Thanksgiving - the anti "holiday"

This is a rant in disguise. I'm not ranting about pumpkin pie and stuffing - it's the Holidays I want to rant about.

I love Thanksgiving. No greeting cards. No music piped into your eardrums until your brain melts - music that would be pleasant once or twice, but I simply can't listen to jingle bell rock seven times a day without getting a little crazed. Thanksgiving comes without trees to haul home, decorate, undecorate and dispose of (how Green is that?), pine needles lingering under the sofa for another month. Thanksgiving comes without bumper to bumper traffic lurching through the parking lot at the grocery store for an entire month, and hot, cranky long lines for the simplest errand.

I've never understood why American culture feels compelled to take three and a half weeks at the start of winter to send cards to everyone they've ever known, photograph the entire family, attend parties with every group with which they associate, cook elaborate meals after making batches of cookies and buy gifts for everyone they feel connected to. And those gifts must be special - they must communicate everything you've forgotten to say all year long.

When you're a parent, the pressure builds ... the Christmas magic fades as children grow older, maintaining the "excitement" created when they were toddlers becomes increasingly difficult. Inevitably, they learn that Christmas is disappointing. Somehow it's not the same thrill to unstuff a stocking at the jaded age of fourteen as it was at age four.

Thanksgiving is four long days of nothing but eating, catching up with family, sleeping and reading. No ribbon, no plum pudding flaming on the table, and no frenzied buildup. Throw a turkey in the oven, open a bottle of wine and relax - you're going to need it.

Happy Thanksgiving.