Thanksgiving BAH HUMBUG!

I am a holiday grinch. I admit it. I DO NOT love Thanksgiving, which is very much the antithesis of the holiday spirit, I know. But let me explain.

As a young child the holidays were reasonably fun. We traveled to see extended family, cousins, big meals with lots of people. So everything started out fine, but has gone downhill since then.

When I was 21 my parents decided to separate right before Thanksgiving. In fact I believe the way it played out was that I was off living with a boyfriend somewhere and called home to make plans to come for the holiday, and that is when they told me completely out of the blue that they were splitting up. Really parents? Your marriage has probably been circling the drain for several months if not years, and you choose THANKSGIVING to break this news?

That didn't ruin the holidays for me necessarily but it did seem to kick off the downward slide of Thanksgiving's and Christmas's places in my heart. After my parents' divorce but before I moved away, Thanksgiving became a sad sack of a holiday when I would spend part of with my dad and either his gathered family or my stepmom's, and the other part of it moping around a table with my mom and siblings, because that's all she ever wanted to do, which was terribly boring for us and only served to remind us all of the fracture of our family. If you could have been a fly on the wall during those dreary meals you would have seen five people eating plain potatoes in deadly silence. Good times.

There is one Thanksgiving that stands out as a highlight, when I was invited to some friends' house to have a non-family holiday. I begged off my family and traveled with a (different) boyfriend several hours to share an unconventional meal with friends, delicious non-traditional foods, an eclectic gathering of strangers, and plenty of wine. It was lovely. If I could do anything at Thanksgiving? It would be that. Every year. Not necessarily the same people, but friends, new friends, good food. Lovely.

But then I got married and moved. And now listen, I do love my husband's family and they are some of the sweetest and most generous people you could ever hope to meet. But their traditions are different than what I was used to. In my family, the host & hostess prepare the food, and the guests eat it, then help clean up. In Mr. I's family, it's all potluck for everything. I know I need to just suck it up and get over it, but every holiday I get irritated that I'm obligated to cook. And I actually like to cook, I just don't like being forced to cook on demand. I get my feminist hackles up about it and resent the men for not having to do anything and I get all bitchy and moany. I don't like being told what to bring the day before the event (without fail), I don't like destroying the kitchen to make my dish and having no time to clean it up because I'm trying to cut it as close to the gathering as possible which means I'm going to come home to a mess later, and I don't like bringing a cold, awful, limp and bedraggled dish to these gatherings. Everything about it is just BLEH. Unlike.

On top of that, I no longer eat turkey, which as far as I'm concerned was the only part of the traditional meal worth eating. I guess stuffing is usually good. But I am not a fan of all the casseroles, and sometimes ambrosia salad makes its dreadful appearance which I'm pretty sure is the traditional holiday dish of the Church of Satan.

And then, AND THEN, because I'm really this much of a scrooge, I also hate being thankful on command. OF COURSE I am thankful, I'm insanely lucky in life and I'm super happy, but being thankful because I'm supposed to on this magical day just turns me into a petulant child. I want to steal a piece of pie and go hide with a book in the back room. Which I imagine wouldn't go over that well.

So that's my Thanksgiving rant. I feel better now. Thanks for reading! Hehehe!!