I took a stroll in the woods this morning, as far as you know. I happen to love this time of the year. The combination of yellows, browns, reds and oranges would paint a bizarrely imbalanced image in any other season, but autumn makes it work.
Now when I say I love the season, I don't mean I run out in the fifty degree temperatures doing cartwheels so much as the core of my inherent melancholia feels attuned to the beauty of decay. I don't know. Maybe I feel like the expectations on me to be 'up' and 'cheery' aren't as high.
So as I was lying, I strolled through the woods taking in the grandeur of harvest, when I noticed an odd sight; a very large turkey, human-sized, wearing a mock pilgrim outfit from the abdomen up. It sat alone on the remains of a fallen tree, apparently lost in thought.
Now turkeys usually tend to be much more social, and when one goes off on its own to sit in isolation that typically means it's wrestling with some huge moral dilemma or complicated math problem, and prefers being left alone. But as my birthday always falls on November 20th without fail, I've spent my life feeling a bit of a connection to Thanksgiving, if only for proximity. As such, I felt comfortable invading the poor bird's personal space.
"Hey buddy," I said. "You doing all right?"
"I'm fine," its beak smiled, even if the rest of its face indicated quite the opposite.
I sat down uninvited next to the creature. "Weather changes getting to you?" I suggested.
The turkey sighed. "Nothing like that. I guess it's just...Thanksgiving is getting to me."
"This particular Thanksgiving?"
"No, in general." The turkey sighed deeply. I prodded it as considerately as possible to elaborate. "I think it's been getting to me for a few years now."
"Like it doesn't mean as much anymore?"
The turkey shrugged. "I don't even know what it means now. I mean, what is the point of the holiday?"
"Something about pilgrims and early America. Probably a fictional re-imagining of history. Maybe even offensively so."
"Most people say it's supposed to be about family. Getting together. In many, many cases a family that doesn't want to get together. You have some family members who work their collective tails off preparing the apex 'meal' while the inactive family members wait. And wait. And by the time everyone is eating, they're all just kind of...over it."
That wasn't always the case, but the turkey had a point. "There's the parade," I said.
"When was the last time you watched the parade?"
"I don't know. A few years-" I trailed off, really trying to remember now. My most recent parade watching memories all had to do with the Disney Christmas parade. In fact, I think Jim Henson was still alive the last time I paid attention to Macy's. "A few decades ago?"
"Exactly!" The turkey seemed to find a new well of energy. "And why don't you watch the parade anymore?"
"Too many commercial breaks. And I never really care about the people they have scheduled to appear."
"That whole parade is a single commercial broken up by smaller commercials. The floats are commercials for other shows, and everything else is sponsored by somebody."
"Well, yeah," I said. "But it is Macy's parade. We wouldn't even have it if they weren't calling us to-"
"Their Christmas sale." The turkey gave me a knowing look which I didn't comprehend immediately.
"So you feel like Christmas horns into your territory too much?"
"I honestly don't care if Christmas horned in on Labor Day. This is the problem." The turkey turned to face me, holding up its plumes like fingers. "Halloween. Thanksgiving. Christmas. The big three. There are other holidays throughout the year, but this is western culture's triumvirate. Now Halloween is a guaranteed success because its a party with death. You CAN'T screw that up. Christmas gets planned as far back as July, and the weeks leading up to it are an overload of carols and eggnog. And what is smack dab between them?"
I nodded, feeling a newfound empathy for the turkey. "So you're feeling the pressure."
"No. I feel the expectations of disappointment." The turkey rubbed its eyes. "It used to be expectations that I could never meet, doomed to disappointment. Now I'm expected to disappoint, and I never seem to not deliver."
The turkey drew in a deep breath like it was about to come undone, but regained its composure with an almost professional recovery.
"I shouldn't complain," it continued. "Everyone from the groundhog to the leprechaun tells me how much they wish they could be nestled right between the jack-o-lantern and the tree. But I get so tired of having to smile whenever people keep chanting 'Happy Thanksgiving' or spend the next three days asking 'how was your Thanksgiving?'. It was THANKSGIVING. It was a placeholder between schools closing and Christmas shopping."
"Maybe we should call it Thanklessgiving," I said, only being met with an unamused glance.
"I guess sometimes I just wish I was Leap Day. Once every four years. No big fanfare. Just come and go. A little acknowledgement. And nobody has to feel like I was this big letdown."
"Yep," I said. "I hear you. When I was a kid I looked forward to the parades, probably because they were geared towards me. But I grew out them and never had another ritual to replace them. There's the family gatherings and croquet games and everybody trying to settle on a movie to tolerate. But like you say, Thanksgiving isn't really the day you get a reignited passion for as an adult."
I didn't know where I was going with that, and we wound up sitting in an awkward, yet somehow comfortable, silence. I tried to imagine what would make the perfect Thanksgiving. What new ritual. Or the perfect Thanksgiving special. There was no shortage of Halloween and Christmas television shows, but Thanksgiving was a bit of a hard nut to crack.
"Still," I said once I'd gotten tired of not speaking, "Maybe the fact that Thanksgiving is such a blank slate is the very reason it's a special day."
"You're really reaching, you know that?"
"Hear me out," I told the turkey. "Thanksgiving tends to be mediocre at best. But at its core there's a hopefulness. Maybe families see each other and the only story they walk away with is having seen each other, but it's at least a chance for something more meaningful to happen."
"Something meaningful can happen on any day."
"This is true. But you're more likely to find those experiences by seeking them out. And whether we realize it or not, Thanksgiving is one of those traditions that compels us to do something that we don't do every day. It may not guarantee that moment of personal development, but it certainly sets the table for it."
The turkey stared at me skeptically. "Are you using a dining metaphor on purpose?"
"Let's go with the harvest metaphor instead. When you go out collecting the sheaves you may not feel like you're doing something significant, but it needs to be done. And later when you need those sheaves, some small part of you is grateful to have gathered them."
I almost got an unwanted laugh out of the turkey. "Do you even know what a sheaf is?"
"No clue. It's harvest related. The point is, Thanksgiving is important, even if it's not immediately discernible why. It's a landmark in the annual passage of the seasons that keeps the holidays from going by too fast. We may not sing Thanksgiving carols, but if even that one single moment where the feast is revealed causes people to become consciously aware that today, and no other day, is Thanksgiving, then isn't that enough of a reason to say it still means something?"
The turkey generously absorbed my rambling with dignity before hopping up onto its legs. "Right. Come on then."
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"Nowhere. I just feel like walking."
"Did I help at all?"
The turkey suppressed its condescension. "If you call 'transforming the problem into preposterousness' helping, then yes."
I smiled and said "You're welcome." And we strolled together for a little while.
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