Redartz: Well, it's Thanksgiving week here in the USofA, and it's a bit outside the usual (as everything seems to be this year). Preparations for the holiday season are underway, albeit with many adjustments for the ongoing pandemic. Anyway, it's got me thinking both backward and forward- about holiday preparations in the past, and what we're doing this year.
Thanksgiving in our family was pretty much like many other families' observances. We had relatives over , or piled into Dad's car and hit the road. We kids didn't have much to do other than to watch the parades on tv all morning, while the adults worked on dinner.
Dinner itself was traditional, Turkey, cranberry sauce, yams, green bean casserole and pumpkin pie. Of course this dinner was served on two tables, the 'Adult' table and the 'Kids' table. It was a source of personal accomplishment when I was finally able to sit at the table with the big folks...
Black Friday, was also part of the tradition at our house. Each year we got up super early, drove to the Mall (often a big one in another town; our local mall was pretty modest). Once there we joined the throngs in shopping, lugging bags, awaiting seating space in the food court, and trying to recall where we had parked. Again, being kids, we didn't have the headache of writing the checks; we just enjoyed all the hubbub (and the window shopping, and the decorations...}.
Long story short, Thanksgiving at our house was a grand entry into the Holiday Season, and basically lasted from Thursday through Sunday. The excitement generated carried us through until New Year's. But what about this year? Again, like many households, ours will be doing things differently. A much smaller dinner. No plans for Black Friday shopping, although I may do some online browsing. However, I do plan to start decorating over the weekend. At least that much tradition can be retained!
And now it's your turn. What memories do you have of Thanksgiving, and /or the Holiday Season in general (knowing that Thanksgiving is a US phenomenon, basically)? What traditions did your family have to prepare for the Season? And what are you doing this year? Personally, it's been quite a tough year, but despite that (or perhaps because of it) I'm rather looking forward to the holidays more than usual. Like they sang in "Mame", "we need a little Christmas, right this very minute...".
34 comments:
I love the idea of Thanksgiving and I'm hoping one day to taste some pumpkin pie. Although we don't have Thanksgiving in Britain we do now have Black Friday which doesn't make any sense without Thanksgiving Thursday before it. I don't know whose idea it was to introduce Black Friday here but it has become quite a big event over the last five or six years. However there's also talk of a backlash against the consumerism of Black Friday so we'll see...
We didn’t have relatives over for Thanksgiving, it was just Mom and Dad, my three brothers and me. Food-wise, we had the usual : Turkey, mashies, biscuits, home-made gravy (YUM), yams, canned cranberry sauce, green beans, pie for dessert. We DIDN’T do the Black Friday thing (Mom HATED crowds, tried to avoid them whenever possible).
KTLA Channel 5 started their TWILIGHT ZONE marathons in 1980, and watching TZ all day long became part of our annual Thanksgiving routine.
In years past, the missus and I have put up our Xmas decorations on Dec 1, but this year we’re planning to put em up the day after Thanksgiving. Like you, Red, we’re especially eager this year for some color and light to brighten things up a bit.
b.t.
We do have Thanksgiving in Canada, but ours is the second Monday in October, so it's over and done. We do tend to follow American tradition for the day as far as food (turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie) and entertainment (watching football on TV) goes. Of course the Canadian Football league is shut down this year because of COVID, so that particular tradition was a no-go this time around.
As for Christmas decorations, we usually waited until about two weeks before Christmas to put them up. When I was in secondary school (aged 11 upwards) there were exams during the first week to ten days of December so it didn't start to feel like Christmas until those exams were done.
By the way, Red, in the above photo are you the kid wearing glasses?
B.t.- Watching Rod Serling sounds like a great Thanksgiving activity! And I feel for your Mom. Crowds can be a hassle. How did she manage to avoid them during the holiday season?
Mike W- so to what extent do you have 'black Friday ' in Canada? As Colin noted, it generally arose as a follow up to the US Thanksgiving holiday. If memory serves, it basically was the best opportunity for many folks to do their holiday shopping with the day off from work.
