“Two men are dead! This is not the time for petty sibling squabbles. That’s what Thanksgiving is for.” – Psych
Isn’t it odd the only people who tried to tell you how many people it’s appropriate to have for Thanksgiving dinner are the Centers for Disease Control and Jeffery Dahmer?
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.
I would say that it has always been my favorite holiday, but that’s not really so. When I was younger, say between toddler and 12, Christmas was. The reason that Christmas was so important was, well, the stuff. The movie A Christmas Story says it all.
But as I grew older, Thanksgiving kept growing in importance. In part, it grew in importance because it didn’t have the gifts. It had all of the proper things that, in my mind, a good holiday should have:
- Time away from the cares of the day,
- Time focused on being grateful,
- Free from stress, and,
- Cold.
The stress of Christmas was from the commercial aspects. Would I get that thing I wanted? The gifts overshadowed the holiday. Of course, each year the presents got less and less important, and the time with loved ones became more important. That’s when Thanksgiving started to win.
This year is the 400th anniversary of Thanksgiving. The first one was held (according to a letter) in 1621. It wasn’t held at this time of year, rather, sometime near the end of harvest. The Pilgrims knew that they were going to make it.
April showers, bring . . .
It wasn’t always so clear. The original deal that they drew up was socialist. Everybody worked, and everybody shared equally. That worked as well as it ever has. Nobody worked, so nobody shared anything, except starvation. That was 1620.
Starvation is a tough teacher.
The Pilgrims then came to the good and sensible decision that if you grow it, you own it. The result?
So much food that they wanted to have a party – a party that lasted three days. And history teaches us that the Pilgrims weren’t teetotalers. But this harvest festival was sheer joy: giving thanks for the good sense to give up socialism and allow people individual freedom. There’s a big lesson here, yet we keep trying to repeat the same evils that impoverish men.
Oh well.
The holiday being a direct repudiation of the philosophy that’s killed more people than any other philosophy, well, that’s not the main reason I love the holiday. It’s just whipped cream on the pumpkin pie.
It’s so cold this Thanksgiving I saw a socialist with his hands in his own pockets.
The cold plays into why I love the holiday as well. The work of planting is done. The work of growing is done. The work of the harvest is done. Now is the time to sit, rest, and be thankful. The harvest was good. The food will last us through the winter and spring until the next crops can be grown from a renewed Earth.
It’s that stillness, that preparation. The great woodpile set and prepared against the winter’s cold. The food stocks set against the winter’s hunger. Now is a time of peace.
And that resonates through 400 years.
The life of a man, when faced with 400 years, is but an instant. But the peace of a single Thanksgiving can seem as an eternity. The moments created when family gathers together to celebrate is nearly magical. Overcooked turkey or gravy as lumpy as the Hunter Biden’s thighs? Not a problem.
We are here to give thanks.
I’m pretty sober, but even prettier when I’m not.
A drunken uncle who wants to need Mom about something that happened when they were six? Not a problem. Your team doesn’t win the football game? Not a problem.
We are here to give thanks.
Of course, at this point, the question is, to give thanks to who? Well, in our folks, the dinner will start out with us giving a prayer. That is, over those 400 years, the most common way the feast was held.
Giving thanks is part of being human, whether you are religious or not. Being thankful is a way to be healthier. The mere attitude of being thankful changes the way that people think. It moves them from a spirit of greed for what they don’t have, to a spirit of gratitude, for what they do have.
French tanks have rearview mirrors, mainly so they can see the battlefield.
Studies have proven that being happy about the things you have is about a zillion percent better for your health than being unhappy about things you don’t have.
Duh. This is the equivalent of psychology professors stealing money to do a study, because nothing in the history of humanity has been more obvious since, well, ever. Yet, they studied this. You could look it up, but, why?
You already know that it’s true. To quote it again:
We are here to give thanks. Not complain. Not be upset about any of the day-to-day things that always go wrong. Thanks.
