold. You know, not unlike the sort of cold one also gets on the other side of the Atlantic, so it’s not as if Pilgrims couldn’t possibly have known better. Oh, and the late November in which I visited is a full month earlier and warmer than the timeframe in which they landed.
Suffice to say, the whole experience simply served to confirm my feeling that England really cut out the middle man, Douglas Adams style, when the Pilgrims left for the new world. (Now there’s something else Thanksgiving celebrants can all be thankful for this weekend: that many, many subsequent waves of colonists and immigrants also arrived to dilute the Pilgrims’ eventual influence on the character of the country. ;) ) Not to mention, the Pilgrims were absolutely charming people:
'We’re seeking religious freedom! Nah, just kidding. Had you going there for a bit, didn’t we? We’re seeking our religious freedom. The rest of you weirdos can all go to hell…er…well, I suppose Roger is calling it Rhode Island these days, but you get the general idea. No, seriously. Start walking now or we’ll start shooting.' (Is it weird that in my brain I hear this alternately in the voices of Eddie Izzard and Louis Black? Nah, didn’t think so.)
I love Thanksgiving – getting together with family for an elaborate meal with a chance to relax, chat and just enjoy one another’s company. It’s like all of the best parts of Christmas in a warmer, more casual configuration. But I can’t help but feel the holiday would be better if more folks would drop the weird, borderline fetish with an overly rosy revisionist history vision of the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving.
I have been to Plymouth Plantation, site of the Plymouth Colony, around Thanksgiving and while the view out over the sea is stunning in its rough beauty, at this time of year the land itself is stark, inhospitable and really farking cold. I mean icy wind cutting through every layer of coat, sweaters, scarf, hat and gloves you have piled upon your body to forcibly pull up gooseflesh on your extremities so tight is actually hurts cold. You know, not unlike the sort of cold one also gets on the other side of the Atlantic, so it’s not as if Pilgrims couldn’t possibly have known better. Oh, and the late November in which I visited is a full month earlier and warmer than the timeframe in which they landed.
Suffice to say, the whole experience simply served to confirm my feeling that England really cut out the middle man, Douglas Adams style, when the Pilgrims left for the new world. (Now there’s something else Thanksgiving celebrants can all be thankful for this weekend: that many, many subsequent waves of colonists and immigrants also arrived to dilute the Pilgrims’ eventual influence on the character of the country. ;) ) Not to mention, the Pilgrims were absolutely charming people:
'We’re seeking religious freedom! Nah, just kidding. Had you going there for a bit, didn’t we? We’re seeking our religious freedom. The rest of you weirdos can all go to hell…er…well, I suppose Roger is calling it Rhode Island these days, but you get the general idea. No, seriously. Start walking now or we’ll start shooting.' (Is it weird that in my brain I hear this alternately in the voices of Eddie Izzard and Louis Black? Nah, didn’t think so.)
