Hello, my darling readers! Gideon U. Eklund here with a Thanksgiving Day themed blog post for you all to consume. (Don’t worry- the best part is that it will still leave you with plenty of room for all the food you plan on eating today!) I’ve been sitting on my epic throne up here on the ol’ Golden Pedestal, thinking about Thanksgiving. Not in a particularly sentimental, fond, malicious, or mean-spirited way, but in the way in which I think about it every year; with a sort of tight-chested reluctance. (A spiritual dragging of feet, if you will.)
Author’s Note: My epic throne is pretty comfortable. Red padded seats, and real gold trim. It’s fancy. I’d invite you to see it sometime, but nobody is allowed to look directly upon it, for their own safety. It’s just too magnificent for mortal eyes. Just believe it exists, okay?
Every year, around the final Thursday of November (for some fucking reason, instead of just picking a date,) we celebrate a holiday wistfully referred to as “Thanksgiving.” For those of you living in parts of the world where this is not a thing, Allow me to explain two very important things:
- Every year we get together with our friends, loved ones, and obligatory associations, to eat a huge meal, traditionally involving a bird too big for everyone to finish. Some folks talk about what they’re thankful for, some folks watch sports and televised parades, and at some point, someone has an argument with someone else over something stupid.
- If you’re not in the United States, then my blog has officially gone international, which we all knew it would someday. So, maybe throw a little congratulations my way, huh? (Hello, other countries!)
This holiday is a very beloved tradition for most people; yet I am burdened with the fact that I have the very, very unpopular opinion that Thanksgiving sucks.
Yeah. I said it, and I’ll say it again: I think Thanksgiving sucks.
Now, that’s just my opinion of Thanksgiving. To many, many people, this is a day of joyous celebration; a time to get together with loved ones, catch up with people they haven’t seen in a long while, and see everyone they feel are valued, important presences in their lives. They can reminisce about days gone by, and share new life developments. They can even argue the age-old debate of “Canned Cranberries vs. Fresh Cranberries,” until they are blue in the face.
But for the most important person in my life—me—this day has nothing to look forward to; and I’m fantastic enough to admit that it is mostly because of my own personal hang-ups.
First and foremost, there’s the elephant in the room. I don’t generally focus on atrocities I wasn’t alive for hundreds of years ago and cannot change; but I would be remiss if I didn’t comment on the fact that, here in America, the holiday is fraught with the constant, underlying reminder that we conquered an entire indigenous people, and we’re not giving that land back anytime soon. You were conquered, Native Americans— you’ve been treated unforgivably, your people were raped, betrayed and murdered, and now there’s a whole nation built on your graves which is so powerful, it’s going to be nearly impossible to topple. Oh… but there’s turkey, and we should all be thankful. Dig in, white folks.
Moving from the political, (which is yet another Thanksgiving tradition every year: ‘blowing off the plight of the indigenous people,’) I’ll remind you that most of my dislike for this day is personal. See, when I was a kid, I was a particularly picky eater. While I’ve gotten better about it over the course of my life, I’m still a bit particular, and I still have issues with textures. I’ve never liked Thanksgiving food; I find it to be a shit-ton of work for a bunch of unappetizing dishes that everyone freaks out over every year. It’s a series of nightmare foods, and people lose their shit over it, even though they could eat it whenever they want. People act like this holiday is somehow the holy grail of food. “Mashed potatoes! WITH GARLIC?! Holy shit! We couldn’t possibly get that any other fucking day of the year! Praise Thanksgiving, everyone! PRAISE IT!”
Author’s Note: People literally argue over the merits of various versions of pumpkin pie; and pumpkin pie is gross. I cannot wrap my head around this. It’s insanity.
People take their food very personally. You can’t go to someone’s Thanksgiving, pass on a dish, and not offend somebody. Even worse is when you do eat someone’s food, and find out it’s not very good. It’s frowned on to say, “Oh, I know you spent hours preparing this stuff, but I’m just not feeling it. Anyone have a napkin I can spit this into? Seriously.” So there’s a layer of guilt-slash-pressure on top of that.