Colin- if you had exams during the first couple weeks of December, how long was your Christmas break? Here in the states we had about 2 weeks off from school, and occasionally a few more days if snowy weather hit.
And you have a perceptive eye. Yes, I was the kid with the glasses. Actually, I still am the kid with glasses. Just a lot less hair now.
Red - our Turkey Day traditions mirrored yours. Perhaps the difference being as a kid we would ride the train to Chicago on Friday and check out the serous department stores like Macys. THere were the street windows with scenes from Nutcracker. There was the 6 story high xmas tree. They also had an entire floor dedicated to real toys (this is pre electronics)!
I tried to recreate this with my kids when they were like 8 and 10, about 15 years ago . So we took the train to Chicago, went to Macys... and... NO TOYS, lol. I asked where they were and they said, "Across the street in Toys R Us or Walmart."
One thing I'll always remember... hadn't seen an Avengers on the spinner since #91, that summer, due to poor distribution. Going through the Chicago Train Station the magazine stand had 97 on display. I froze in my tracks. Remember stopping and staring at it. I think my dad yanked me and said, "let's go!" lol.
ANd that's that...
Wow Charlie, thats what you call a loss of innocence - who would ever see their dad the same way again after being yanked away from Avengers #97?
Living in the Old World, your Thanksgiving is a mystery to me. Only last night I was watching the tv news when the reporter started going on about Donald Trump pardoning a turkey.
Which I assumed must be some sort of American euphemism, but no - he really did pardon a turkey. And I thought the Brits had cornered the market in strange arcane customs.
-sean
Sean - you have to imagine to a 10 year old #97 was a pretty dynamic cover and featured Marvel/Timely characters this boy had never yet seen! It was a loss of innocence or more like an enormous frustration! LOL.
Well besides pardoning the Turkey I think the other custom that most of us would now disavow is the whole "door busting" shtick on Friday after Thanksgiving.
Xmas has long been tagged with "commercialism." (Just look at the message in Charlie Brown's Xmas from 55 years ago.) But this door busting / black friday hype started in early 80s or so? I imagine a custom that may not last much longer with internet shopping.
But you do have a good question in there about "arcane customs." Not sure what else we have... Easter egg hunts on the white house lawn?
(FWIW folks in the know say the Presidents really enjoy the whole Turkey pardoning thing.)
Sean, re: Trump pardoning a turkey. There's so many jokes that can be spun out of that statement, but I'll refrain to keep this thread from becoming too political.
As for Black Friday, I get the impression we discussed this either here or at the BAB some years ago, but when I was still living in the US, until 1992, I don't remember it being the big deal it has become more recently - with people camping out in front of stores and shopping centers in the early morning hours, then rushing in like mad when the doors open and often getting into fistfights when grabbing stuff off of the shelves. Sure, people all went shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, but I just don't ever remember the near riots that seem to make the global news over, say, the past two decades.
Red, I can't speak for Colin but, in my part of England, we had two weeks off at Christmas; basically, the week before Christmas Day and the week after it, although I remember us getting three weeks off in 1979, to reduce the school's fuel usage.
As far as I can remember, our house used to put the decorations up at the start of December and take them down on Twelfth Night.
I think Colin's mentioned it in the past but, in the UK, it's become accepted wisdom that it's not Christmas until you've heard Slade's Merry Xmas Everybody being played.
Redartz: I live in a (very) small town, so Black Friday isn't really a thing here, but I think most stores in the cities have Black Friday sales just to keep up with the States, otherwise anyone close to the border would head down there to buy stuff cheap. (Although that's probably not an option this year.)
Red, like Steve my school had a Christmas holiday of about two weeks, usually from around December 22nd to January 7th or thereabouts. But in January 1982 there was an onslaught of terrible winter weather and my school didn't re-open until January 25th so the Christmas holiday lasted more than a month!
Steve, I don't think it was me who said that Christmas doesn't start until we've heard Slade (wasn't it you? I know somebody did). Anyway, I haven't actually listened to Slade (or Wizzard) yet so I must remedy that. But I have listened to Greg Lake's "I Believe In Father Christmas" which is probably my favourite Christmas song :)
On the subject of the President pardoning a turkey - I first heard about this curious custom a long time ago, back in the '80s I think when Reagan did it one year. Trump seems to be more interested in pardoning his crooked pals (oops, musn't be political).