I seemed to figure that out a little each year as I grew older. When I was six, it was all about the stuff. I remember ripping through the wrapping paper like a velociraptor in a room full of Leftists who had been raised on soy since birth. Some of the bits probably reached orbit.
As I got older, the greed waned, and the importance of Thanksgiving increased. Last year when I cooked the turkey upside down? I don’t think anyone but me noticed. But we were together as a family on the 399th Thanksgiving. Together, in a house filled with the smells of turkey and pumpkin pie and a family that loves each other.
The most frustrated ghost in the world? The one that tried to haunt Helen Keller.
The things that I am thankful for are so numerous I couldn’t list them if I kept writing for the next eight hours. I’d put my list down, but I’m going to (as my textbooks always said) leave this as an exercise for the reader. It’s not what I’m thankful for, it’s what you are thankful for that will help you.
Even in the deepest depths of difficulties, there is a time and a place to stop. And give thanks.
Every minute I think about those things I give thanks for, I feel better. And the crazy thing I’ve learned? I don’t even need a turkey and mashed potatoes to do it. But the gravy? I’m especially thankful for my annual gravy bath. What would Thanksgiving be without it?
Happy Thanksgiving.
And a Happy Thanksgiving to you too. I live in the Texas RGV, hard up against the border of Mexico / Texas near the mouth of the Rio Grande River. Tomorrow’s forecast – 80 something for the high. So not so much frigid. Didn’t used to be this way, when I was younger, Thanksgiving was rainy and in the 40’s, perfect for deer hunting.
Was a tough year for me but I’m still alive with an intact family. That is a lot to be grareful for. Positive thoughts for people with family members in service to our country and have an empty chair at the table.
Happy Thanksgiving, John!
This year I am thankful for the opportunity to create my own supply of Hopium – it’s a great drug, the best drug… but the withdrawal symptoms are a stone b****, so it’s not good to rely on others for your supply. It’s been a lot of hard work, and a lot more hard work to do, but I’m investing in myself these days, and making myself a place in the world that should sustain me no matter what.
I’d also like to thank YOU for all your efforts to shine some light in these dark times. There are others; I have navigated this Hellscape by finding beacons here and there… and bright stars of brilliant past minds that have been in this place before, just with less i-gadgets and cat memes and bikini graphs. I don’t know how we survived without that last one; those times were barbaric!
Thank you for showing me some of those stars! And the bikini graphs and jokes are much appreciated as well. A sense of humor is an indispensable survival skill; to paraphrase Patton, “You can’t win a culture war without a sense of humor, and it has to be a robust sense of humor! A troll army without a sense of humor couldn’t meme its way out of a salt-encrusted wet paper bag!
So, in the spirit of giving thanks, I’d like to share my aunt Laurie’s corn pudding recipe: a recipe that many guys I know who couldn’t cook a milkshake without burning it can handle; Hell, they could probably pull it off in the last hour before having to attend a potluck that they are expected to bring a side dish to – the pan type doesn’t matter, as long as it’s greased, and big enough to hold the stuff.
The kids love it, and the adults in my family are craving it right now. Might want to give it a whirl yourself, unless you’ve already got something similar going this year. Enjoy!
Corn Pudding Recipe (Laurie’s)
Standard recipe
Combine:
One 17 oz. can whole kernel corn
Two 17 oz. cans of creamed corn
5 lightly beaten eggs
Add the following to the corn/eggs mixture:
½ cup sugar
4 tablespoons cornstarch
½ teaspoon Season All
½ teaspoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon instant minced onion
½ cup of milk (should be whole milk, or 2% milk with Half & Half added)
½ cup melted butter
Pour into greased three quart casserole. Bake at 400 degrees for one hour stirring once (halfway through the cooking time). Pudding should be lightly browned on top and a toothpick inserted in the middle should come out clean.
