{"id":17301,"date":"2025-11-03T12:33:33","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T18:33:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/richardbarron.net\/giantmuh\/?p=17301"},"modified":"2025-11-03T14:26:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T20:26:22","slug":"its-not-thanksgiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/richardbarron.net\/giantmuh\/2025\/11\/03\/its-not-thanksgiving\/","title":{"rendered":"Praying to the Thanksgiving Duck"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend Courtney has told me in the last few years that her favorite holiday is Thanksgiving, and recently, it has become mine as well.<\/p>\n

But it wasn’t always this way.<\/p>\n

Traditionally, Thanksgiving is a feast holiday, featuring the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. I have no problem with a nice meal, but it seldom works out that way. It tends shake out to be four hours of cooking, 15 minutes of eating, then four hours of cleaning up. Also, because there are so many different foods, you really only get a small bite of each one.<\/p>\n

\"My<\/a>
My grandmother Aileen Barron serves Thanksgiving dinner in 1980. Many of the dishes served for those holiday meals came from her garden.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The reason there are so many foods is that despite efforts year after year to “keep it simple,” everyone has one or two items they want to have with dinner, “or it’s not Thanksgiving.” Someone has to have asparagus, someone has to have broccoli casserole, someone has to have jelly cranberries, someone has to have fresh cranberries, someone has to have walnut salad, someone has to have turkey breast, someone has to have sweet potatoes, someone has to have pecan pie, someone has to have potato salad… you get the idea. It’s “just not Thanksgiving” unless you repeat some memory from 40 years ago. The result is 20 items on the bar served buffet style, which you can’t really prepare and serve all at once, so most of them are cold by eating time.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/a>
Two Thanksgiving foods that remain popular, but which I won’t eat, are ham and cranberry sauce.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But living alone since the fall of 2021, I’ve been able to vastly simplify Thanksgiving. I cook and eat a nice meal, but I’ve never put much burden on specific foods. I don’t have any “it’s not Thanksgiving without” this or that. I sometimes share it with friends or family, but I am just as happy in the quiet of my own home.<\/p>\n

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if it were up to me, Thanksgiving would be a day of fasting and meditation.<\/p>\n

I once told my wife it should be a day of “prayer and fasting.” She asked me, “Who do you pray to?” I tried to express to her that prayer isn’t a conversation, it’s a mindset. You don’t have to pray to anyone or anything. Prayer allows us to quiet our minds and center our thoughts.<\/p>\n

But if it helps, you can pray to the Thanksgiving Rubber Duck.<\/p>\n

\"I<\/a>
I am still trying to decide about a good name for the Thanksgiving Rubber Duck, but I am leaning toward something simple like Daisy.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend Courtney has told me in the last few years that her favorite holiday is Thanksgiving, and recently, it has become mine as well. But it wasn’t always this way. Traditionally, Thanksgiving is a feast holiday, featuring the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. I have no problem with a nice meal, but it seldom works out…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,20,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-abby-and-richard","category-essays-and-opinions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardbarron.net\/giantmuh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardbarron.net\/giantmuh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardbarron.net\/giantmuh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardbarron.net\/giantmuh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardbarron.net\/giantmuh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17301"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/richardbarron.net\/giantmuh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33159,"href":"https:\/\/richardbarron.net\/giantmuh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17301\/revisions\/33159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardbarron.net\/giantmuh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardbarron.net\/giantmuh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardbarron.net\/giantmuh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardbarron.net\/giantmuh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}