And on the subject of Black Friday - I was in my local supermarket this morning and they were advertising their Black Friday "Event" which runs from November 24th to December 1st. How can it be Black Friday if it lasts for 8 days??
Colin - the naming of the Friday as Black Friday... it's OK. I mean it has this quasi-interesting concept behind it that that is the day retailers are finally in the "black" after 11 months of being in the "red" financially. And we get it, retailers live and die by their xmas sales.
However, it was this whole "door busting" "midnight madness" that started a few decades ago leading to chaos, shootings, fights, etc. that took it over the top into the "this is really shameful" category.
I will admit to buying a computer at 6:30 AM about 15 years ago. I was driving to work that Friday morning, saw a line at "Computer Store" and purely out of curiosity walked up since the line was like only 15 people. The manager said, "I have to give you a number for the door buster stuff since there are only 2 of each, what do you want?" I asked, "DO you have a computer" and they did! And it was actually what I was planning to get anyhow for the family in terms of "features." So... I did save a few hundred bucks.
But... I was standing next to a guy who'd been in the damn cold for like an hour already and he was there to save $1 / box on 5 boxes of rewritable DVDs.
But as I drove by the toy store... and the electronics store... the lines were hundreds and hundreds of people long. Literally like 50 -100 yards long of people waiting.
And Colin, this may interest you...
Yesterday in may area (day before thanksgiving) there was a traffic jam literally over 1 mile long of people queued up to get their pies from Bakers Square which they had pre-ordered and were picking up. The line flowed down main artery and was diverted by police in a huge parking lot where it snaked around. Folks were sounding off on the community app "Nextdoor.com" saying it was a good 2.5 hour wait to pick up their pie.
Ole Charlie makes his own organic pumpkin pies! And its 9:00 AM on this Turkey day and that's next on the agenda! The kids are dining with me today so... go to have that "homemade pumpkin pie!" (As the man sings about in the holiday song "There's no place like home for the holidays.")
Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays
'Cause no matter how far away you roam
When you pine for the sunshine of a friendly gaze
For the holidays you can't beat home sweet home!
I met a man who lives in Tennessee, and he was headin' for
Pennsylvania and some homemade pumpkin pie...
Charlie- Baker's Square! Oh man, every time we visit Chicago we try to stop in Merrilville at Baker's Square. Their pies are INCREDIBLE. Probably not as good as homemade organic, but awfully good...
As we speak, HBDaughter is up in the kitchen filming a Youtube video of her making a Vegan Pumpkin Custard Tart Pie (something like that. . . )
My own (our own) childhood Thanksgiving holidays had a rather disheartening dissolution over the course of, what, fifteen years, maybe? Several early years of enjoying the most comfortably cliched feasts at my Grandma's house in town (gathering with our fun-but-wild cousins; kids' table; assorted aged aunts/great aunts & uncles/great uncles-- several of them nuns & priests; an early home-movie nut uncle; delicious feast-- right out of a Hallmark special). But her health declined in the very early 70's, and she passed away shortly after, after having let go of the traditional family gatherings. My Mom seemed happy to make our own feast for our single family-- but my folks' marriage was starting to rapidly degrade and dissolve at about the same time- so there's not really a sense of family thankfulness and togetherness attached to those holidays. And then eventually-- after an extended and seriously acrimonious split-up, I don't recall there really being Thanksgivings, per se, anymore at all. IIRC, my freshman year of college was the only year I actually came home for the holiday-- preferring to remain at school as one of the "orphans" for that long weekend.
