The Perfect Thanksgiving

First off, how can any day that includes a major focus on eating turkey and mashed potatoes be anything but perfect??!!

The Perfect Thanksgiving includes the traditionals: Food. Family. Sincere prayers to God to thank Him for the good things we have... even if they seem to be not as massive or endless as in other years. (Do atheists celebrate Thanksgiving? Who do they give thanks to? Themselves? The cosmic particles which were part of the big bang?)

Memories clearly contribute to the Perfect Thanksgiving. Showing my age, Thanksgiving was the day when the Christmas season began. Thanksgiving's newspaper was huge, broken into a million sections and packed with ads...especially ads for toys! We could start making our Christmas list that very day after seeing for the first time what was available. That's when shopping for toys meant finding the toy department in one or more of the large downtown department stores that we would get to via a bus, since neither my mom nor dad drove (and I was born in the 50's, not the Great Depression, thank you!). It was certainly memorable and special, and, I think, probably better than seeing Christmas decorations available for purchase as early as September.

Thanksgiving is still the day each year that I shave using the ceramic mug and bristled brush my father gave me when he taught me to shave more than 40 years ago. In all honesty, the lather is not as rich and comfortable as what now comes out of a can, so the shaving stings a little more. But it's my annual homage to my dad, and the sting is worth the memory.

Perfect includes days of leftovers, a four-day weekend, the debut of Christmas lights on houses, and the arrival of the Christmas and New Years season. (With no offense to anyone, and all best wishes for other celebrations this time of year, I still wish people Merry Christmas.) While on a four-day weekend, we know there are more days off built into the schedule, arriving in just a few weeks.

Watching the Thanksgiving Day football game is not critical for a perfect T-Day for me. This year, however, there is the anticipation and inevitable bantering that will come with the classic Ohio State/Michigan battle on the Saturday AFTER Thanksgiving. Another event to enjoy during the long weekend. (Go Bucks!)

And a new appreciation enters my mind this year: while actuarial tables will show that I should still notch a couple more decades to my belt, I'm not foolhardy enough to realize it could be much less. Not that I'm ill or want to die. It's just that for nearly six decades it has been Thanksgiving after Thanksgiving after Thanksgiving in a seemingly endless stream. But the mirror convinces me daily that the stream ahead is no longer endless. So I resolve to try and treasure each holiday-family time more deeply.

So, barring health issues, an unexpected emergency (and that does not mean running out of gravy) or a natural disaster, the Perfect Thanksgiving is now virtually every Thanksgiving...and I thank God I will encounter them clean-shaven.

Happy Thanksgiving to you!