As soon as Halloween is over, I look forward to Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday. No shopping. No wrapping. No costumes. Good mood. Good food. Great leftovers. We eat early and eat too much, then return to eat again. There’ll be a neighborhood stroll between snacks, but there will be more eating.
We’ll have delicious late-in-the-day sandwiches. We bring in special rolls (some of us love sourdough, others prefer wheat.) There’s nothing exotic about our Thanksgiving planned-over sandwiches, but there’s no other sandwich all year that tastes this good. Frank Bruni writes about his family’s similar sandwich tradition in Real Simple Magazine.
By dessert time, music starts. Christmas begins with Thanksgiving pie. Some years Johnny Mathis kicks off the season. Sometimes it’s Burl Ives, or Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown soundtrack.
Meanwhile, I’m already humming a chorus of “Count Your Blessings.” Some years there’s a need to start the humming earlier, a reminder to myself that no matter what else happened during the year, there are still reasons to be grateful.
(photo from Real Simple)