Murfin’s Thanksgiving Rules and a Poem, Damn It!

It’s Thanksgiving Day and no one wants another long, yammering post of historic or philosophic pretension.  So you are all off the hook today.  You don’t get one.  Go, enjoy the holiday.  Just keep in mind these few simple rules

1. If you spend the day in a homeless shelter, soup kitchen, jail, hospital, nursing home, or even on the street blatantly and illegally feeding the hungry, read no more.   Your sins have been erased and forgotten and you win a gold star in the middle of your forehead.
2. Sleep in a little.  No matter how much there is to do, you will need your rest.  Strong coffee with at least the pre-show for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is OK.
3. It’s alright to come early and spend the day—AS LONG AS THOSE NOT ACTUALLY COOKING OR HELPING BY REQUEST STAY THE HELL OUT OF THE KITCHEN.
4. If you are coming, bring something, anything to add to the feast and festivities unless you are explicitly warned against if by the occasional fussy perfect Hosts and Hostesses.  It does not have to be homemade, expensive, or complicated.  Just not poisonous.
5. If you are not cooking, help with the set up.  Not every home has a state dining room, plenty of matching chairs, and infinite table leaves.  Be prepared to move furniture aside, scour the house for any chair that will not collapse, including the folding chairs rusting in the garage.  Try to make sure there are plates, bowls, glasses, and silverware at every seat.  They do not have to match.  In a pinch Ronald McDonald plates will suffice.  Be prepared to ferry food from the kitchen as directed.
6. Try to seat the children at the table.  If this is not possible, do not ask teenagers to sit at the kids’ table.  They will know you just want them to baby sit and hate you so much that you may later not want to be alone with them near the plug in your nursing home.
7. Speaking of children, if any are present at least one will smash an heirloom platter, spill a two litter of Coke on the kitchen floor and everyone’s feet will be sticky the rest of the day, or pour gravy on the cat.  Smile sweetly.  This will become a beloved family story, and will embarrass the miscreant for decades to come.
8. It  is alright for some folks to watch some football when dinner is not on the table or family social time is not in force as long as men don’t hog the couches and beer and women are not made galley slaves and serving wenches. 
9. When dinner is finally ready, firmly demand that all electronics be put away.  This will cause shrieks and wails of protest, some of it from actual teenagers, the rest from relatives who realize you do not want them posting the meal live on Twitter.  There will be sulking.  Almost everyone will get over it.  Then tell some of the men that means turning of the football game as well.
10. Saying grace is fine.  If you are a host, take a look around your table and if you are not completely sure that everyone there shares your exact and passionate religious convictions, try to make the prayer as inclusive as possible.  Don’t ask for salvation of lost souls.  No adding political diatribes in the guise of prayer—right or left.  If you are a guest and hear a prayer that does not conform to your preferences unless a thumb has been stuck directly in your eye, smile and ignore it.  Chances are that no matter how doltish the person praying meant well.
11. This is not the occasion to go to war over food choices.  Let what you won’t/can’t eat pass by.  Carnivores do not ridicule the vegetarians—and hosts make sure they have something to eat.  Vegetarians, vegans, and Ethical eaters spare everyone your diatribes.  You knew what you were in for when you agreed to come.
12. There almost surely will be at least one dramatic, cathartic moment at the table when old resentments are laid bare and skeletons come tumbling out of the closet.  A few tears, even a little screaming and a dramatic stomping away from the table clear the air like a thunderstorm on the prairie.  Afterwards if there is love and a dollop of understanding, the expectant tension broken, things feel better.  Pass the pies.
13. After dinner the COOKS ARE EXEMPT FROM CLEAN-UP AND DISHWASHING!!!!  There are no guests at Thanksgiving.  Everyone is literal, figurative, or honorary family.  Roll up your sleeves and pitch it.  With a group effort, and plenty of take home containers for leftovers, it doesn’t take long.
14. Don’t everybody scatter the second the pie is put away.  Deal the cards on the cleared table, play charades or parlor games.  If there is a piano or guitar, start the singing.  Share scrapbooks.  Break out your best lies.
15. After a while it is alright to surrender to lethargy, sprawl listlessly on sofas and easy chairs, go gape mouthed and stupid.  Even snore a little.  There must be some sappy old movie on to pretend to watch.
16. And the most important rule of all—DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT GOING SHOPPING!  If you do, I will hunt you down and hurt you.

Now that we’ve got that straight, here is the poem I threatened you with.  It’s a little prayer, really, feel free to use it if it fits.  Or not.  No pressure.

A Thanksgiving Prayer for Those Who Don’t Pray

Thanks for the hands.

All of them.

