Dude, Where’s My Turkey?

This is, to date, the most controversial and divisive topic I have ever posted about. It will polarize all of you. You WILL pick a side. I will get hate mail.

Ready?

Here it is.

I don’t like celebrating Christmas early.

There. I said it.

I know this is a non-topic for those of you who are non-Christians because you get inundated with a holiday you don’t celebrate every year. Just bear with me while I rage a little.

Here’s the deal. I don’t understand this deep-seated need some people have to jump the gun on holidays. There are twelve months in a year. Almost every month has its own fun “thing” or holiday to celebrate. Hell, open up Facebook and you’ll find out they’ve invented a celebration for every damned day of the year.

International Toad Day. Take your brother’s girlfriend’s cousin’s child to work day. Take a long drive off a short cliff day.

You get the picture.

My point is, there are plenty of things and holidays to celebrate throughout the year, so there’s really no need to Deck The Halls for four months straight.

I know. I’m a kill-joy and I’m ruining your Christmas joy.

Hear me out. Around our house, Halloween is a big deal, but we don’t start decorating in July. We have a friend who starts in late August but she gets a pass because she’s the one who throws the Halloween Hangover Bash we go to annually and she literally transforms her house into a Halloween wonderland, so something like that takes time. The rest of y’all don’t need to start until late September/early October, capisce?

It’s bad enough that when I’m all set for pumpkins and ghouls and skulls and dark, scary things, the stores are already stocking wrapping paper and ornaments and snowmen.

Fucking SNOWMEN.

IN FUCKING OCTOBER.

IN OKLAHOMA.

It doesn’t even snow here until actual winter.

But, as Shane is my witness, I almost wrecked my car driving through the neighborhood behind us because somebody had their Christmas lights up on their house and turned on before Trick or Treating had even commenced.

I lost my fucking mind, and taught my teenager some words he hadn’t yet heard. That’s really saying something, considering he has me for a mother.

Don’t even get me started on how we just seem to skip right over Thanksgiving.

Never mind. I’m already started.

For my readers who are not in the U.S., Thanksgiving is a day that was set aside years ago and declared a National Holiday in 1863. Traditionally, it has been a day to celebrate the first Pilgrims who moved here from England, who somehow managed to survive a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean and then that first year in a harsh, unfamiliar land. The stories we were told as children were that the Natives cooperated and helped the Pilgrims, thus allowing them to survive.

And we repaid them by stealing their land and giving them small pox.

That last part wasn’t actually taught in school. My education was seriously white-washed. But that’s another controversial topic that I won’t be tackling on this blog. Enjoy this joke instead.

Anyway…when I was growing up, we still took just one holiday at a time.

When October rolled around, we knew our Math problems were going to involve how many pumpkins there were in the pumpkin patch and we would get to have a party with cupcakes and treats.

When November rolled around, we knew we were going to do book reports about Native Americans and Pilgrims, and we would get to have a party with cupcakes and treats.

When December rolled around, we knew there would be a Christmas play about Santa Claus and reindeer and a party with cupcakes and treats.

Come to think of it, we ate a lot of cupcakes and treats in school. No wonder I became a fatass as an adult.

Every month had its holiday, and we took them one month at a time.

Nowadays, they sneak the Thanksgiving/Harvest décor in with the Halloween stuff. I mean, these are two totally different holidays. Yeah, yeah…pumpkins are kind of a crossover between the two holidays, but there’s nothing else remotely similar about them.

Yet, by the time you put away the last of your scary décor and eat the last Reese’s Peanut Butter cup out of your kid’s trick or treat bucket, instead of being faced with Turkeys and Fake Fall Foliage in the stores, you’re being slapped with red and green lights, candy canes, and that creepy little bastard, Elf on a Shelf.

Here’s the thing. We have literally turned a holiday designed to make us stop and ponder our gratitude about everything we are blessed with into a weekend of crazed, greedy materialistic commercialism.

