On Wednesday, I was presented a question that I assume many people who live in this country are asked:
“So Tom, what’s your favorite Thanksgiving food?”
It’s a query that puts me in a tough spot. That is because I do not eat Thanksgiving food — I eat Christmas food. So, if I were to respond that my favorite Thanksgiving food was, say, Turkey, I would be lying on two accounts:
Turkey is not the best Thanksgiving food
Turkey is not a Thanksgiving food, anyway
Thanksgiving has always been a tricky holiday for me. There is indeed a certain ceremony to things, and now that I am a (vaguely) professional working person, a day off is welcome. But embracing the holiday in all of its marshmallow-atop-sweet-potato glory is reasonably tricky. That’s not to say that there haven’t been some lovely fourth Thursdays in November over the years. Such is my family’s eternal charm that we have received a fair few pity invites to various dinners — with our hosts undoubtedly enjoying the not-so-subtle irony in hosting five Brits for a quintessentially American holiday.
This year, though, presented a different type of challenge. I was fortunate enough to host my younger brother in my Brooklyn flat. This is the same brother whom I have so often driven to enumerate boba and ice cream shops late at night for various sweets. The same who I have walked with to 7-11 for sugar fixes and shit candy. The same who I had served mediocre carbonara to the night before.
Ceremony isn’t really our thing.
But it’s f*cking Thanksgiving, man! Turkeys! Pilgrims! Football (the American kind)! Though we were, and still are, perhaps reluctant to admit it, there’s a pressure — an obligation — to do something special.
So, what to do if you kind of give a shit, but don’t want to seem like you do? Or, more accurately, what do you do if you can’t be arsed to cook a turkey, largely due to some sort of pseudo-patriotic, obnoxious gatekeeping of a national identity that has more or less crumbled over the course of a decade?
Well, as we found out, there are two things that make a terrific Thanksgiving, regardless of nationality or enthusiasm for the holiday:
Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring (Special extended edition)
Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers (Special extended edition)
That 7 hours and 52 minutes of hours of film time — stretched out to about 10 to allow for cooking and such — is the ideal way to celebrate this country’s second most American holiday (cinco de mayo is, of course, number one.) A few other vague symbols of ceremony were added to the mix. We prepared and consumed a quite wonderful Beef Coq au Vin (yes, that translates into “beef chicken to wine” — it’s a glorified beef stew with an obnoxious name.) We purchased a blueberry pie from a supermarket, and chucked ice cream on top after warming it in the microwave. We had a glass of buy-one-get-one-free red wine that had been sitting on my shelf for a month.
It was perfect.
So, I suppose I am grateful for my French soup, served with Italian bread, and accompanied by Spanish wine. I enjoyed eating it while I watched a film based on a book by a British author, shot in New Zealand, and starring a Danish-Argentine actor (Frodo and Sam are irrelevant for the purposes of argument, ok?)
Most of all, I’m grateful for Gandalf the white. His dramatic appearance to save King Theoden from an advance of Uruk-Hai at Helm’s Deep, on the sixth day at dawn, no less, was nothing short of inspirational. That he did it less than two weeks removed from smouting the Balrog of Khazad-dûm upon a nearby mountainside is even more remarkable.
I suppose there’s something that can be learned from his plight, his reincarnation of the spirit that the high wizard Saruman was supposed to be. Perhaps Gandalf’s return to Middle Earth and subsequent antics with the hobbits, ents, and Rohirrim is the quintessential commentary on being thankful for the life you have.
So, maybe you don’t need Turkey, stuffing, football, and marshmallows atop sweet potatoes to learn something about gratitude, after all.
Indeed, microwaved pie and Tolkien will do the trick.
Happy (belated) Thanksgiving. Genuinely nice of you to take the time to scan your eyes over this.
Genuinely don’t know which would make me puke first Thomas; beige Thanksgiving food or small creatures with hairy feet looking earnest for 8 hours…….