Thanksgiving is the time when extended family members get together, usually after a long time apart. It marks the start of the holiday season. Thanksgiving is when relatives ('The Rels') gather over at the designated family gathering house, which in my case, was always Gramma's-on-the-farm.
It was like the damn Waltons over there. I mean, there were aunts and uncles and kids- lots and lots of kids. So many, and so many new ones, that you had to struggle sometimes to remember names. I thought everybody had experienced this growing up but only years later did I realize that not everybody had experienced burgeoning swarms of relatives on Thanksgiving Day. Some people never knew what it was like so I'm here to tell you that it was just alright.
It wasn't like we were all warm with each other, like me and my numerous cousins were super friendly with each other. We were cordial, let's say. Our aunts wanted us to get along like we were long lost kin but Nah! We didn't. There were some I bonded with, some I just tolerated, and some that were in between those two poles. Some of this was due to the fact that we only saw each other once or twice a year. The local cousins I might see numerous times during the year, the more distant ones maybe once or twice.
This was in Wisconsin so it was at that time of year pretty damn cold outside, the first snow had fallen a week or so before and on Thanksgiving week the snow usually started sticking, and would, until spring. Wouldn't be melting off anymore. Deer hunting season was also in full swing, and always coupled with Thanksgiving was the sight of blaze orange-clad hunters and deer carcasses gracing the beds of pickup trucks or deer carcasses strung up between trees, ready to be 'dressed', as they said it.
Gunshots were occasionally heard coming from the woods around town where I lived, and around Gramma’s farmhouse, sometimes in rapid succession, and this was necessary because if the deer weren't reduced in population many might starve during the long winter or, come spring, they would become road hazards and invade the farmer's fields. Just the way it was up there.
So relatives that had been hunting and relatives coming from town or places farther away would arrive at Gramma's doorstep. Coming in from the frosty cold they would be met by two things- a lot of heat from the many things cooking on the stove, and the gang inside the house, which seemed to grow by the hour.
Cousins by the bushel! This here’s Aunt Nan’s boy!
Luke Southern- Unsplash.com
Now Gramma's (Gramps was there too, but he had dementia to where he just sat in his chair) house wasn't that big but we all fit in there, the women all fussing around in the kitchen trying to help Gramma, the younger kids running around in their wild ways, occasionally being scolded by their respective mothers if they got out of hand, me and my cousins awkwardly trying to get along with each other, and the older men, uncles and husbands of aunt so-and-so, sitting at card tables playing poker while either The Lawrence Welk Show (Gramps’ favorite), NBC, CBS, or ABC holiday specials, or better yet, football was playing on the black and white TV in the living room.
By nightfall, which came pretty early at that time of year, dinnertime would be announced, and it was everybody grabbing plates and making their way around an extended kitchen table covered with good eats. There was a huge turkey, of course, a big sliced ham, mashed potatoes, boats of gravy, cranberry sauce, green beans, home baked bread and butter, lots of other stuff, and at least three different pies to choose from. More than enough for everybody- and please help yourself to seconds.
There wasn't enough room at the table so everybody just found a place to sit and eat and we did, happily so, 'cuz nothing was better than Gramma's food I swear to God there was something special about it. Might not have been the healthiest in today's estimation but our ingestion of large amounts of butter, bacon fat, Crisco shortening, sugar, and salt didn't seem to do us any harm. All those older people 'round the table at the time lived a great number of years afterward.
After dinner the kitchen table was cleared and the women sat around it and played Canasta and Pinochle for hours. Many of the kids and uncles joined in or watched, or joined in the easygoing conversation that passed around the table. It was good stuff.
Then the first yawns started getting shared and it was time for the families to gather up kids and get their jackets, hats, and gloves from the pile off the spare sofa in the corner nook where the adolescents hung out and make their way to the kitchen door to get their boots on. Goodbyes were said and off they'd go, the crowded house thinning out in this way until the last family was left.
Oh, the dishes had been cleaned up some and most of the food had been put away but Gramma would hear none of any attempts to clean up everything, she'd get to that later. And then when the last family left it was just her and Gramps alone and Thanksgiving was over and down the long snow covered and icy gravel country road family members would drive back to the paved county road, which led to their places some twenty miles or more away.
Whenever I think about Thanskgiving I think about those days, which didn't last very long. We kids grew up fast and eventually Gramma and Gramps passed, the old farmhouse got sold off ('cuz none of their kids wanted to do hard farming work), and it never was the same again. Thanksgiving was a smaller affair after that and it still is. It's hard to get people together in that way year after year anymore, people live so far apart now, or at least my family does.
But that's okay. I had my Norman Rockwell Thanksgivings growing up and while they were bustling and bonding times, so is every other Thanksgiving I've experienced special. The spirit of Thanksgiving is what makes it so. Doesn't matter if you're with a crowd, if there's only the two of you, or if you're even just one. Just know that the very act of getting together and putting aside differences for awhile warms up people's hearts and gets transferred to the populace at large. Everybody benefits.