I can remember as a child that you better not forget anything you needed for your Thanksgiving meal because on the day of, EVERYTHING was closed. No grocery stores. No malls. Not even some gas stations.

The notion of Black Friday started some time in my pre-pubescent years. People got up at a NORMAL time on Friday morning and made their way to the shops to take advantage of sales at stores that opened at their regular time. This eventually evolved into stores opening their doors for the “early birds” at 7, 6 or even 5 a.m.

Then came the insanity. Stores opening at midnight and people camping out in line for a great deal on a T.V. or the latest toy or gadget.

And then the fuckers just lost their minds and stores didn’t even close on Thanksgiving at all. They started running their deals and sales ON THANKSFUCKINGIVING.

Gone were the days when retail workers could have a day with their families.

I mean, fuck that shit. WE NEED THE LATEST DAMNED IPAD RIGHT NOW AND WE NEED IT 30% OFF!

When I was growing up, Thanksgiving was truly a family holiday. There were no gifts that had to be purchased, wrapped and exchanged. There was just food to be cooked and devoured.

We spent nearly every Thanksgiving with my mother’s family. Her parents, sister, and her sister’s kids. Mom and Dad got up at O Dark Thirty to prep the Turkey and get it into the roaster. Then at an ungodly hour, they piled my brother and me sleepily into the car to make the twenty minute drive to my aunt’s house, where my grandfather and cousins were stationed in front of the T.V., watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and eagerly awaiting the start of the day’s football games.

My Mom and Aunt and Grandmother would busy themselves with finishing the turkey and making dressing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, and cranberry sauce. My aunt would’ve already spent the day before baking homemade rolls, and pies – pecan, pumpkin, and mince meat.

We would all gather hungrily around the table and eat and…get this…talk.

Yes, we actually talked to each other, about everything. There weren’t phones, except for the one hanging on the wall, and though my grandfather enjoyed his football games as much as the next person, the T.V. was NEVER on during a meal while he was still alive.

After the food was eaten and put away and the kitchen was cleaned, my mother and aunt and all the cousins would go outside to “walk off the food”. Again, it was more of just spending time together, watching ducks swimming on the little nearby pond, admiring people’s well-manicured lawns, and pondering what they were building on the vacant piece of desert they had just cleared.

When we came home from our walk, we’d sit out on the patio if it was nice, or gather in the living room and “visit”. After a few hours, somebody would suggest leftovers and all the food came back out again, and there was more talking and more eating.

And at the end of the day, we would head out to the driveway to get in the car and take another hour to say goodbye as we talked and hugged and my grandmother handed us all her “Tupperware” (empty cool whip and margarine containers) full of leftover goodies to enjoy the next day.

That was Thanksgiving. It revolved around food and family.

Now it seem like a lot of people’s Thanksgivings revolve around scouring the newspaper ads, plotting which stores to go to, and lining up for the next best deal.

Not at my house.

I’ll be the first one to tell you that I compete with myself to see how early I can get my Christmas shopping done each year. It’s a game I play with myself.

But  you won’t see a single jingle bell at my house until sometime between Thanksgiving Day and December 1st. And you sure as shit won’t see me camping out at Best Buy or the Apple Store or Walfart.

The day before Thanksgiving, I’ll be baking Pecan and Pumpkin and Apple pies. I’ll get up at the ass-crack of dawn on the day of to make my mother’s dressing and wish my grandmother was there to be my “taster” and let me know if I need more sage. I’ll be setting the table with my grandmother’s china and my mother’s stemware and the table will be gorgeous and formal even though our attire will likely be stretchy pants and uber-casual.

And then maybe, just maybe, the day after Thanksgiving, I’ll get up and start pulling out the Christmas tree (ours is fake) and the decorations. Or maybe I won’t do that until the next weekend. But rest assured, it won’t happen until  Thanksgiving is over and on the books.

One holiday at a time, peeps. That’s how I roll.

Stay weird, my friends. Normal is boring.