It wasn't until grad school that thanks to a dear, dear (and sadly departed) pal that I got pulled back into an annual found-family Thanksgiving gathering, which shortly was to include my for-sure girl-friend (now wife). These gatherings were astonishing banquets (almost of literary proportions, no kidding-- this pal went ALL-FLIPPIN'-OUT with his presentation and preparation. And once he passed away, we were able to transfer that sense of family and grateful togetherness back to our own household, which sometimes had a group of folks, sometimes just a guest or two (or we ourselves were guests), and sometimes was only our own core family of four. The feast was simpler, but the day was rooted in our own created traditions (local farm for our turkey; amish market for fancy sausages; watching the parade; watching football; maybe playing video games; fancy antique china and tableware-- and usually watching MIRACLE ON 34th STREET at the end of the day). The passage of time has since changed most of that as well, though-- HBDaughter being Vegan has taken turkey right out of the equation, which is a tough adjustment-- but we've managed it 'cause we love her. Recent years have seen both mental health and physical health crises occur RIGHT at the holiday, which has taken a toll-- this year being a double-one as I recoup from knee-replacement AND our son & his fiancee are wisely staying distanced at their own house thanks to Covid-19. Sooooo, it'll be a Vegan three-of-us. . . and yet. . . Son/Daught-in-law DID make safely-distanced back deck visit (w/ scones and cider) this morn for an hour or so, which itself elicits a reminder to be thankful. And there's bustling and cooking in the kitchen (regardless of cuisine), which is always a happy underscore. So even though it is a subdued and quieter holiday than we're accustomed to, that unmistakable sense of Family is still suffusing the atmosphere in our household. . .
HB
Red - I used to live about 15 minutes from that store, LOL, after we moved out of Gary, Indiana. Yep... Baker's Square has a legion of faithful! My fav was the banana cream pie!
But there are few left, I think they filed Ch 11. Literally, the wait was 2.5 hours in the car yesterday.
My daughter and I are roasting pumpkin seeds now before we make the pumpkin pie. The pumpkins were uncarved from Halloween and we just opened them up. If I'm ambitious I may cook them up in a few days! The organic pumpkin-pie pumpkin is out of the can, lol.
Red, and all you 1960s guys...
WGN is showing classic "Bozo" from the 1960s right now on Channel 9 WGN. I am watching over the aerial antennae but I assume this is the same programming being sent nation wide?
(Bozo was an extremely popular show out of Chicago that ran 12 - 1 PM every weekeday for decades and decades. I'm not sure how it was known nation wide, though.)
That Wizzard Christmas song is something else but to fully appreciate it, you have to see the video. Roy Wood looking like a creepy Derelict Clown in his smeary pancake makeup surrounded by toddlers who seem to be terrified of him — what genius thought this was a good idea?
b.t.
In my first comment I said that Black Friday had become a big event here but really I meant that I seem to hear a lot about it around this time of year - but that could be mainly due to the shops pushing it and I don't actually know how successful Black Friday is. But there are definitely no long lines of shoppers or door-busting where I live!
Charlie, your mention of that song got me thinking that there are lots of Christmas songs but no Thanksgiving songs...or are there? Admittedly Thanksgiving songs would be unknown here in the UK where there's no Thanksgiving.
HB, isn't it your 60th birthday sometime around now? Happy birthday whenever it is.
And I'll definitely watch HBGirl's vegan pumpkin custard tart video for no other reason than to find out what a vegan pumpkin custard tart actually is :D
MerryRose Howley - I haven't forgotten the name.
HI Colin,
There are no specific Thanksgiving songs I am aware of.
But "There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays" is not specific to Xmas and, as I think about, more likely a T-giving / Xmas song.
The "Holidays" referred to by us start at T-Giving and to New Year. Though, I guess, one could argue that Holidays refers to the Xmas-New Year or Xmas -Kwanzaa-Hanukah time?
Anyhow, the clincher, in my mind, that this song MUST include T-Giving is the dude is driving from Tennessee to Pennsylvania for some "pumpkin pie" and this pie is really specific to T-Giving. (see the verses above that I pasted in). I don't know that we have Pumpkin Pie at Xmas since Xmas here often features 10,000 xmas cookies and perhaps some ethnic things depending on your heritage.
In my case, being Hungarian descent and a French wife desserts are pretty tasty!