Corn Pudding Recipe (for a big crowd)
Combine:
Two 17 oz. cans whole kernel corn
Three 17 oz. cans of creamed corn
7 lightly beaten eggs
Add the following to the corn/eggs mixture:
2/3 cup sugar
6 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon Season All
1 teaspoon dry mustard
2 tablespoons instant minced onion
2/3 cup of milk (should be whole milk, or 2% milk with Half & Half added)
2/3cup melted butter
Pour into greased three quart casserole. Bake at 400 degrees for one hour stirring once (halfway through the cooking time). Pudding should be lightly browned on top and a toothpick inserted in the middle should come out clean.
I hope your Thanksgiving was a good one. The recipie sounds great! We may have to give it a shot . . .
And the game isn’t over until we say it’s over.
Here’s the toast I made today at dinner, “Here’s to 2020 and 2021, may we never hear those years mentioned again . . . “
“the poople in the frozen food aisle…”
If I did that anywhere outside of Asheville in Western NC, it’d be, hey, cool!” I don’t think it’d go over very well down here at the Harris Teeter on East Bay Street.
Ha!
Hope your Thanksgiving was a good one!
The traditional response to somebody saying “Thanks!” is “You’re Welcome”. Thanksgiving is ideally not a private time, it is a social one where you gather with the ones you love. We need that more than ever in the past eighteen months for a whole host of reasons. So I want to say I’m thankful to John for providing such a welcoming and fun home here where we all can gather a few times a week away from the cold in the world, and to all of you here that come to this comments sections to lurk or read or sound off. You are all a Thanksgiving family that I treasure being a part of.
And yeah, I ended a sentence in a preposition, and you ain’t supposed to do that. I am most thankful for still having the freedom to express myself in any way that I choose.
“Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put” – Winston Churchill
Thank you, Ricky. Hope all is well with you!
Have a happy and grateful Thanksgiving, all! (Except for the Leftists trying to blow it all up, of course.)
Corn Cake Muffins
1 pkg cake mix
2 pkgs Jiffy mix
1 pkg instant pudding
6 eggs
1/2 cup oil
2 cups milk
Blend for 2 minutes.
Pour into well oiled muffin tins.
Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.
Let stand 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack.
Okay, another one we’ll have to try! Thank you!
And I hope your Thanksgiving was great!
“Last year when I cooked the turkey upside down? I don’t think anyone but me noticed.”
Why would you cook while walking on your hands? Toes weren’t made to handle oven controls.
Ha! Well said. This time I used my hands.
John, wishing you and your family a wonderful Thanksgiving Day! As with all family gatherings, it is all good until somebody gets shot. Despite the continuing shit show of Clown World going on around us over the last 2 years, I still find lots to be thankful for.
So glad I was drinking coffee when I first saw, “the people in the frozen food aisle…” meme.
Thank you! And I hope your Thanksgiving was great. Sadly, Clown World is not even through Act 1.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone here commenting at Wilder’s Mountain. Especially thankful for John’s wisdom and humor.
As the Lord’s Prayer says…”Give us this day”, something we all should be thankful for every day.
Thank you, and I hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful. Indeed, because all we have is this day . . .
I am grateful that 43 years ago before I knew her, my beautiful and talented wife got beat out of a job promotion to the East Coast because she is white and the other guy wasn’t. A few weeks later her office in the Midwest closed and she came to work at the same company as I worked at. I knew from the first time I saw her that she was “the one”. Now, 42 years and two great kids later we are happily still together. We will spend Thanksgiving with a traditional blended family meal. Some from her traditions, some from mine, and some we made up together. God truly works in mysterious ways.
Happy Turkey day to the Wild (er) bunch.
Grumpy
Happy Thanksgiving to you . . . so much to be happy for here, especially the mashed potatoes . . .
Thank you John. Happy Thanksgiving.
Thank you! And happy Thanksgiving to you!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Thanks, John, for your continued giving of yourself to this site.
It is truly a blessing to visit here, and there are even (surprise!) random bikini charts. Lots to be thankful for!
