Today in Thanksgiving Day in the US, a holiday dedicated to reflecting on good things while eating way too much and watching football. It’s one of my absolute favorite holidays, because it really plays to my strengths.
It’s always kind of a tough one to talk about online, though. On the one side, there’s always a ton of angst from people who have strained relationships with their families, talking about how they dread the family dinner and workshopping zingers to really nail some obnoxious relative for their retrograde views. The Internet being what it is, some fraction of this is just performative bluster, but it’s hard to sort out, and as a result is hugely corrosive to my interest in starting to discuss Thanksgiving.
In the other direction, there’s a lot of cringily wholesome content: long lists of Reasons To Be Thankful in greeting-card level fulsome prose. The sentiments are unimpeachable, but a little of this sort of thing goes a loooong way.
As is often the case, I’m in the squishy middle zone between the big poles of Internet discourse. I actually like my family, and am sad that we’re not getting to spend time with more of them this Thanksgiving (my parents are visiting my sister in California this year, so our only guest for Thanksgiving is their yellow Lab, Argos, who is a sweet and goofy knucklehead, and he and Charlie are having a grand time wrestling with each other and collecting treats for being Very Good Boys). And writing-wise, I’m someone who struggles with sincerity, in both directions— I’m not wild about reading other people’s heartfelt reflections on gratitude, which feeds into my reluctance to generate my own such lists. Which pretty much leaves food and football…
Anyway, it’s going to be a fairly quiet Thanksgiving here at Chateau Steelypips, modulo the occasional outburst of barking at the local squirrels. We’ve got the traditional feast prepped (a bit more turkey and stuffing than absolutely necessary, to be honest…), and while the kids almost certainly won’t watch football with me, there will definitely be some TV watched. And also a bit of mostly private reflection on how fortunate we are to be in a position to celebrate as we do.
So, best wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving if you’re someone who celebrates it, or at least won’t take offense at being wished well for a holiday you don’t observe. Everybody else, have a lovely Thursday.
I’m not going to flatly declare that this is it for the week, because I might very well find something I just have to write about tomorrow or Saturday. Odds are good this will be it until the “This Week in Movie Nights” round-up Sunday, though. If you want to be the very first to know when I write again, here are some buttons:
and the comments will be open.