I am probably one of the most prepared people for Thanksgiving during Covid.
I moved to Minnesota in the mid 90s with a very quiet man named Bill (or Non Birding Bill as many long time readers remember). Our first few holidays were torture for me. I was used to Thanksgiving and Christmas being large, noisy affairs with family members working hard to stake a claim over hosting and loud squabbles over political candidates or personal grievances. Holidays were loud, generally involved laughter, and occasional fights over politics and food.
We weathered our first Thanksgiving after being taken in by a local actor and his roommate who served us copious amounts of scotch. By the time Christmas arrived it was just the two of us and too quiet. I was crying, the company of a taciturn man was not what the holidays were supposed to be for me. We were too poor and at the time both worked retail so traveling out of state to see our respective families was not an option.
Bill decided that we should look into creating our own traditions. We dubbed it, “Naked Thanksgiving.” Being in our twenties, being naked and under a blanket made sense. But as the years went by, nudity became optional—especially while basting and we mostly wore pajamas all day.
We would wake up to no alarm or if we felt really salty, we’d set the alarm for the sheer pleasure of turning off and going back to sleep. When we finally woke up, we ate pumpkin cream pie for breakfast and savored a glass of scotch. By the time pie comes around at a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, you are too stuffed to truly enjoy it. Pie for breakfast isn’t too different from eating a pastry for breakfast and pumpkin is a fruit, right?
From there I would get to work on making our meal for later in the day. In my family Thanksgiving involves many carbs around a turkey: stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, dinner rolls, homemade cranberry relish, gravy, and a relish tray full of olives, pickles, carrots, and celery. Since it was the two of us, I only made our personal favorites. Turkey, stuffing, sliced cranberry jelly from a can, and gravy. And for the relish tray, I opted for a gin martini with extra olives. It goes perfectly with a turkey dinner.
We would rent or download our favorite movies for the day that varied from watching odd things remembered from childhood like The Goodies or marathons of Bond Movies. We’d usually engage in other adult activities while the meal was cooking because…no one wants to that after eating a massive turkey dinner. It was the perfect day and is to this day my favorite holidays. I spent the day relaxed and full of gratitude while I watched friends and family fret and stress over their holiday visits.
Over the years friends and coworkers would lament about a stressful trip to visit family and complained about having to dress up or deal with uncomfortable conversations. I would reply, “I’m having Naked Thanksgiving where we eat pie for breakfast, watch tv all day and only eat the food we want, clothing optional. We might be really hedonistic and eat the cranberry sauce directly from the can.”
“I’m coming over,” they’d say.
My standard answer was, “Your first time, you have to be naked.”
No one ever came over.
That relationship ended, but Naked Thanksgiving still sticks with me. I work for the National Park Service and one of our mottos is that we honor our history and traditions, but we are not bound by them. Holiday traditions are amazing family chains, but reinventing a holiday, even if it’s only temporary, still has value.
If you are feeling pressure from family to have a large gathering and your gut is telling you to stay home, consider a Naked Thanksgiving. In fact, tell relatives who are pressuring you to “not live in fear” that you agree and you’re only going to participate in the gathering if nudity on board. I guarantee that they will request you to stay home.
And then have your own personal Naked Thanksgiving. You don’t have to do it my way, maybe at your Naked Thanksgiving you’ll wear a tutu, or that extravagant feather robe you impulse purchased from a Facebook ad. Or maybe you’ll wear that ridiculous dress you bought and haven’t used all year because Covid. You don’t even have to have turkey, you could eat a mushroom lasagna if that is your favorite thing to eat. You could get take out pho. You can watch an Amen marathon or find a way to watch the only acceptable Anne of Green Gables with Megan Follows. You can also choose to drink bourbon and watch a bird feeder out the kitchen window, or drink tea and play mindless solitaire all day. You can spend it alone or with a friend from your pandemic pod. You can tell your kids to watch all the Disney while you spend four hours in a hot soaking tub. The point is, create your own scaled down Thanksgiving, be entrepreneurial. It’s what the American Spirit is all about.
Be grateful and if you need to, FaceTime over coffee or a beer with your family.
It’s been a rough 2020 and creating your new Holiday can and will be rewarding. It can also be a one time lark that will make for an insane and hilarious story when we finally get vaccinated and share a meal in person again.
We will be the insane grandparents/aunts and uncles reminiscing about our archaic past to future generations, “Remember that year during the pandemic when we all went a little mad over the holidays and ate Instant Pot turkey and cranberry jelly from a can while using ‘the social medias’ to communicate to family in our boxer shorts? Your generation doesn’t know hardship like mine does.”