Thanksgiving—a time of thanks giving and truth telling.
The truth about our nation…it is a country rooted in every other country in the world. And the reason we have Thanksgiving is to be thankful that human beings, under challenging circumstances, in little wooden boats with sails and little ability to keep food edible over long ocean journeys, could move themselves across great ocean distances, encounter the hardships of strange lands, strange weather, different flora and fauna, could survive, and eventually thrive. It is a time to be thankful for the survival of all who came to this land and made it what it is – for us – the positive and the negative.
We all know the story and we are not going to emphasis the horrid treatment of our indigenous peoples; but we cannot have Thanksgiving without lifting up their lives and the lessons they tried to teach us.
My friends who grew up in other nations or whose roots are in other nations around the world celebrate Thanksgiving. It is not a European American tradition so much as it is an United States tradition. It does not matter where a person grew up; if they are living in the United States today, then one is comfortable celebrating this unique Thanksgiving holiday. In fact, my friends tell me, that it is the one holiday everybody they know celebrates—regardless of their religion. Manish, you know our friend from Nepal who recently moved to Albany. He called me Thursday to wish me--and you, too--Happy Thanksgiving!
Now, let us get to the food! I’ll share with you my informal research, based on life experience, living in different parts of the country, sharing Thanksgiving with others who grew up in a different regions of the country or who have experienced Thanksgiving themselves with people from various parts of the country and of course real “research!”
There is always turkey—unless someone says, “We have turkey every year, let’s do something different this year,” and they have—depending on where they are—a ham or roasted duck, or a pork roast, or quail, or maybe even something more exotic—but then the next year they serve turkey again until someone says, again, “Let’s do something different this year.” In some families there is always turkey and something else, like a ham, or lamb, or pork roast.
Have your ever had a turduckey? It is a turkey stuffed with a duck. In some parts of the country you can get a turkey stuffed with a duck which has been stuffed with a chicken—and then it is called a turduckin.
There is always gravy, giblet gravy or turkey gravy, of course.
And, always stuffing and/or dressing.
White bread dressing in most northern, northeastern, eastern, and Midwest families
Cornbread dressing in the south east, south, and southwest
Unless of course, you’re from Tennessee or Missouri, and then it is divided, I hear. Northern Tennessee and northern Missouri you’ll get bread stuffing, southern you might get cornbread dressing. That’s only rumor, I heard it said, but we do have witnesses here, perhaps they’ll share the truth with us.
Since Arizona, New Mexico, California, and those “western states” have all been settled by people from all the aforementioned areas, then the stuffing or dressing is usually whatever it was “before the family migrated west.”
In Louisiana there is a rice dressing. Not dirty rice, that is made different, the rice and ingredients are all cooked together. Rice dressing is made like traditional bread dressing, rice is cooked first and the other ingredients are added. They do, however, have this rice dressing right along side of corn bread dressing, generally.
Green beans, of course. I’m sure at one time it was fresh green beans or maybe canned green beans, but then Campbell’s mushroom soup teamed up with Del Monte green beans and now we have a tradition that shows up on most families’ holiday tables. To be honest, I think some creative homemaker invented the dish—not Campbell’s soups or Del Monte.
Sweet potatoes, baked and then made into some kind of casserole—mashed or cut in bite size pieces—and covered with brown sugar and pecans, or pécans, or Kraft marshmallows, and then put in the oven at 325 degrees for 20-30 minutes. If one is lucky, there may be yams available to make these dishes.
Mashed white potatoes, you know, mouth-watering, fresh Idaho potatoes mashed potatoes with butter and milk or cream. I never in my life saw these on any table in Texas or Louisiana, maybe Oklahoma doesn’t have them at Thanksgiving either. But in the southeast, all along the east coast, and into the Midwest we’ll find mashed potatoes on most Thanksgiving tables.
In some families in the south, there is always cooked dried beans, usually, red beans, or red beans cooked with several different dried beans. Makes a pretty dish, let me tell you, to sit on the table… And for many southern and southeastern families there are the greens—mustard or collard usually.
There is usually a cranberry dish of some kind. Fresh where they’re grown in the cooler climates of the U.S. Often, jellied from the can; although, more and more cooks are making some kind of cranberry dish these days and foregoing the canned, jellied cranberry—that is if there’s not too many complaints about “Where’s the good ol’ canned cranberry?”
That’s it for the staples: turkey and dressing, green bean casserole, mashed sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, cooked dried beans, and greens. Seven dishes, that’s all. Oh, except for all the favorites and the traditions of each and every family. In Illinois there is corn pudding.
Perhaps though, you know about Aunt Millie’s asparagus salad, Uncle Joe’s green pea salad, Sherrie’s potato salad, Cindy’s fruit salad, Genevieve’s three-bean salad, or Grandma’s homemade triple-cheese macaroni and cheese. But we don’t stop there. Then we have the favorite desserts: pumpkin sweet potato or pecan pie; chocolate or cocoanut meringue pie; apple or cherry pie; chocolate, cocoanut, or carrot cake. And, we can’t leave out the one dish that some families cannot live without—banana pudding.
Now, in addition there are those dishes unique to families or cultures. My Hispanic friends always have tamales, fajitas, and guacamole. My Lebanese friends have this wonderful lamb dish, as well as other Lebanese delicacies which are special dishes.
I’m too full to think about all the other possible dishes, but I’m sure you know right now, what I’ve left out!
Food, food nourishes us and comforts us. It provides a way to make eating a beautiful and pleasing experience. Food gives us the opportunity to share our accomplishments or our mastery of the culinary skills.
