After juggling a dozen pots on four burners, that annual circus trick otherwise known as getting Thanksgiving dinner onto the table, there is always a moment of pause. Think ahead to this Thursday. Everyone's seated, foil is removed from casseroles, and ice is clinking in the water glasses. What do you imagine will happen in those few suspended seconds before the hungry mob, otherwise known as your loved ones, descends on the food?
"All of my brother's and sisters' families get together, and before we eat, we play our annual Turkey Bowl soccer game," said Bart Harvey, chief executive officer of the Enterprise Foundation in Columbia, a nonprofit organization that builds affordable housing nationwide. "Afterward, everyone comes limping into the house, tired and hungry, for a champagne toast, given by one of the family elders. This sounds solemn, but it's not. There's a real feeling of thanks for the blessings our family has had, but a lot of kidding goes on as well. You can usually expect a barb or two."
Charlie Duff, a city planner and developer who lives in Bolton Hill, foresees a somewhat less elaborate pre-dining ritual at his house.
"We'll quickly sing a verse of 'We Gather Together to Ask the Lord's Blessing,' then we'll try to hit the food before it gets cold," Duff said. "Now, if you are brought up right, you know how to carve a turkey into such thin slices that it loses all its heat at once. So, we usually lose that race, but we try."
As these stories suggest, before the eating begins, America's most homegrown holiday is honored in astoundingly various ways. Some families pray; many don't. Some hold hands and give gratitude for life. Still others are silent and remember the dead. There are even those who feel that the preparation of once-a-year delicacies is sacrament enough, and words are redundant.
"We always have a nonreligious meal, but sometimes when I'm up before dawn, cooking alone in the kitchen, it almost feels like a rite," said Marybeth Shaw, creative director of Wolf-Gordon Wallcoverings, who recently moved with her husband and four-month-old son from Manhattan to Canton.
"Like boiling giblets for the gravy. Why, I wonder, am I taking such bizarre care with these very particular parts of an animal? Then, there's the splurge on special mushrooms and pecans -- exotic things I don't normally have in my kitchen. Come to think of it, this Thanksgiving, I'm especially thankful for Whole Foods."
Universal blessings
No matter how it's consecrated before consumption, this holiday meal is remarkably adaptable to different moods and changing tastes. Substitute whatever flavors you like in your dressing, or blessing, and Thanksgiving still tastes, well, American.
The reason for this, explains Gary M. Laderman, a professor of religion at Atlanta's Emory University, is that Thanksgiving is not a Christian holiday, but part of America's distinctive cultural religion that cuts across the traditions of all ethnic backgrounds and faiths. "As such, it has a unique kind of accessibility," Laderman said. "Whether you are from Japan or South America, Thanksgiving can express your American-ness, but it's also a way to maintain your own culture's specific traditions."
Such is certainly the case for Marianne Marstrand, a public relations executive in New York City, and a Tibetan Buddhist who plans to bless her meal beforehand with a Buddhist prayer called Tonglen.
"I will visualize other people's sufferings or negativity as a dark cloud of smoke, which I will inhale," she explained. "While I hold my breath, I will imagine this darkness being transformed into a golden light, which I can exhale as a beam of goodness and joy. The essence of both Buddhism and Thanksgiving, after all, is compassion."
Golden light will also play a key role in a pre-dining ceremony at Allison Dickinson's house, which she jokingly refers to as "the hippie hut," in Lutherville.
"I always light a bazillion candles, and then cram up to 30 friends, and friends-of-friends, into my tiny dining room," said Dickinson, owner of the Paper Rock Scissors Gallery in Hampden. "Before we eat, everyone holds hands, and we all say something we are thankful for. I know it's hard for people to be sincere sometimes, but Thanksgiving is not the time for sarcasm."
Free of commercialism
Freedom to hallow the day as one sees fit is also possible because -- with the notable exception of the Macy's parade -- Thanksgiving isn't overly tainted by America's marketing machine. There is no single, all-powerful mascot for the day, like Santa Claus. Neither is there an indispensable item to buy, like chocolate Easter eggs or Halloween costumes. If Thanksgiving even has an iconic image, it is probably the 1940s Norman Rockwell painting, "Freedom From Want," where an aproned grandmother lowers an enormous turkey down onto a table, around which are gathered her adoring, and saucer-eyed family.
Despite Rockwell's all-Caucasian cast of characters, this painting -- like the holiday it depicts -- has spawned countless imitations of more heterogeneous gatherings. Not to mention some celebrations that may not be purely celebratory. Consider, for instance, the experience of Chava Koster, a rabbi at a temple in New York's Greenwich Village.
"Traditionally, Jews aren't so interested in Thanksgiving, because we have our own celebration of the harvest ingathering called Sukkot," she observed. "What I'm noticing this year, however, is that many Jews are taking Thanksgiving more seriously because Hanukkah begins this year the day after."
"In a strange way, this seems meant to be, as during the last year, we have felt continued terror and a dread of military conflict," Rabbi Koster continued. "Since both Hanukkah and Thanksgiving celebrate the miracle of life, I'm planning to have a moment of silence before the meal. With days getting shorter, colder, we feel vulnerable. I think it will be moving to just sit there, quietly, and reflect on all we have."
Bawa Jain, the Secretary General of the World Council of Religious Leaders, agrees with Rabbi Koster. "Since 9 / 11, Thanksgiving for many now has an added layer of meaning," said Mr. Jain. "People are gathering to give thanks to creation and the divine not only for life's bounty, but for protection from life's dangers. I think it's important this year to express such thoughts, aloud, before eating."
Another year of survival
With this current sense of fragility surrounding the holiday, America would seem to have come full circle, back to its "First" Thanksgiving.
Although historians dispute the particulars, there is general agreement that some sort of festive meal took place in the summer of 1621. The previous winter in Massachusetts had killed nearly half the members of the Plymouth colony, but in the next season, a bumper crop of corn revived hopes. Anxious to interpret their survival as proof of God's benevolence, Governor William Bradford decreed that a three-day feast be held, to which the Wampanoag Indians were invited.
Governor Bradford's was only the first of many attempts over the ensuing four centuries to freight Thanksgiving with symbolic resonance. In 1789, George Washington was the first president to officially declare the holiday, as a way of unifying the experience of the thirteen original colonies. Looking to meld a country that was bitterly divided during the Civil War, in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that the last Thursday in November would be a national day of Thanksgiving.
"While offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for singular deliverances and blessings," Lincoln wrote, "[we should] also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers."
President Lincoln was doubtless referring to those lost in the continuing battle between North and South. However, some people today still follow his advice and use the time before holiday dining as an opportunity to eulogize. One is Alexander Baer, an interior designer in Baltimore.
"After we've all gotten settled at the table, the first thing we do is remember people that we've lost during the past year. Someone will say a name and then speak for a moment about that person and how much they are missed," Baer said. "It's not a sad moment. Rather, it's kind of a reality check about what Thanksgiving is about, which is the importance of loving our friends and family."