Milton, I promise more bikini charts in the future.
Hope Thanksgiving was great for you!
Happy Thanksgiving John!
For the first time in two years, we have been able to take a family vacation together. We are not home for Thanksgiving – or even in the country this time – but still thankful.
Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy every minute!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving!
I agree 100% with all of the sentiments here, but I feel compelled to correct historical inaccuracies.
Thanksgiving was not “invented” by the Pilgrims. “Days of Thanksgiving” were an important part of the English Reformation, harvest festivals were and are widely celebrated across Europe, and similarly themed festivals with similar names were celebrated in medieval Germany and feudal Japan.
However, the Thanksgiving tradition that turned into the American holiday was indeed first celebrated by the Puritan Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony in 1621, but it was for a successful harvest for their FIRST year in the colony, as they had only arrived the previous fall of 1620 after many delays leaving Europe in the spring of 1620. They did not sight land until November 9 1620 and did not arrive at Plymouth and establish the colony until mid December. Times were indeed tough; 45 out of 102 Pilgrims on the Mayflower died before the next spring. The Puritans operated first as family groups and second as church congregations; there was no attempt at a socialist type system. This probably explains why they very quickly had one of the more successful European colonies, and the infamous Mayflower Compact shows that they were well led. Although it is obvious that supplies were tight in 1621, the colonists were able to send back 500 English pounds worth of goods as payment on their colony debt on the second ship that arrived in November 1621 (although the ship was captured by the French and the payment lost).
The story of the first attempt at socialism in European America comes from the Jamestown colony, which was not particularly well led nor had the close community of the later Puritan group. The “common store” system that was instituted by the Virginia Company was recorded as encouraging idleness and the colonists starved. It wasn’t until Governor Thomas Dale instituted private property and economic freedom in 1613 that the colony’s fortunes began to turn, although to be fair there were a lot of factors influencing the near failure of the colony up to that point, including the ineptitude of the Virginia Company, the placement of the colony in a swampy area, and an historic drought in the area that didn’t ease until 1612.
What I find very interesting is the contrast between the two models, and their relative success timelines. The family and congregation model had tough times and far less backing, yet was quickly established and almost immediately successful. The more corporate model used in Jamestown resulted in starvation and cannibalism, very nearly the failure of the colony in 1610, and at least five years of struggle before the colony could stand on its own feet without constant resupply from England. There are some important lessons there for those looking at how to reorganize their communities away from the big government model.
Max, THANK YOU!
Great comment. I want these posts to be factually correct . . . and you’ve tossed up some great points that I bungled. I’m going to re-edit the post for clarity and to remove innaccuracy.
Thank you!
Actually, my comment has factual inaccuracies as well. The Pilgirms did indeed attempt the common storehouse system, dictated (once again) by their investors. In 1626 Gov William Bradford finally returned all private property rights and switched the colony to a free enterprise model with taxes. Although the Plymouth colony didn’t suffer nearly the disasters that Jamestown did, one wonders why the lesson had to be learned a second time.
I guess no education system with an agenda is without pitfalls. My expensive private religious school education through college level was generally excellent, but I remember in history classes extensively covering the disasters of the Jamestown colony while this aspect of Plymouth colony was glossed right over.
I should have done some more research before opening my big mouth.
https://www.educationviews.org/the-american-pilgrims-disastrous-experiment-in-socialism/
No, seriously, thank you. I need to carve out an hour to update it, and maybe it might become an evergreen post for Thanksgiving. And thanks for the additional facts!!!!
Belated Happy Thanksgiving to all. We were staying with my parents. Lots of interesting family drama on the side, sadly. But the good part was being too busy to with the family to play on the internets.
Christmas will always be favorite because the music is so good, and it is so much fun to give presents.
No drama here, except that everyone that visited forgot something here. Bread bowl. Nebulizer. Game controller.
Wonder what that stuff’s worth on Ebay?