            That dug and scratched,

            reaped and loaded,

            milled and butchered,

            baked and cooked,

            served and scrubbed.

The cracked,

            the bleeding,

                        the blistered hands.

The hands that

hewed and smelted,   

            sawed and hammered,

            wove and sewed,

            put together and took apart.

The  calloused,

            the  greasy,

                        the grimy hands.

The hands that

            wrote and painted,

            plucked and keyed

            carved and created.

The graceful,

            the supple,

                        the nimble hands.

The hands that

            caressed and fondled,

            stroked and petted,

            held and are held,

            grasped and gave,

            played and prayed.

The warm,

            the soft,

                        the forgiving hands.

And today bless even the hands that

            shoved and scourged,

            slapped and smote,

            bound and chained us.

The harsh,

            the hateful,

                        the heavy hands.

Today they cannot still our hands

            from their pleasure and their duty.

The void of anger they create,

            our hands fill with love.

The gentle,

            the clasping,

                        the reaching hands.

—Patrick Murfin

The Great Holiday Congruence

Are you ready?  Traditional holiday plans are were complicated for some folks as two festive occasions collide on the calendar.  Not only is this coincidence rare—it will never happen again.

I am talking about Thanksgiving, which this year is celebrated on November 28—the latest date on which the fourth Thursday of November may fall—and the first night of Chanukah, 25th of Kislev on the Hebrew calendar, which this year occurs on the earliest possible date.  That means that by tradition the first night is this evening and the first full day is Thanksgiving.  But because the Jewish lunar calendar is slowly sliding forward in relation to the western Gregorian calendar, after this the earliest date will be the 29th.

There is even a spreading name for it—Thanksganukkah.

For Jews it is an obvious challenge to celebrate or try integrating two celebrations with very different culinary traditions.  Some will opt for an early Thanksgiving meal and a light meal with traditional touches prior to the family gathering to light the Menorah.  Magazine and newspaper articles abound with advice, both cooking and social, on how to deal with it.

But Jews are not the only ones affected—many Thanksgiving tables have long welcomed extended friends and family—even lonesome strangers—for the feast.  And many families are religiously “complicated.” 

My family is a perfect example.  My wife Kathy is not only a practicing Catholic, but the Director of Religious Education at a very large suburban parish.  I’m a Unitarian Universalist whose personal theology is, at best, eclectic. For the last few years my former sister-in-law Arlene and her husband Michael have hosted us and others in their Chicago home.  She is culturally Jewish but not observant and dabbles in Buddhist meditation.  Her husband Michael was raised Irish Catholic and his brother, a jovial Milwaukee priest who said the funeral Mass for my late brother is sometimes in attendance.  So was, at least once, her brother, an agnostic scientist/inventor.  Of our progeny, Heather, her husband Ken, and daughter Caiti are practicing Catholics.  Carol returned to the Church after her husband died and her son Randy is being brought up one.  Our youngest Maureen is resolute in her refusal of any religious affiliation and iffy about the whole “God Thing.”  Our other two grandsons Nicholas and Joseph are likewise officially apostate.  Of course my nephew and Arlene’s son Ira S. Murfin, aka The Last Bohemian and a gifted raconteur whose religion just may be art in all of its forms will be there with his bride, the estimable Emmy Bean, an actress, singer, puppeteer, and Jill-of-all-performance who was raised in a famously liberal and activist New York City Protestant congregation and whose mother is an ordained minister and father a former minister turned stage actor.  Also gathered at the table in any given year are whatever friends or acquaintances need a Thanksgiving table to join, whatever their religious affiliations. 

Like I said, complicated.  When I discovered the congruence of the holidays a couple of weeks ago, I contacted Arlene although I knew she is not an observant Jew.  I had volunteered to bring a ham as our family’s contribution to the feast.  But I had qualms.  Would it be, at least, a cultural travesty, I asked in an e-mail.  Arlene answered with an e-mail laugh.  Of course not. 

In some ways, philosophically, even historically, the two great holidays should not be hard to reconcile.

Chanukah or the Festival of Light commemorates a miracle.  When an army Jewish traditionalists under Judah Macabee, finally ousted the forces of King Antiochus III of the Greco-Syria Seleucid Empire, Hellenized Jews, from Jerusalem in 165 BCE they found the Temple profaned and an idol of Zeus erected.  The Macabees undertook the ritual cleaning of the temple to restore it to its uses as the ritual center of Jewish life. 

By proscription the Menorah in the Holy of Holies was to burn 24 hours a day, but only one small flask was found containing just enough oil to burn for one.  Yet the lamp burned brightly for eight days in which time new ritual oil could be purified.  In later years the Talmudic scholars proclaimed holy days to commemorate the miracle. 

