Thanksgiving is a Feminine Holiday
I'm busy cooking a turkey for the food bank Thanksgiving today, and wanted to share this, one of my favorite columns.
Everyone has a favorite
holiday. Mine has always—always—been
Thanksgiving. As a child it meant the
best food, unremitting talk, games and play.
As an adult it means ever so much more.
In my years of making Thanksgiving dinner I have come to
believe that Thanksgiving is a feminine holiday. I don’t mean that it isn’t enjoyed equally by
both men and women. I certainly don’t
mean that the deeper meaning of Thanksgiving isn’t appreciated and revered equally
by both men and women. I just mean that
the essence of the holiday is feminine.
It is a day centered on two things, the meal and the meaning. These are feminine strengths.
Men are great cooks, but they aren’t likely to plan a
meal for a week, get the baking done the day before, set the table with
matching candlesticks and get up at 4:30 a.m. to get the meal started. Men are much more the spontaneous, “slap” it
on the grill type. And I haven’t found a
man yet who didn’t see an advantage to Chinette over fine china. No, this holiday loves women.
I
have a Thanksgiving morning ritual. Up
before dawn, I make my coffee (Minnesotan’s don’t do much before coffee), clean
the turkey, sauté the giblets and start chopping up the onion and celery for the
dressing. While they are cooking I carry
my coffee cup to the door, and step out on the cold, silent porch. I count the subdued lights filtering through
the curtains of every kitchen window. I
know that each small beacon represents a woman starting the hours of work that
is the Thanksgiving feast. This is a day
designed to remind each of us that no matter what budgeting, what careful use
of leftovers, what creativity in bargain cuts, and coupons it takes, our families
will be fed. We are nurturers. We need to not just feed our families, but
keep them from fear of want. So we work,
this one day, on celebrating food in abundance.
We don’t carbo-load the potatoes, dressing, bread, yams and two
different kinds of pies because we need that much food. We do it to show our families that we
can. We are women. We feed our families. They shall not want.
But
Thanksgiving is more than just the meal.
This truly is a holiday dedicated to the meaning of its name. One of my previous blogs talked about the
journey of my ancestors over 200,000 years of seemingly random migration from
Africa to northern Europe, Scandinavia and Great Britain . The fact is that I am where I am because of
untold generations who made one decision after another that led to me. One accident, one misstep, one choice of, “B”
instead of, “A” and I am a different person, in a different land with a
different story. There is much that I
can take control of, ergo credit for, in my life; but the truth is, I am who I
am for no reason other than the Grace of God.
This is what Thanksgiving is for.
Each
Saturday morning I work at the local Food Pantry. It is just two hours of sacking up food and
schlepping it to the front for distribution.
If you have any trouble remembering how rich your life truly is, work a
month of Saturday’s with the less fortunate. Capture the real meaning of
Thanksgiving. Reflect.
Thanksgiving
is a feminine holiday. It is a day to
nurture, a day to care, and a day to love the smallest gifts of faith, friends
and family.
Thanksgiving
is why I keep the faith.
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