War on Thanksgiving

When I was a kid, late November in our house meant a trip to the Arkansas Delta and Thanksgiving at Uncle Tony and Aunt Maxine's house. It was a sprawl of a place with a pecan grove for a front yard and plaques on the wall with things like "Crittendon County Farm Family of the Year, 1967." Tony made his living farming cotton and soybeans in the rich soil next to the Mississippi River while Maxine raised three kids and combined the pure Southern cooking of her mother (my great-grandmother) with the off-the-boat Italian cuisine of her mother-in-law, Nonni. The results were magic.

On the massive buffets in her dining room would be laid out cornbread stuffing and fresh cranberry sauce as well as shells with red sauce. At the end would be a perfectly done turkey (or two or more, considering the crowds her meal attracted) along with a pan of Nonni's lasagna. It was many years later before I learned that pasta wasn't an automatic staple of the holiday.

You'd arrive a little before the meal — always with a dish — in time to hug your relatives whom you often hadn't seen since last Thanksgiving. After a big lunch and some pecan pie — ALWAYS pecan pie — you'd find a spot near the TV to engage in a little tryptophan-induced afternoon football watching/napping. Sometime after the game, you'd grab a plate and head back to the kitchen counter for a second (or third) round while the late game came on. Food, football, food, football. What a glorious cycle.

But beyond the meal, Thanksgiving is the one day of the year where turkey is raised to an art form. Freaking turkey. The bland, lifeless lunch meat that is used as a delivery vehicle for things with actual flavor is roasted until wonderfully juicy and succulent, smoked gently until it is fall-apart tender or deep-fried to turn the skin into a salty, crispy, mouth-watering treat.

Sure, Christmas has deep spiritual meaning and presents and lights and everything sparkly, but Thanksgiving has the greatest meal of the year.

The encroachment of Christmas across the final two months of the year has diminished its aura. After four weeks of jingles, carols and reruns of classic movies, I'm exhausted by the time Dec. 25 gets here, fatigued from the sensory overload. And last year, in the most American tradition of "too much is never enough," retailers couldn't wait to start their Black Friday rush at 4 a.m., they had to push them back to midnight or even 10 p.m. ON THANKSGIVING DAY. The holiday was under assault by sales for the next holiday.

Enough!

The folks at Fox News like to start rolling out the "War on Christmas" stories this time of year as a code for playing to their base of conservative Christian viewers. But if Christmas keeps encroaching on Thanksgiving, I'm enlisting for the other side. My line in the sand is Thursday, and I will take up arms and cranberry sauce to defend it.