It is a minor holiday in the Jewish liturgical calendar, but culturally important.  Many Orthodox Jews have come to disparage the tendency of the holiday to become a kind of “Jewish Christmas” complete with elaborate gifts for children and “Chanukah” bushes in America.  A lot of interfaith families find ways of celebrating both holidays for their children.

But the experience of Jews trapped in Europe during World War II and the Holocaust deepened a connection to the holiday for many.  Jews in hiding, or even in death camps, found furtive ways to celebrate what was after all thanksgiving celebration for deliverance from oppression. 

A family based celebration, Chanukah menorahs are lit each night at sun down for eight nights, lighting first one candle then an additional one each night for the eight days.  Treats made with oil—a kind of filled doughnut called  pontshkes, latkes (potato pancakes), and fritters, are served by Ashkenazi families and children gamble for gold foil covered chocolate coins called gelt by spinning the dreidel, a simple top.

Thanksgiving is also a joyous family oriented celebration.  It is the American version of almost universally celebrated harvest festival typically held on the cusp of the arrival of winter—a dreaded time of starvation and want.  It is decorated with a largely mythic back story about the Pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation and a feast they shared with probably uninvited Native American guests. 

It is the only truly American feast day.  Because it is unencumbered by ritual ties to any specific religion, to patriotic observance, or the commemoration a historic (or mythic) individuals who stand in a symbols for aspiring ethnic groups, Thanksgiving is the most inclusive of all American celebrations.  Native Americans, balking at the back story, have protested in recent years, but when stripped of that baggage many can join in the celebration.

It is the day when the family comes together, often at “home” however far away that is.  And not just blood families.  Many gatherings are of “intentional” families of friends gathered by those far away from blood relatives or even alienated from them.  The lonely, lost, and hungry are not forgotten.  Many are invited to join family suppers.  Volunteers spend the day serving meals in churches, retirement homes, homeless shelters, hospitals, and military posts.

Prayers are often said.  Thanks are given to God, or the mover of the universe, or a greater power known by a thousand names and unknown.  Thanks are also given to the good fortune and the dumb luck to be born among bounty, to the hands and labor of humans who in one way or another brought the bounty to our tables.

Surely such two great traditions of expressing gratitude and love can find a way to dwell together this year. 

I, for one, am looking forward to it. 

Pass the turkey…and the latkes.

How Come They Took a Sleigh to Grandfather’s House?

Today there is a skiff of snow on the ground and temperatures this week are expected to be cold enough for it to linger, at least on the grass, through Thanksgiving.  And that’s kind of unusual.  Although snow around the holiday is not unheard of in these parts, it has been pretty rare for many years.  Serious snow usually holds off until December, and there have been a few years in the last ten when there were no real snow storms until January.  A few Thanksgivings have been marked by late Indian summer mildness.  But most years the temperatures hover in the mid-forties under typically leaden skies.  Just cool and drab enough to make a day of feasting, football, and playing out complicated family dynamics attractive.

That’s why the poem Lydia Maria Child published in 1844 and titled A Boy’s Thanksgiving Day and was later set to music often ends up being sung as a Christmas song.  After all, it is about snow and a sleigh—they gotta be going to Grandfather’s for Christmas, right?

Wrong.  Child was recalling her own childhood when snow indeed laid deep and thick on the hills and ice froze streams in New England by mid November and a sleigh was the vehicle of choice. She could recall the bitter and long winters of what climatologists now recognize as the Little Ice Age. 

The Little Ice Age is estimated to have lasted from about 1350 to 1850 and to have been particularly severe in Europe and Eastern North America.  It began after an extended period of warming from 950 to 1250 known as the Medieval Warm Period when a mild climate peaked about 1100 a few degrees below the average temperatures of the last twenty years.  During that time Mediterranean agricultural practices extended deep into Europe.  The plunge into the deep freeze destroyed much of that agricultural base and caused wide spread famines and suffering.

There were variations of temperatures during the Little Ice Age, including short spurts of mild warming.  But especially sever winters clustered around 1300, 1650, 1750, and the last around 1850.  Some experts extend the period almost to the 20th Century to include the epic blizzard years of 1886-87.

The Little Ice Age was truly devastating.  Greenland was completely depopulated of its Norse settlers and Iceland lost half of its population.  Famines in Scandinavia claimed at least 10% of the populations, much higher in remote northern farming villages.  Unreliable growing seasons and hunger weakened populations and made them much more susceptible to death during the periodic plagues that swept Europe.  In densely populated cities like London death tolls were staggering.

