By the time you read this, Thanksgiving will have come and gone. I hope everyone had a lovely celebration with family and/or friends and that, as a result, you can face the coming holiday juggernaut with energy, patience, and humor. Indeed, the day this post goes live will be “Black Friday,” as it’s called because it puts so many stores into the more-income-than-expenses category after what can be at times a lean year.
Personally, I prefer to put as much distance between myself and a shopping mall on Black Friday as I can. Having grown up in the UK, where Thanksgiving is—or at least was, when I lived there—unknown, I don’t even quite see it as “my” holiday, not in the way that Christmas is. But I do love the idea of celebrating gratitude, even if, in the modern era, we can recognize that the historical origins of Thanksgiving—specifically, colonialism—leave much to be desired.
This year, too, marks a new stage in my life and that of my family. The Filial Unit married his beloved in August, and one of his oldest friends—whose family has hosted us for the last twenty Thanksgivings at least—married last year. They live in the same town, and this year we were invited to join the friend and his wife, his parents, and, of course, our own son and daughter-in-law to celebrate this annual holiday.
We are not only guests, of course. Sir Percy loves to cook, and especially he loves to cook turkey. The invitation to cook the turkey was, in fact, one of the factors tipping the scales in favor of driving several hundred miles on the worst travel weekend of the year.
Still, there is a distinct changing—or perhaps expanding—of the guard as we share hosting responsibilities with the next generation. And that is definitely a bittersweet moment. More sweet than bitter, I think, but nonetheless a call to reflection.
Image by Karen Loach, purchased from Shutterstock, no. 2522371747.
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