Then, there’s a the weird stigma I face for not liking gross-ass Thanksgiving food. When you say “I don’t like Thanksgiving food,” you get treated as if you’ve just declared your own insanity, you don’t believe the Holocaust actually happened, the moon landing was fake, and The Postman was “a pretty damn good movie.”
As people who generally don’t use the phrase “I don’t really like Thanksgiving food,” allow me to enlighten you about that side of the argument, because you may be unaware of the deeply stupid phrases you hear back. Usually it’s one of the following three:
“What? You don’t like any Thanksgiving food? ANY? There must be something you like.” No, actually. There doesn’t have to be anything I like. Why do people say this? Thanksgiving food is not automatically good.
“Oh, you’ll like this Thanksgiving food. I make it differently.“ Really? What are you basing that on? If you mix the same ingredients together into the same shitty food, it rarely matters what random, slight changes you make to the recipe. Nobody’s ever revolutionized cranberry sauce by adding nutmeg, okay? Your shitty food isn’t special.
“Have you tried any of it? You’d probably like it if you just tried it.” Yes. I’ve fucking tried it. It’s how I learn that I like or dislike food— by actually putting it in my mouth, and eating it. I’ve tried it. It’s gross. It’s nightmare food.
So, to avoid this line of stupid interrogation, I have to go to people’s Thanksgiving dinners, put this hard-worked meal of detestable food in my mouth, pretend to like it so that I don’t hurt someone’s feelings, and then act like I’m actually fucking grateful for the opportunity.
Then there’s the quantity of the food you make. So much of it is made, that it lasts for days or even weeks afterward. You make a mountain of food, you overstuff everyone who comes to eat it. Then, you send a bunch of it home with people. What the hell. Just make normal portions, people. It’s crazy wasteful; especially since you get so many of your leftovers thrown out over time.
On top of that, there’s the forced thankfulness. I can’t recall the last time I was at a full-blown Thanksgiving where some asshole didn’t declare, “Let’s all go around and say what we’re all thankful for!”
Author’s Note: Everyone fucking hates that suggestion.
So then they go all the way around the table and everyone throws out some bullshit answer. They say things like, “having such a great family!” or, “I’m thankful to have such a good life!” Hell, if someone in the family recently got out of the hospital, it’s a slam-dunk that someone is going to use that as their thankful thing. It’s bullshit, but it’s easy to get out there, and you look like you give a shit. You know what my actual answer is? The one I keep to myself?
“Nothing. Not a goddamned thing. Life is what you make of it, and I’m not thanking someone for the day-to-day shit that I have every fucking year, day in and day out. It’s pointless. I’m not ungrateful for these things, but I’m not going to act like today is any more special than any other day when I’m already grateful for what I’ve got.”
On top of faking my way through—and choking down—an oversized meal I don’t want, and pretending to be thankful for shit, there’s the other factor: Getting together with the people we’ve generally avoided most of the year. People dodge relatives all year ’round, and then act like it’s a wondrous occasion when everyone is driven back together again.
Now, lots of people get together with their families, and it’s a fun occasion. But, dear readers, not all families are the same. While I do love my family, sarcasm and mockery are the order of the day. Growing up with the brothers and sisters I had, you had to be quick with your tongue; able to verbally spar like Errol Flynn with a fencing foil. If you couldn’t keep up, it was like blood in the water, and you were going to be eaten alive.
While it was usually funny and entertaining, it was also a ruthless way to grow up. People tell me that I’m fairly quick-witted when I throw out a joke, but they don’t understand that this was a survival skill I’ve cultivated over a lifetime of trading jabs with my relatives.
That being said, I am now about to go into a weird side tangent about pants.
