All of my American readers will be frightfully busy. Kitchens will already be groaning with fresh food, the clank of saucepans being heaved up out of the pot cupboard that can never stay straight. ( Just shut the doors fast with your foot.) They will be sorting the ingredients for Gramma Emma’s special recipe for beans that must be replicated at all costs or worrying that Cousin Bob will cry into his four fat chins if they swap out the mashed something for mashed something else. And who would do that to Cousin Bob.
This is what I love about Thanksgiving. It is about people. And about People and their Food. (And, at the table of The Matriarch, a glass of lovely chilled white pinot gris.)
There are no painstakingly wrapped presents, no shopping campaigns to find something for someone who has every something you can imagine, no gaudy blowups deflating slowly outside the door, or lights flashing or not, no dressing up or guilty spending, or pressure to buy or terror of competition. Thanksgiving is not a Main street day. It is not a High Street day or a Mall day. It is a Kitchen day. It is a Dining Room day. Our Dining Room.
It is largely ignored by the money hungry Big Box Stores (who try to cash in with Black Friday .. we are having a Green Friday). In fact most of the stores already have Christmas Carols shrieking like reluctant bullies in the background. Halloween stuffed back in the store rooms with undue haste and Christmas lights blaring out into the night.
But Thanksgiving sits proudly and quietly stuffing its face, in its own house. Ignoring the ignorance of the ignorant and loving them for it too and knowing that this day is just food and family and friends. It is not tinny or commercial. We LIKE that the stores skip straight over Thanksgiving from Halloween to Christmas. Because Thanksgiving does not belong to big business, it belongs to us. You don’t have to be rich to have a lovely lovely day of Thanks. You don’t even need a big family or lots of friends. There is always something to be thankful for. Always. Even in the darkest of our dark times (and everyone has them, I could tell you stories that would take the curl straight out of your hair). There is always a lovely little glowing space for thanks, a wee shiny rock of thankfulness sat out there on a tiny sheltered shelf waiting to be seen, collected and stored in our pockets, where we can hold it in our hands like knowledge. And keep it.
Whether your gathering is large and rowdy with a Big Fat Turkey and marshmallow stuffing followed by flaming pink desserts, or a small juicy duck cooked with orange and pine nuts accompanied by roast potatoes crisped in the duck fat and a fresh spinach and lettuce salad, (that I will very thankfully gather from the garden.) Whether it is colorful and pretty or plain and tasty. Maybe just ordinary and not even particularly bright. 
It is still our Day of Giving Thanks.
Thanksgiving.
Thank you.
c
The Kitchen's Garden 
86 responses to “Day for Giving Thanks is Tomorrow”
Lovely!
Have a great day tomorrow Phyllis.. c
Beautifully put – even though we don´t celebrate it here, we will quietly give thanks for all that we have and remember those that don´t have so much to be grateful for. Bless you, have a wonderful day.
Thanksgiving is new to me too Tanya. And thank you for being such a bright star in my internet sky.. c
Happy thanksgiving from up here in Canada 🙂
Thank you Andy, you have a great day too!! c
And Thank You Cecilia. I feel exactly the same way about thanksgiving even though ours was last month, here in Canada I will be thinking about all my American friends with thankfullness!
I did not realise that Canada had a thanksgiving, brilliant. I should have know that too.. Lovely to hear from you Chris, have a lovely day.. c
“In fact most of the stores already have Christmas Carols shrieking like reluctant bullies in the background.” Really super sentence and I intend to steal it from you. I will make one change and make my bullies restrained instead of reluctant. I have never met a reluctant bully.
I’m also stealing this one: “Halloween stuffed back in the store rooms with undue haste and Christmas lights blaring out into the night.” I will change blaring to glaring, though, and undue haste to much-to-do haste.
I will claim these sentences as mine and we receive much deserved compliments on them, but in my heart, I will be thanking you.
D.
Don’t you stand for even the tinkered-with plagiarism, Celia. Though I did hanker after “ignoring the ignorance of the ignorant.”
An excellent post for which to be thankful (NB over-careful grammar)
Thank you ViV, I do appreciate the support! Lets zoom over to his site and start nicking stuff!! and I always trip over thankful FOR.. Have a great day..
c
You are a very cheeky fella Mr Harper, christmas lights BLARE, their lights are Noisy with Glare.. ha ha ha and bullies are often reluctant because deep down they are mean scaredy cats, BUT I kind of like much-to-do haste. I am going to steal that BACK! I love a good debate! thank you.. c
A happy, thankful day to you and all of yours, my friend.
Is that frost on the fields this morning? Or the other white stuff?
No just frost, mercy, I am not ready for the other stuff yet!! c
So well put, Celie, and certainly no need for me to elaborate any further, other than to say I hope you and Your John have a wonderful Thanksgiving with the Family. You are certainly one of the reasons I’ve found blogging to be so enjoyable and for that I am thankful.
Love love.. have a great day tomorrow! Our thanksgiving luncheon will be at the Matriarchs table and we will be making a very laid back party of THREE! So more duck for ME! That rhymes! weird.. c
The face stuffing holiday, how right you are. I mean yes there’s the people, gratitude and all, but I do love your phrasing. Have a great holiday!
You too Greg, and tell Kathryn Happy Thanksgiving from us too!
c
Nice, every day would be Thanksgiving!
Absolutely Joy.. c
So beautiful. Happy American Thanksgiving to you and your lovely family, C!
Thank you Desi! c
My kids complain about how the big box stores skip Thanksgiving and go straight to Christmas. They think they should wait until after it’s over. I like your perspective though – if the big boxes didn’t skip it, they would claim it. I like it much better this way, and will share your thought with them.
Oh yeah, we do NOT want it to become commercial, it would be so sad! c
Beautiful images. Beautiful words. And exactly the right perspective for a day that should be all about family and food and thanks.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Have a lovely day Audrey! c
Have a blessed day, c! And here I give thanks for you and your wonderful outlook that you share with us. 🙂
You are awesome ted, have fun tomorrow.. c
Just love this post Cecilia! I’m thankful for this one holiday that ‘Big Box Stores’ don’t own!!! And I must reiterate what ChgoJohn says, that I’m thankful for your posts!!! XO
You are all in on it you know, this blog happens because you all read it!! love c
Not a holiday here, as you know, but I’ll be thinking of you all and wishing you a blessed, joyous day! Happy Thanksgiving! 🙂
thank you Celia, I am so lucky to have you dropping in so often, you are a star.. I am thinking seriously of doing the IMG next month, it has been a while!! c