Holiday Update

At one point, I totally had a topic in mind to write about today. I've now forgotten the one, and the other just might take more time than I feel like devoting to a post right now.

I spent my Thanksgiving sleeping in, lounging around the house, and then finally went to a German restaurant for Schweinebraten and Knodel. It's kind of a German version of pork roast with potato balls. One of my friends went skiing, and a few weeks ago, someone had mentioned their Thanksgiving dinner to me, but I ended up deciding against it - if I'm going to eat turkey, I want my mom's, dammit. With her gravy and mashed potatoes. I'm not much of a turkey person, anyway.

Who knows - maybe next year, I'll boycott the holiday for the right reasons.

Really, though, Thanksgiving has never been a big deal to me. Ironically enough, I think my favorite Thanksgiving dinners took place in Germany. My mom would invite her parents and brother, once or twice I invited a kid from school (it's not like their families were celebrating Thanksgiving), and we'd eat once I got home from school. Plus, the food was just better. In addition to the usual turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, cranberries that only my mother ate, and stuffing, we also had Knodel. I love potatoes so any meal that involves two varieties of them is a plus. After moving back to America, the Knodel fell off the menu.

Additionally, once we got back to the States, my mom tried having the family over once (way too much work that no one appreciated), we went to my grandmother's once (the turkey was pink), and then we gave up: Thanksgiving became just my parents and me, basically just like any other meal except with turkey (and my mom has on occasion made those randomly during the year). Since my K-7 education was all in German schools, Thanksgiving has never been about pilgrims "peacefully" coexisting with Native Americans, it's always just been some meal with lots of food and turkey. And really, we could do that any time of the year. In fact, wouldn't it make sense to have the holiday earlier instead of having all the family holidays overlap within in a month? It seems like every other country I know has their Thanksgiving, Erntedankfest (Harvest Gratefulness Feast), whatever in October so being the non-country person that I am, I'm assuming that's when the harvest generally comes in?

I started writing my Christmas cards today, and I gotta say, I think I was still hyped up on the election results when I bought them - I usually go for the most generic wording along the lines of "Happy Holidays," because I don't want anything that even suggests religion; this year I have cards that talk about hope being born. Maybe I should have sent those out in the beginning of the month.