Winter sea ice extended for miles around Ireland and regularly closed major ports.  Great rivers, including the Thames in London, the Rhone and Rhine froze solid.  A Swedish army was able to march across the sea to attack Copenhagen.  In the Low Countries rivers, canals, ponds and marshes froze solid every winter encouraging a culture that included ice skating.  Dutch and Flemish Renaissance artists depicted it all in many winter scenes and landscapes—a type of painting virtually unknown during warmer periods.

In North America crop failures helped encourage competing and often warring tribes to create political alliances to regulate hunting grounds, which became much more important as crops failed and even to share surpluses in good years.  Thus the Iroquois Confederacy was born as well as smaller alliances of tribes scattered along the eastern seaboard from Chesapeake Bay north to modern Nova Scotia.

When the folks we call the Pilgrims landed on the rocky shores of New England they were seeking not just relief from religious persecution, but a warmer and more hospitable climate than their refuge in frigid Holland.  They were aiming at balmy Virginia but fate and bad weather deposited them in the equally grim north.  They and their soon to arrive Puritan neighbors suffered in the early years and their colonies only really took off in a brief warming period.

The American Revolution was fought largely during one of the worst of the cold spells and the weather often played a critical role in the fighting.  If there had not been plenty of snow on the ground and frozen rivers, for instance, Henry Knox could not have hauled all of that heavy artillery from the fort at West Point to George Washington’s troops besieging Boston without oxen dragging the cannons overland on sledges.  Washington and the Continental Army famously endured the heavy snow and bitter cold of Valley Forge, but the same bitter weather kept British forces cooped up in New York and other port cities and not wrecking havoc in the countryside.

By the time of the Revolution, New Englanders had established a late autumn Thanksgiving tradition as an alternative holiday to Christmas which they despised as Papist on one hand and an orgy of pagan revelry on the other.  The celebration had nothing to do with the dinner party shared between the Pilgrims and local natives which had been long forgotten.  It had originated in local proclamations of fasting and prayer for delivery from the Indians after King Philip’s War and for local bountiful harvests.  Fasting eventually gave way to feasting in a natural harvest festival.  Dates varied depending on local proclamations, but were generally in late November on some other day than the Sabbath or Wednesdays when mid-week evening prayers were held.

The celebrations came only after not only all the crops were in, which was typically weeks earlier, but after the snow had fallen and the long hunts for deer, turkey, and other game was completed—the snow aided in tracking and the absence of leaves made seeing game easier—and storms made fishing for cod too dangerous.  Larders were full and men, at least, were idle.  Women, of course were expected to prepare and cook the feast.  As younger children who had no hope of inheriting the farm typically moved away to find land of their own, it became customary for them to return to the ancestral homestead for the feast.  And in an era when roads were bad and often impassable, the frozen ground, snow, and rivers made travel even long distances easier.

So many a family bundled up, climbed in the sleigh and headed for the old folks home whether it was just down the road or even days away. 

Those were the happy days Child was recalling.  But she was also 14 years old in the famous Year Without Sunshine.    1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies and other volcanic activity had spewed enough ash high into the atmosphere   to shield the sun from the Northern Hemisphere for most of the year.  Freezing temperatures and snow were recorded every month in New England.  Crops failed and record shattering snow came that fall.  Famine lurked that year, but could not completely discourage the traditional trek home for Thanksgiving.

Anyway this year in addition to the bit of snow we have here, I understand a major storm is brewing along the East Coast.  Moisture laden air from the Gulf Coast and Florida is moving north, banging into cold weather from Canada and the Midwest.  The result will be nasty storms lashing the region and disrupting holiday travel times.  As it moves north the storm will mostly dump rain or a wintery mix and ice on most of the coast.  But inland in a band from Pennsylvania through Upstate New York, western New England, and into Quebec snow accumulations of several inches are expected, just like in the olden days.

So if you live there, just break out your sleigh and you can get to Grandma’s pumpkin pie.

 Along the way you can sing the song based on Child’s poem.  If you want to use the original words, here they are:

                                                A Boy’s Thanksgiving Day

Over the river, and through the wood,

To Grandfather’s house we go;

The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh

Through the white and drifted snow.

Over the river, and through the wood,

To Grandfather’s house away!

We would not stop for doll or top,

For ‘tis Thanksgiving Day.

Over the river, and through the wood—

Oh, how the wind does blow!

It stings the toes and bites the nose

As over the ground we go.

Over the river, and through the wood—

And straight through the barnyard gate,

We seem to go extremely slow,

It is so hard to wait!

Over the river, and through the wood—

When Grandmother sees us come,

She will say, “O, dear, the children are here,

Bring a pie for everyone.”

Over the river, and through the wood—

Now Grandmother's cap I spy!

Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done?

Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!

 —Lydia Maria Child