With food we can create tradition. There is a recently published book you might not want to miss, Being Dead Is No Excuse The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral. Several years ago, a friend of mine in North Carolina put together her own family cookbook; her friend named it Funeral Casseroles and Other Party Foods. In it she gives her brother’s secret recipe for preparing wild quail. Shucks, soaks, marinates, wraps it in bacon, barbeques it, unwraps the bacon, serves the bacon, and throws away the quail.
A woman from my last congregation almost lost her recipes in a kitchen fire, so afterwards, she sat down and compiled her own cookbook and made sure she gave one to everyone in the family and special friends. I got one. She titled it After the Fire.
Food is something else, too. It is our affirmation of life. Shange writes that food is the connection to the past and “what is to be as well as all that went between.” [85] She claims that it is the creative, culinary abilities that allowed her African brothers and sisters in the Diaspora to experience continuity of their people and their selves. A valid claim I believe.
It is the same for all of us, from wherever we came. Thanksgiving dinner is the epitome of that cultural identity we all claim as people of the new world with a past rooted somewhere else and a future of possibilities.
Lest we forget, the lack of a bountiful Thanksgiving on some tables speaks volumes to us and about us. While most of us here, in some way, experienced the plenty; there were plenty of people who did not, and as a people of faith, we cannot forget about them. Our Biblical readings today tell us that God takes care of us. The manna from the heavens for the Hebrew people in the desert and the promise of the Saviour who teaches us to live the Kingdom of God each day are very clear messages from God. We are God’s hands and help here on earth. We are called to be the savior that God sends to the hungry. As a people of faith, we are promised the strength and courage to deliver the promise at Thanksgiving and every day.
We cook, serve, and eat this bountiful feast on Thanksgiving. But there is no way we can eat all that food.
What do we do with the leftovers?
Re-heat and eat over the next few days
Cook them in something else, like turkey pot pie, or turkey salad, or
Make soup—all kinds of soup—pumpkin, sweet potato, vegetable,
Throw them away, easier said than done
Compost them, they change and can feed something else
Freeze them
That brings me to the leftovers that are not food. They are all the feelings we have about Thanksgivings past or even Thanksgiving present. Our feelings about family gatherings at this holiday time of year, or any time.
My friend and UU minister wrote this, “I feel very blessed to be part of a family (my own and my extended) who enjoy being together. For me, the leftover feelings of being blessed are the best leftovers of all!”
The leftover feelings of being blessed are the best leftovers of all.
Not all Thanksgiving feelings are like Linda’s. For many of us there are, but for others of us, there is a different story. The comedian Jeff Foxworthy put it this way, “You are not alone, everybody’s family is crazy.”
On a more scholarly note, research in family systems tells us that family holiday gatherings are challenging for many of us. I am not talking about those families who end up on the news, where there are absolute, tragic consequences. I am talking about families that look like other families—just like us—but where there are long-ago traumas, present day dramas, and the unspoken, unhealthy dynamics that are hurtful. Some of us can stay away; we have friends who become our family. Some of us, though, want to go, need to go, because the affirmation of our individual and family traditions is the positive that lives right along side the negative and the challenging.
After we leave these gatherings, there are the leftovers that we have to deal with. What do we do with them?
Re-heat and re-live the positive ones over the next few days
Cook the negative ones in something else, like the context of a family vacation that was happier than it was sad, or a birthday party that miraculously had no residual pain
Make soup—all kinds of soup—mix the love and joy of the gathering, drain off the hurt feelings, pour them down the drain, and cook a sustaining soup that nourishes
Throw them away, easier said than done.
Compost the negative leftovers, do it symbolically, get a plastic bag or plastic box with a lid and put in it pictures, notes, mementos, anything symbolic of the negative. Tie it up, cover it with the lid, and put it away, deep in a closet or way up high and back on a shelf. Let it is set, it will compost, and you know we have a different perspective of everything that composts. Composting nourishes eventually.
Freeze them, yes, freeze them. Like any leftovers, they can be frozen. The positive ones can be thawed any time and used to feed us; the negative ones can be frozen until they are positively, 100% outdated, no longer powerful, and then you can throw them away.
What do we do with the leftovers?
Re-heat and eat over the next few days
Cook them in something else
Make soup—all kinds of soup
Throw them away, easier said than done
Compost them, they change, we change
Freeze them for later
Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful. For the human beings who came in tiny little wooden boats with sails and little ability to keep food edible over the long ocean journeys, who moved across great ocean distances, encountered the hardships of strange lands, strange weather, different flora and fauna, and survived, eventually to thrive. It is a time to be thankful for the survival of all who came to this land and made it what it is – for us – the positive and the negative.
We are assured by our faith that God provides. Yes, but how does God provide? God provides through us. We are God’s hands, and the meaning of Thanksgiving is meaningless, if we do not take care of ourselves and others as God would have us take care of each other.
The Readings
Reading I
Luke 1:68-79
'Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a mighty Saviour for us
in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
and has remembered his holy covenant,
the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,
to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,
might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness
before him all our days.
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.
By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.'
Reading II
Our second reading is from the book If I Can Cook You Know God Can by Ntozake Shange.
Shange is an award-winning author of plays, novels, and poetry. Her most famous work is For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.
If I can Cook You Know God Can is a nonfiction work that is part cookbook, part journal of Shange’s extensive travels around the world, and part philosophy! She recognizes the role food has played in the lives of her people, Africans of the Diaspora. She writes to remind us that no matter what happens in our lives, we have to eat, and we have to thank God for whatever we have.
We’ve found bounty in the foods the gods set before us, strength in the souls of black folks, delight in our … [hard] work, and beauty in Jean Toomer’s image of a November cotton flower.
What and how we cook is the ultimate implication of who we are. That’s why I know my God can cook—I’m not foolish enough to say I could do something the gods can’t do. So if I can cook, you know God can.
So ends the reading.