WITH ALL THE TRIMMINGS
A Thankgiving Essay
BY GARRISON KEILLOR
It is a wicked world in which the power of any individual to cause suffering is so great
and the power to do good is so slight; but here we are, the week of our beloved national feast,
our annual homecoming, and signs of loving Providence are everywhere around us.
I am thankful to be alive. In Minnesota the lakes are freezing over in late November,
and some men who envision a leadership role for themselves take their snowmobiles
out onto the thin ice and fall through and drown in the cold water--their last thought
in this life: "Boy, was this dumb or what?"--and so far I have not been one of them.
Caution was bred into me: I never played with guns or made a hobby of pharmaceuticals
or flung myself off a cliff while clinging to a kite. I read books instead. I read
books in which men hearken to wild imperatives, and that is enough for me.
I am thankful for living in a place where winter gets good and cold and you need to build
a fire in a stove and wrap a blanket around you. Cold draws people closer together.
Crime drops. Acts of kindness proliferate between strangers. I have been in
Los Angeles on a balmy day in January and seen the glum faces of people poking
at their salads in outdoor restaurants, brooding over their unproduced screenplays.
People in Minnesota are much cheerier, lurching across the ice, leaning into the
wind as sheets of snow swirl up in their faces. Because they feel needed and because
cold weather takes the place of personal guilt. Maybe you haven't been the shining star
you should have been, but now is not the time to worry about it.
I am thankful for E-mail, which allows us to keep in touch with our children,
and for the ubiquity of fresh coffee, the persistence of good newspapers, the bravery
of artists, the small talk of sales clerks, the general competence and good humor I
encounter every day. None of us is self-sufficient, despite what the Republicans claim.
Every good thing, every morsel of food comes directly from God,
who expects us to pay attention and be joyful, a large task for people from the Midwest,
where our idea of a compliment is, "It could have been worse."
I am thankful, of course, for Thanksgiving, a joyful and simple day that never suffered
commercial exploitation and so is the same day as when I was a boy and we played
touch football on the frozen turf and came to the table sweaty and in high spirits
and kept our eyes open for flying food. My sister had good moves; you'd look away
for an instant, and she'd flip her knife and park a pat of butter on your forehead.
Nobody throws food at our table now, but in the giddiness of the festive moment,
I have held a spoonful of cranberry for a moment and measured the distance to Uncle Earl,
his gleaming head, like El Capitan, bent over the plate.
As I grew up, Thanksgiving evolved perfectly. It used to be that men had the hard work,
which is to sit in the living room and make conversation about gas mileage and lower back pain,
and women got the good job, which is cooking. Women owned the franchise, and men
milled around the trough mooing, and if any man dared enter the kitchen, he was watched
closely lest he touch something and damage it permanently. But I bided my time, and the aunts
who ran the show grew old, and young, liberated lady relatives came along who were proud of
their inability to cook, and one year I revolted and took over the kitchen
--and now I am It. The Big Turkey. Mr. Masher. The Pie Man.
Thanksgiving dinner is as easy to make as it is to eat.
You're a right-handed batter in a park that's 150 feet down
the left-field line--it doesn't take a genius to poke it out.
Years of selective breeding have produced turkeys that are nothing but cooking pouches
with legs. You rub the bird's inside with lemon, stuff it with bread dressing seasoned with sage
and tarragon and jazzed up with chunks of sausage and nuts and wild rice, shove it in a
hot oven; meanwhile, you whomp up yams and spuds and bake your pies. The dirty little secret
of the dinner is melted animal fats: in all the recipes, somewhere it says,
"Melt a quarter-pound of butter."
Think of the fancy dishes you slaved over that became disasters, big dishes that were lost in
the late innings. Here's roast turkey, which tastes great, and all you do is baste. You melt butter,
you nip at the wine, and when the turkey is done, you seat everyone, carve the bird,
sing the doxology and pass the food.
The candles are lit in the winter dusk, and we look at one another, the old faces and some
new ones, and silently toast the Good Life, which is here before us.
Enjoy the animal fats and with no apologies. No need to defend our opinions or pretend to be
young and brilliant. We still have our faculties, and the food still tastes good to us.
Walt Whitman said, "I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by
God's name."
Thanksgiving is one of those signed letters. Anyone can open it and see what it says.
Copyright 1995 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
A Thanksgiving Fairy Tale Flash Movie with a great moral.
Give Thanks
A Christian Thankgiving Flash Movie
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Need essays that get away from the traditional rehash about holidays and the American condition, i.e., life.
