Tradition, directly from Latin traditionem “a delivering up, surrender, a handing down, a giving up.”
Strangely bleak, no?
I don’t remember any one Thanksgiving of my childhood, I realize. Thanksgivings don’t get delineated like Christmases do, framed — maybe sadly, consumerly — by certain gifts eg all the years we didn’t get a dog, that year we did get a dog, all the years after we got a dog when someone had to walk that dog in the snow.
I remember Thanksgivings as a totality, a batch memory — sometimes with my mom’s family, sometimes with my dad’s, usually hosted at our house requiring Herculean, go-it-alone efforts on the part of my mom. I wasn’t tuned to that station back then, to the amount of work producing a meal for upwards of 25 people took. I guess I thought it just came with that Mom job — like for as tired as my mom might’ve been in that week leading up to the grandest of meals, this is just how it went: the housewife’s version of year-end earnings due. A grind, but surely she’d rally in time to also put on a glorious Christmas for us! Plus, Santa did most of that holiday anyway!
I did help in the kitchen at Thanksgiving, but I’d categorize my help as Lite, and even this categorization may be generous. I’d be sure to hold a dish towel, but I was always magnetically drawn to the family room, and the homey drone of whatever football game was on. I could see early on that Thanksgiving was a good day to be male — I mean even the turkey on the table was more than likely female. And as a male person, the Thanksgiving play book was very favorable: to have a solemn obligation to watch football and/or play it in the yard, to carve the turkey to great flourish, eat it and retire to watch more football, constantly turning up the TV volume because dear lord the clatter of dishes from the kitchen.
Alas, this was the 80s when, as we now know, we did and perceived and said a lot of things wrong. Our cultural blindspots can be staggering to look back on. An example:
A few months ago, my younger daughter and I were looking for a movie to watch. After those minutes-that-feel-like-hours scrolling for something we could both enjoy or at least agree on, we found the remake of Overboard. She was mildly interested, but I convinced her to watch the 1987 original starring Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn. This was one of my favorites, I excitedly told her. It’s simple and adorable and sweet and romantic.
As the movie started, I saw my daughter’s skepticism rise because even on a high def TV, there’s something granular and feathered-hair-giveaway about movies from this era. Charlie Chaplin may as well be silenting his way through a black and white scene.
My daughter looked up from her phone since movies are mostly ambient for this generation.
“Wait a sec. Has he kidnapped her???”
“No, no…I mean not really. He’s um, just bringing her back to his house…”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t even know who she is right now…”
“I know, but he’s just like a nice carpenter trying to raise four sons on his own, and…”
“Did he just kiss her?? Against her will?? Isn’t that assault??”
“I mean I can see why you’d say that…but everyone ends up falling in love and they become this happy little family and those boys really needed a mom. She taught the one kid to read!”
“Mother,” this is what she calls me when she’s teaching me things, “that doesn’t make it okay.”
“No, no you’re right…Did I mention though these two actors met on this film and have been together ever since? A true Hollywood relationship success story. They are grandparents now!”
“This movie is weird.” And then she returned her full attention to the assuredly pure and unproblematic content of her phone.
So it is: a lot of what flew in the 80’s no longer has wings. I guess we’re evolving? Now we know that nice carpenters shouldn’t kidnap ladies and more than one female person should make a giant meal. Which means a Thanksgiving where my dad will clear the table and my husband will make balsamic Brussel sprouts (right, Honey?) and our local grocery store will do a lot of our feast prep work and I will watch a lot of football while not even holding a dishtowel.
Meanwhile, what would Thanksgiving really be without the delightful elementary school assignments it inspires? The other day my youngest brought home a paper turkey, each attached feather decorated with a picture of something he’s grateful for: Family, friends, PJ Masks, cookies and apples. Only young kids can nail this high/low balance. Here he blends broad and specific just right, and I don’t care that I appear to be on equal footing with a fruit. He really does love apples.
This turkey made me think of some of my other treasures from the archives. Choose anyone from your family or history — dead or living — to invite to your Thanksgiving dinner and tell us all about it. This was a standard assignment at my older kids’ k-8 school. My oldest daughter chose Richard Warren because — and I don’t want you to act all differently around me after learning this — we are descended from this Mayflower pilgrim. Mind you, this claim had very little cache when I was growing up in Massachusetts — it was more uncommon to not be descended from Richard Warren — but in California, to a bunch of 5th (?…I’ve forgotten) graders, this had mic drop potential and my daughter knew it.
Three years later, my older son would get the same assignment and naturally chose, in all of history, Steph Curry. He detailed a glorious day together where the meal was highly secondary to a one-on-one game. The final sentence, summing up the whole holiday with an NBA great and turbo-powered by a thesaurus, remains one of my all time favorite pieces of writing: “It will be so frivolous!!”
But not every assignment was so lighthearted (I theorize this word was a stepping stone in my son’s search for the perfect finale ie something like fun » lighthearted » frivolous!) When my younger daughter was in an early elementary grade I can no longer recall (theme), she came home from school very troubled. She had a big assignment and it was weighing on her.
“I have to write about our family traditions, and I don’t know what I’m going to do, because…” dramatic pause, “…we don’t have any.”
Can we all agree that as a parent there’s nothing more gratifying than all of your invisible efforts remaining…invisible?
I started trying to list all the things we’d done, all the special things that were specific to our family. But honestly in the face of such an audit (hey, listen up, Elementary School: I don’t need it), I couldn’t think of a single thing, and started to understand her concern: maybe we were a tradition-less, terrible family.
Perhaps this is why “give up” is right there in the root of the word tradition?
My older daughter kicked in: what about going to the cape every summer? What about birthday dinners in the dining room? What about Christmas Eve? What about, what about, what about?? To all of which I helpfully added “Hey, yeah!”
But none of this rattling-off sounded like tradition to my younger daughter — this was just the stuff we did all the time, year after year and always the same way.
That kind of stuff you look back on, that aggregate memory, like my big batch of Thanksgivings, and think: such rich tradition.
Happy Thanksgiving! Make it frivolous!
jen.
Nothing gets lost in translation when reading it as a Brit across the pond. So amusing. My husband sure wishes Thanksgiving happened here.
So good- was reading/ chuckling along and then…literally busted out laughing with the words ”It will be so frivolous!!” Thanks for this, put a big smile on my face. Happy thanksgiving!