Writing from the Heart, Reading for the Road

Happy Thanksgiving, America.

November 27, 2024 at 5:32 pm 2 comments

So once again it is Thanksgiving time and all across the United States people are trying to figure out how to get along with family members whose political views they do not share. (Takes a lot of extra figuring this year for some people, and that (I think) is all I’m going to say about it. 😦 )

Thanksgiving tends to be the favorite holiday of many Americans. It is not religious, and it is not commercial. There have been attempts to make it commercial, of course. But it seems to be more or less impervious to these attacks on the sanctity and simplicity of the holiday. (Especially if you choose to boycott that godawful Black Friday that follows so quickly on Thanksgiving’s heels…and I strongly urge you to do so. You will be much happier.)

It is not even, strictly speaking, a “national” holiday, even though we all celebrate it, in one way or another.

It is above all, as a friend said to me recently, “our kindest holiday.” It’s really just about food. Family. Friends. Feeling gratitude for our blessings (whether you want to use that word or another one). It’s about reaching out to and including new friends, or even strangers, at the table, sometimes at the last minute.

It’s also a time of cherished traditions. And one of the traditions is the requisite Thanksgiving drama. Sometimes it has to do with food. (The turkey dropped in the kitchen during the carving process. The plastic spoon melting into the stuffing. etc) Sometimes it has to do with personalities clashing at the table. Or toddlers pulling on the tablecloth and all havoc ensuing…

The requisite Thanksgiving drama is not planned and you don’t know in advance what it will be. You just know that probably there will be one, and when it happens, people just smile, shrug their shoulders and remark, philosophically, “Well. There’s always gotta be one…” 🙂

Just today I discovered a wonderful Thanksgiving post, titled “Happy Messes.” It begins with the line “There are many ways to cook a turkey, all of which require heat. When I was 12, in 1974, my mother forgot to turn on the oven…” 🙂

It doesn’t matter. It’s still about family. Friends. Food. Gratitude.

Like most Americans in France, we celebrate Thanksgiving every year, either on the Saturday before the real day, or the Saturday after. This year we celebrated five days ahead of Thanksgiving.

As usual, we invited both French and American friends to join us in our celebration. As usual there was a lot of confusion about what the final number would be. (We started out with a potential number of 15, and ended up with 6 this year as illness, deaths in the family, and other matters interfered with our carefully-laid plans.)

As usual, there was some good-natured negotiation/discussion of the menu in the days preceding our celebration. For example, must we really have turkey? (Harder to find in France at this time of year, and also quite expensive.) The answer to that was provided by one of my sons who made it very clear he was not going to be happy with any kind of substitute. (Happily our local butcher found a turkey for us and it was wonderful! Much better than the Butterball turkeys we used to get in the US, and also better than the Picard turkeys we relied on here in France for a few years, which have since been discontinued.)

Then there was the last-minute confusion and several dashes to the store for forgotten items, or items we suddenly realized we needed. For example: To my delight I had found my mom’s “fancy” silverware, discovered in the trunks of things I had shipped over here last year. (Well, okay, it’s not really silver. But it’s fancy, and it kinda looks like silver. 🙂 ) Looking happily at the sparkling display of knives, forks and spoons I had laid out I suddenly realized that paper towels were not going to be a suitable napkin to use for this meal. And so, it was off to the store again…

In the end the meal turned out wonderfully well, thanks to many cooks. Even our French neighbors who were coming to their first Thanksgiving meal had somehow heard (or been told? but not by us) about the potluck nature of Thanksgiving meals. They brought little crabmeat verrines for our apéro, providing a lovely French accent to the meal, and also some to-die-for chocolate truffles for dessert. In between apéro and dessert we had turkey/stuffing/gravy; mashed potatoes; green bean casserole; cranberry sauce; cornbread; and two kinds of pie (pumpkin and pecan). Everything, in short, but the sweet potato casserole that American friends in a nearby town were going to bring but couldn’t at the last minute because one of them got sick. 😦

We did our now “ancient” (three-year) tradition of writing what we were grateful for on slips of paper that we then drew out of the “gratitude vessel” and read aloud–trying to guess which person was grateful for each of the sentiments expressed, accompanied with much laughter and warm feeling.

And of course there was champagne: this year our chosen champagne was Nathalie Nourissat, made by good friends and vignerons who live in Essoyes, and it drew praise all around.

We did not read a Thanksgiving poem aloud this year but if you’re looking for one, here’s one of my favorites. (Along with the poet I repeat, and repeat: “Bless the world outside these windows…Dear God, grant to the makers and keepers power to save it all…”) [My emphasis]

Wishing one and all a Happy Thanksgiving, for all we have to be thankful for.

Janet Hulstrand is an American writer/editor who lives in France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France.

Entry filed under: Neither Here nor There.... Tags: Franco-American Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving in France.