Hello, bloggers!
Happy Thanksgiving to you as we approach this wonderful holiday and the entire holiday weekend.
In our family, we have a tradition where, for the last number of years, we go to our farm in Wisconsin and have an old-fashioned Thanksgiving get-together. The dogs come, the children, the grandchildren, the great-grandchildren, the whole cast of characters...
The farm is on two rivers in Wisconsin. The Native American tradition is that where two rivers meet, is a sacred place. There are Indian burial mounds on our property, and I find it a very important place to meditate and work on huge projects of art. I’ve converted a couple of the barns into large studios.
So this is where the whole family assembles. It becomes anywhere from a one-day to a three-day get-together. We eat anything that’s put in front of us. The fatter it makes you, the better. Everybody makes their favorite dishes, and it would be an affront to their culinary efforts if we didn’t eat it whether we liked it or not. When I come back to Chicago after Thanksgiving, I don’t weigh myself for a couple of days!
It really is a great, old-fashioned Thanksgiving, and I look forward to it immensely each year. To me, Thanksgiving is a wonderful family time. Christmas is, too, but Christmas, which started out revolving around a religious event, has been turned into a commercial event. There’s so much running around and buying gifts and almost mandatory glee, that some of the Christmas spirit can get lost if you’re not careful. But the Thanksgiving holiday is more of a family, in-house celebration instead of this wild running through the crowd screaming “Merry Christmas!” to everybody.
Christmas was probably more gregarious back when I was drinking. I always remembered Christmas, but I wasn’t so sure of New Year’s Day. I was probably lucky just to be alive to live through the next year, even thought I couldn’t remember much of the last one! That was probably a good thing...
So Happy Thanksgiving! Forget the diet! If we gain five or ten pounds, it won’t be the end of the world. Take it from someone who’s done it!
Matt