Colin J - IIRC I've seen footage of a bit of UK madness that happens when one/some of your big department stores have an annual sale? Not like here where gun play or fisticuffs (yes the occasional murder) may happen though?
Murder, Charlie? Wow. I suppose anything is possible when guns are so freely available as they are in America.
I heard on the radio this morning that France has Black Friday too and it seems to be a worldwide phenomenon now.
They even have it in France? Zut alors!
To be fair though, Vendredi Noir does sound more sophisticated, like the sort of shopping you'd do inbetween reading Sartre and listening to Serge Gainsbourg records...
-sean
Sean, you had me ROTF LMAOing...
Yep- Vendredi Noir invokes a midnight showing of "Touchez Pas Au Grisbi" LOL!
(Don't touch the haul / the loot!!!)
In my above comment I had intended to write Black Friday in French but I completely forgot the French word for Friday (shame on me considering I studied French in school till the age of 18)!
Well.... if you, Sean, et al. could explain why this Friday has any significance to you, I'd be curious!
Here, many folks have the day after Thanksgiving "off" and don't work and thus go shopping.
But this Friday is not a holiday / non-work day, so... why the heck promote an event when folks are working?
Oh the agony of figuring out these cross-atlantic cultural events!
Charlie, this Friday had no significance for us - Black Friday is just a shameless consumerist import.
Good grief... it sounds like us suddenly having a "Guy Fawkes" sale, lol. I mean... if you don't have Friday off, so more shoppers will be shopping, why have a sale / promotion. Why not just call it Black Saturday then.
Well... I'm not a retailer, lol. Go figure... AND MAKE MINE MARVEL!
Dunno about Black Saturday, Charlie. They say name recognition is useful in retail - maybe calling it Black Sabbath would be better?
-sean
Yeah, even here in Croatia retailers have been holding Black Friday (and Cyber Monday) sales for the past few years. It's completely ridiculous. Also, using the term 'black' in Croatian has even more negative connotations than in English, i.e., calling a day, week, month or year 'black' usually means something really bad or tragic happened. By now people are used to it, but when some retailers first started announcing 'black Friday' sales, a lot of people were scratching their heads, wondering if something bad would happen if they went shopping.
Otherwise, though, Vendredi Noir should definitely become a thing. It can be when Baron Samedi comes out to play...
ColinJ-- Yep, your memory is superior-! Birthday is. . . in a week? I have paid scant attention to it at all, I must confess. And I'll be spending a good chunk of it recording (at home) my track in a radio-adaptation of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE- by one of our larger area community theaters- which will be broadcast locally a couple of weeks later. And wow, yes!-- MerryRose Howley is indeed my talented daughter's name, well-remembered, that! Her Youtube channel is not really targeted at middle-aged guys like us at all. . . but I'm a HUGE fan of it, regardless. She's flippin' funny, and engaging, and has quite the flair for editing. In fact, if you guys want to catch the two of us in action, she did a lighter post a few months ago of me trimming some length off of her (extremely long) hair-- which starts in my comic book room, in fact. . .
Regarding decorating traditions-- our normal routine for years & years was for me and one or two available kids to go cut a fresh, oversized tree at an up-state tree farm. Being just over 2 weeks into knee-replacement recovery, that clearly was beyond me yesterday-- and I don't see it being a realistic option at all this year. This is sad, 'cause we've had a LONG streak of finding enormous pyramid shaped monster-trees that fill the end of our living room area. Roughly 10-1/2' tall by 8 or 9 feet diameter at the base. But the physical labor of finding one, cutting it down, dragging it 1/4 mile across the farm, and securing it to the top of the car--- THEN getting it into a reinforced base (modified it myself), and tortuously lugged through the garage, around the back, up the deck steps, through the kitchen, and into the living room (EVERY turn and corner a tight squeeze),-- and then lifted into place, balanced, and secured to two anchor points--- all BEFORE a single light, garland, or ornament can be thought off. . . welllllllll, this is the year where the prospect fills me with dread and trepidation, rather than joy and cheer. So-- we'll get a cut tree from our local family-owned farmer's market, and help keep those nice folks in business this time around. . .
HB
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