Michael Arlen Ode to Thanksgiving Essay Example for Free

Michael Arlen Ode to state of grace EssayConsider the participants, the merrymakers men and women (also children) who have survived more or less well throughout the years, mainly as a result of living at considerable distances from their dear parents and beloved siblings, who on this feast of feasts must evidently forgather (as if beck sensationd by an aberrant fairy godm separate), usually by circuitous routes, through heavy traffic, at a common meeting place, where the very moods, distempers, and noticeable personal habits that have kept them all happily apart since adulthood are then and there encouraged to slowly ferment beneath the feed husks, and gradually rise with the aid of the terrible wine, and finally burst forth out of control under the stimulus of the cranberry jelly No, it is a mockery of holiday. For obiter dictum Thank you, O Lord, for what we are about to receive. This is surely not a gala concept. in that location are no births, unless one counts Aunt Berthas benignant rolls a present, which no one does. There is precious little in the way of costumery miniature plastic turkeys and those witless Pilgrim hats. There is no sex.Indeed, Thanksgiving is the one day of the year (a even sot known to everybody) when all thoughts of sex completely vanish, evaporating from apartments, houses, condominiums, and mobile homes like steam from a bathroom mirror. Consider also the nowhereness of the judgment of conviction of year the last week or so in November. It is obviously not provided winter winter, with its death-dealing blizzards and its girls in tiny skirts pirouetting on the ice. On the other hand, it is certainly not much use to anyone as fall no golden leaves or Oktoberfests, and so forth. Instead, it is a no-mans land between the seasons. In the cold and sobersides northern half of the country, it is a vaguely unsettling interregnum of long, mournful walks beneath aphyllous trees the long, mournful walks following the midday r epast with the dread nevitability of pie following turkey, and the leafless trees looming or standing about like eyesores, and the ground either as hard as iron or slightly mushy, and the light ascorbic acid incessantly beginning to fall when one is halfway to the old green gateflecks of cold, watery stuff plopping between neck and collar, for the reason that, it being not yet winter, one has forgotten or not chosen to bring along a muffler. It is a corollary to the long, mournful Thanksgiving walk that the absence of this muffler is cursorily noticed and that four weeks or so later, at Christmastime, instead of the Sony Betamax one had secretly hoped the children might have chipped in to purchase, one receives another muffler by then the thirty-third.Thirty-three mufflers Some walk Of course, social functions are more fun in the warm and loony southern part of the country . No snow there of any kind. No need of mufflers. Also, no long, mournful walks, because in the warm and loo ny southern part of the country everybody drives. So everybody drives over to Uncle Jaspers house to watch the Cougars play the Gators, a not entirely unimportant conflict which will determine whether the Gators get a Bowl bid or must take another postseason exhibition tour of North Korea. But no sooner do the Cougars kick off (an astonishing end-over-end squiggly thing that floats lazily above the arena before plummeting down toward K. C.McCoy and catching him on the helmet) than Auntie Em starts hustling turkey. curtly full cousin May is slamming around the bowls and platters, and Cousin Ber puritanical is oohing and ahing about all the fixins, and Uncle wharf is making low, insincere sounds of appreciation Yummy, yummyAuntie Em, Ill have me some more of these delicious yams Delicious yams? Uncle Bobs eyes roll wildly in his head, Billy Joe Quaglino throws his long bomb in the middle of Grandpa Morris saying grace, Grandpa Morris speaking so low nobody can hear him, which is j ust as well, since he is reciting what he can remember of his last union contract. And then, just as J. B. Speedy) Snood begins his ninety-two-yard bet on return, Auntie Em starts dealing everyone second helpings of her famous stuffing, as if she were pushing a controlled substance, which is well might be, since there are no easily recognisable ingredients visible to the naked eye. Consider for a moment the Thanksgiving meal itself. It has become a sort of refuge for endangered species of starch cauliflower, turnips, pumpkin, tame (whatever mince is), those blessed yams. Bowls of luridly colored yams, with no taste at all, lying torpid under a lava flow of marshmallow And then the sacred turkey. iodin might as well try to construct a holiday repast around a fishsay, a nice piece of haddock. aft(prenominal) all, turkey tastes very similar to haddock same consistency, same quite remarkable absence of flavor.But then, if the Thanksgiving piece de resistance were a nice piece of boi led haddock instead of turkey, there wouldnt be all that fun for Dad when Mom hands him the sterling-silver , bone-handled carving set (a wedding present from her parents and not sharpened since) and then everyone sits around pretending not to watch while he saws and tears away at the bird as if he were trying to burrow his way into or out of some grotesque, fowllike prison. What of the good side to Thanksgiving, you ask. There is always a good side to everything. Not to Thanksgiving. There is only a bad side and then a worse side. For instance, Grandmothers opera hat linen tablecloth is a bad side the fact that it is produced each year, in the manner of a red flag being produced before a bull, and then is always spilled upon by whichever child is doing poorest at schooldays that term and so is in need of greatest reassurance. Thus, Oh, my God, Veronica, you just spilled grape juice or plum wine or tar on Grandmothers best linen tablecloth But now comes worse.For at this point Co usin Bill, the one who lost all Cousin Edwinas money on the car franchise three years ago and has apparently been drinking steadily since Halloween, bizarrely chooses to say Seems to me those old glasses are always falling over. To which Auntie Meg is perceive to add Somehow I dont remember receivin any of those old glasses. To which Uncle Fred replies Thats because you and George decided to go on vacation to Hawaii the pass Grandpa Sam was dying. Now Grandmother is sobbing, though not so uncontrollably that she can refrain from murmuring I think that volcano paint I threw away by mistake got sent me from Hawaii, heaven knows why. But the gods are merciful, even the Pilgrim-hatted god of corn husks and soggy stuffing, and there is an end to everything, even to Thanksgiving. Indeed, there is a grandeur to the feelings of finality and doom which usually settle on a house after the Thanksgiving celebration is over, for with the completion of Thanksgiving Day the year itself has b een properly terminated shot through the cranium with a high-velocity candied yam. At this calendrical nadir, all energy on the planet has gone, all fun has fled, all the terrible wine has been drunk. But then, overnight, life once again begins to stir, emerging, even by the next morning, in the work on of Japanese window displays and Taiwanese Christmas lighting, from the primeval ooze of the nations department stores.Thus, a new year dawns, bringing with it immediate and cheering possibilities of lengthy consumer debt, office-party flirtations, goodor, at least, mediocrewine, and visions of Supersaver excursion fares to Montego Bay. It is worth noting, perhaps, that this true new years always starts with the same mute, powerful mythic ceremony the surreptitious tossing out, in the early morning, of all those horrid aluminum-foil packages of yams and cauliflowers nd stuffing and red, gummy cranberry substance which have been squeezed into the refrigerator as if a reenactment of t he siege of Paris were shortly expected. Soon afterward, the phoenix of Christmas can be observed as it slowly rises, beating its drumsticks, once again goggle-eyed with hope and unrealistic expectations.