Thanksgiving Memories: The Good, the Bad, and the Tasty

If your family is anything like most middle class families, you annually gather with your family to spend your holidays gorging on incredibly delicious (but fattening) foods a loving relative spent hours preparing. Usually the delectable treats quickly disappear in a nearly infinite vacuum of distended stomachs and elastic pants, before the post-feast fun and family together-time begins. You enjoy some football, or a movie with the family, before heading to bed to get up and head out to Black Friday for the best supposed “Holiday” sales. In any case, it's probably a nice time of year.

Personally, I'm not usually a holiday person. Frankly I'm also not much of a shopper, either. Judging from these and many other factors, it probably seems like the whole Thanksgiving thing must be lost on me.

Luckily, it's not.

When I was growing up, every year my family headed to my grandparents' house to catch up with cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents for a few hours before eating the incredible foods my grandmother managed to cook in prodigious quantities. After eating our own body weights in stuffing, potatoes, and perfectly tender turkey we'd all slowly meander out of the dining room and sit down in the den, where the uncles watched football with Grandpa. My cousins, siblings, and I would run around in the back yard or pretend to know the rules to billiards as we shot pool in the basement. Family time would commence until it got late enough for everyone to either head to bed or drive home, depending on how far away each family unit lived.

Thanksgiving was a chance to say hello to family, eat wonderful food, and take a break from the impending Midwest winters. It was a chance to remember that you are connected to people all around the country. Thanksgiving gave my extended family a chance to get together for restful and loving family fun.

They all look so happy! (Yes, it's from television, because
it's hard to actually find happy thanksgiving pictures!)

Now, if I were to be totally honest, I'd admit that getting together for the holidays is also sometimes less than fun. I'd tell the story of when my brother and sister got stomach aches from the food one year and got sick in the car. Or I'd tell the story about the year I got sick within minutes of getting to my grandparents' house, and spent the rest of Thanksgiving in a bathroom. Hell, if I wanted to focus on the negative, I'd talk about how it's impossible to get the family together without someone saying something racist, sexist, or some other form of bigoted enough for the politically correct factions of the family to correct them until an argument breaks out.

In fact, if I'm being honest, it's easy to see why lots of BAD things are associated with holdays too. Suicide, depression, all the nasty junk that comes along with winter also happens to coincide with Holidays. It's easy to get cynical and pessimistic as the holidays approach. I mean, how many television shows have used the stereotypical “Families fight during the holidays” joke to fill an episode or two a year? Or how many procedural crime dramas have had someone die during the holiday rush, only to spend a full episode focusing on the dangers of “Black Friday” shopping?

Nothing says "Happy holidays" like getting trampled
to death buying a new video game console!

I choose to focus though, on the positive, and I hope you do too. As Thanksgiving approaches, focus on the time you get to spend with your parents. Focus on the time you get to spend with siblings. Focus on the feeling of thankfulness you have instead of the 50% off deals at the nearest outlet store in the morning. Instead of worrying that another helping of stuffing will be against your diet plans for the week, take a moment to look around at what you've accomplished in 2012, and what you hope to accomplish in 2013. Take a moment, this thanksgiving, to legitimately give thanks.

In that spirit, I'd like to close today's post with a list of the things I'm thankful for this past year.

My family (Minus my brother, he's taking the picture
....and might kill me if I put his picture on my blog)

MY LIST OF THANKFULNESS:

• I'm thankful for another year of graduate school finished. I'm 3 semesters in and hoping to finish in 2 more.
• I'm thankful for my siblings, both my dour and sometimes gruff Army Ranger brother (he means well!) to my bubbly and energetic musician of a sister (who to this day calls me by a silly but endearing childhood nickname).
• I'm thankful for my parents, and the help they offer their friends and family in terms of every kind of support they offer us. They're truly wonderful parents, and I'm fortunate to have them.
• I'm thankful for the experiences I've had in Alaska: Life is tough in the frozen north, but it's also something of a gift. Nowhere else I've lived has offered me so many unique opportunities, from skiing to fleeing from a rutting moose.
• I'm thankful for my readers, you guys have been great. I only started this blog back in late winter and early spring, and we're up to over a thousand views each month! You guys are wonderful, and I appreciate you a great deal. 
• And a WHOLE LOT more!

Enjoy the holiday, and check back for more BB+B goodness soon!
Thanks,
Brian, the Author Guy.

Check out other fun stories from BB+B, such as "Shut Your Trap and Sing!" and "Beards are Beautiful."