You know, there\u2019s more to Thanksgiving than gravy stains and grease fires. For instance: it\u2019s the official kick-off of eggnog season. <\/p>\n
This time of year also spells socially acceptable public belt unbuckling, really uncomfortable political discussions with people you thought you loved and an opportunity for family and friends to come together in the spirit of sitting around a living room staring at their own personal screens.<\/p>\n
No wonder Thanksgiving rates as our second favorite holiday after Christmas. Let\u2019s face it: Nothing can compete with American Christmas (I should know; I\u2019ve been watching Hanukkah get its butt kicked for 40 years). <\/p>\n
As such, Thanksgiving weekend is one of the busiest times of year for retailers. The day after Thanksgiving has long been known as Black Friday. Now, it\u2019s followed by Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday and When-the-Eff-Do-I-Get-my-Own-Day? Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Of course, Thanksgiving traces its roots to Protestant Reformation-era England, the ancient Hebrew harvest festival of \u201cSukkot\u201d and an annual Dutch observance commemorating the end of the 1574 Siege of Leiden. So you can see it\u2019s thoroughly American. <\/p>\n
The Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts, held what we consider the \u201cFirst Thanksgiving\u201d in 1621, marking their successful completion of a full year after migrating to the \u201cNew World.\u201d Note: the citizens of America at that time \u2014 by whom I mean Native Americans \u2014 joined these immigrants in their three-day feast, you know, as opposed to condemning them all as terrorists, criminals and job-stealers, and threatening mass deportation. Just saying. <\/p>\n
Today, the United States celebrates Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November; Canada celebrates it on the second Monday of October. I\u2019m guessing that\u2019s because they use a metric calendar? <\/p>\n
This year, Thanksgiving fell on Nov. 24, which also happened to be the celebrity birthdays of Toulouse-Lautrec, Scott Joplin, original Beatles drummer Pete Best and Donald \u201cDuck\u201d Dunn, the bass player from, among others, Booker T and the MG\u2019s and the \u201cBlues Brothers\u201d band (you know, the guy with the perm and the pipe?), all of whom I\u2019m thankful for.<\/p>\n
Despite its religious origins, Thanksgiving has since grown into a secular federal holiday along the lines of New Year\u2019s, the Fourth of July or Super Bowl Sunday. <\/p>\n
The main event, so to speak, is a large festive meal generally centered on a turkey \u2014 what U.S. holiday would be complete without a steaming hunk of meat? <\/p>\n
Other Thanksgiving traditions include watching football, wishing there was something else on TV besides football (and I don\u2019t mean CNN), drinking enough beer to make hanging out with your septuagenarian parents bearable, waiting in airports, sitting in traffic, freebasing Pepsid AC and explaining to your kids that grandma and grandpa weren\u2019t nearly as forthcoming with the candy and money when you were their age.<\/p>\n
This brings me to my favorite Thanksgiving custom: going around the table and expressing gratitude. Since I probably wasn\u2019t at your Thanksgiving dinner \u2014 although I did just get a drone, so you never know, I could\u2019ve captured the whole thing on surveillance video \u2014 I\u2019ll close with my own brief list.<\/p>\n
This year, I am thankful for: reflective outerwear; breathable underwear; 50-50 bleach-water solution; pea gravel; big blue tarps; Mae Ploy Thai sweet chili sauce; Visqueen; automatic hard drive back-ups; \u201cPlanes, Trains and Automobiles,\u201d still the greatest Thanksgiving movie of all time; RainX; rock salt; the near-constant airing of \u201cStar Wars: the Force Awakens\u201d on late-night premium cable, thereby enabling me to finally see it, albeit in 20 individual non-sequential chunks; snow, of any accumulation; WD-40, duct tape and, while we\u2019re at it, Krazy Glue; pre-mature male pattern baldness, which, despite being a total bummer during my 20s, now spares me the rapid greying that suddenly seems to afflict all of my contemporaries; hoodies; Netflix, which, at $8.99 a month remains the cheapest babysitter around (not to mention the only one you can call at 6:30 a.m. Sunday; bungee cords; conscientious pedestrians; conscientious motorists; vitamin D, however I can get it; Brussels sprouts, for providing an alternative to kale; well-marked address numbers; carabiner clips; French drains; French Vanilla Coffeemate; my newfound habit of neatly re-coiling extension cords, hoses and ratchet straps after every use; and the failure of skinny jeans to replace Carhartts in Southeast Alaska … at least so far.<\/p>\n
Most of all, in 2016 I am thankful for humor, which, along with my redoubled commitment to setting a positive example for my kids, is not only how I\u2019ve managed to make it through the last two and a half weeks \u2014 it\u2019s how I intend to survive the next four years. <\/p>\n
Happy Thanksgiving, Juneau. May all your kitchen surfaces be free of salmonella. <\/p>\n
\u2022 Geoff Kirsch is a Juneau-based writer and humorist. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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