When I was a kid, (I think around ten or eleven, so 1987-ish,) I had a pair of ugly, plaid-printed bell-bottomed disco pants. They were white and green hand-me-downs and they were utterly hideous. I’m not making that up; I wore them a handful of times in less than a single school year, and quickly outgrew them. It was a tiny blip in my life that I almost never, ever think about. I’m not embarrassed by it, and it was—despite my brother’s memory to the contrary—a very brief handful of incidents which I barely remember.
Why is this pants story relevant? Because one of my brothers said they reminded him of Rick Moranis’ character, Louis Tully, from Ghostbusters. The pants were quickly dubbed my “Gozer Pants.” It gets brought up every time I spend more than five minutes with my brothers. (My sisters are less likely to bring it up, since most of them weren’t alive or very cognizant at the time, but they do still bring it up on occasion.) While the joke itself doesn’t bother me, I have two problems with this:
- Louis Tully was not Gozer. He was possessed by Vinz Clortho. The joke is both lazy and factually incorrect from its inception.
- At no point do I recall Louis Tully wearing pants like that. He may have, but honestly I don’t care enough to go back and re-watch the film to find out.
So, not only is it tired, it’s not even a good joke. Yet, every time I get together with my relatives, this same, tired, 32-year old joke that should be long forgotten gets brought up. At some point, my brother is guaranteed to throw out the term “Gozer Pants.” Every. Single. Time. I want you to think about that, knowing that it’s not an exaggeration—it happens each and every time our family gets together. It’s not some joyous tradition or anything; he just doesn’t have any better material than that.
Our individual families all live in different states now, which means we don’t get together nearly as often. But, for my father’s recent birthday, we all agreed to have a group video chat, so he could spend time with us. That video chat was less than an hour, and like clockwork, my brother managed to bring up the pants. The conversation wasn’t even headed that way, but he made sure to cram it in, like an engineer who realized he had leftover parts from a project, and didn’t want to look like he’d forgotten something important.
I’ve spent most of my life blowing it off as an unoriginal, unfunny running gag—which only he laughs at—but I’m going to be honest; while the joke itself doesn’t bother me, it gets old. I almost logged out of the chat and left it at that; walking away from someone flicking my ear to get attention. He thinks it’s funny, so I let him have his really worn-out “joke.” However, shit like this is what makes me “thankful” about the fact that our families get together less and less. I speak with my relatives with such infrequency that I have to be reminded of what some of my nieces and nephew’s names are. Some of them have never even met me in person, and that’s not through any malicious action or avoidance on my part, it’s just how our lives have worked out.
Author’s Note: See? It’s the magic of Thanksgiving all over again.
After all is said and done, everyone packs up and heads out for the Black Friday sales, and gouge each other’s eyes out and elbow each other in the face so they can buy more of the stupid shit they just spent the whole day claiming to be thankful for.
So, from the standpoint of an amazing, handsome, High-Brow Book Scientist, (patent pending,) Thanksgiving is like a goddamned minefield. Every year, since I was a child, this has been my burden. I’m almost literally being held hostage by someone’s unappealing meal, and their personal feelings—two things I’m inherently not good with. I have to sit there and pretend to like food I hate, to spare the feelings of others, which by my narcissistic nature, I typically don’t think or care about. It’s double my usual work. But hey; at least I get to endure the same handful of jokes at my expense the entire time, and it’s immediately followed the next day by violent hypocrisy.
…And people genuinely wonder why I hate this holiday.
To those of you who love this holiday, I am genuinely happy for you. Enjoy your hard-worked meal, meet with your beloved relatives, and enjoy your holiday. I’m sure you have good, loving times, and I wish you all the best. In the meantime, I’m going to go eat some chocolate pie, and wait for it to fucking end.
See? Thanksgiving is a waking nightmare, but at least sometimes, there’s chocolate pie. So, I guess there’s something to be thankful for after all.
I’m sure you’re all thankful that this post is over, but come back next time!
I’d be thankful for that.