NATSLETTER | THANKSGIVING CORNUCOPIA

Christmas looms like a tidal wave of tinsel, bearing down on us with its flood of mediocre pop carol covers and AI generated schmaltz in the form of Coca Cola commercials with terrifyingly rendered animals. We have but one moment of brief respite left before we are all swept away by The Season, and that tiny island of solace is Thanksgiving.

Some prefer Easter or Ramadan or Passover or Diwali or Lunar New Year. Others buy an entire armory’s worth of fireworks to set off in their back alley on Independence Day. There may even be a few folks who get super into Flag Day. Hey, I’m not here to kink shame - if Flag Day is your thing, that’s cool. You like symbolic pieces of fabric. Let your freak flag fly.

But Thanksgiving has always been the one for me. At its core it’s a very simple and straightforward holiday. We get together; we eat; ideally we give thanks. Some of us watch football. Some watch a parade with improbably massive balloon animals. That’s about it.

And yet, this is also a hard holiday to love, particularly lately. So please permit me, if you will, a moment to stan for Thanksgiving.

NAT’S FIRST ANNUAL THANKSGIVING DIATRIBE

We all know the myth, right? 

I write of course of the famous tall tale recounted in every elementary classroom: A group of Pilgrims arrive on the shores of their new manifest-destiny’d home, bedecked head-to-toe in outlandishly impractical buckled garb but with nary a farmer or hunter amongst them. Just as the winter is about to descend on them, threatening to wipe them out for good, a group of kindhearted anonymous “Injuns” arrive in Plymouth bearing baskets full of groceries.

The two groups sit down and - you know, there’s probably no better telling of the tale than this clip from the 1993 film, Addams Family Values.

It’s a perfectly fine myth, particularly if you’re a White American Protestant of English origin. Why wouldn’t you love it? You’re the hero! 

Naturally, the story gets more problematic the further you get from those WASPy identity markers; the most egregiously harmed being those Indigenous people who were royally shafted pretty much immediately after folding their napkins at the meal upon which the myth is based.

We’ve been raised to believe that Americans have been celebrating Thanksgiving ever since, but that’s not at all the case. If it was celebrated at all, it was usually done sporadically and locally, often only after a good harvest. The idea of the national holiday belonged to a woman named Sarah Josepha Hale, a well known writer, magazine editor and New Hamster (which I presume is what people from New Hampshire call themselves, no?). 

Her goal was to create a holiday to help bring the fractious young country together in the early 1800’s, and she used her magazines to promote a version of New England Thanksgiving that allowed Blacks and Roman Catholics (roundly hated at the time) and others on the margins of American society to become more “American.”

See where this becomes problematic? It’s a well meaning idea - to invent stable traditions in order to weave the social fabric tighter - and admittedly the food is delicious, but it also imposes a New Hamster’s idea of “proper American culture” on the rest of us. If you hear echoes of those age old questions - what makes an American and who gets to be one? - then you’re not alone.

The thing about it is this: the Pilgrim Thanksgiving was picked arbitrarily. It's an invented holiday to a certain extent - there's not any particular reason it had to be this specific episode that gave the holiday it's lore. They could have picked any number of other Thanksgivings - in Jamestown, in St. Augustine, or more. The cultural tastemakers just sort of picked the Pilgrims because they thought it was the prettiest story and the nationalist undertones fit what they were looking to communicate at the time.

So let’s set aside the Pilgrims and their weirdly buckled hats for a second and acknowledge that this holiday is much bigger than nationalism and colonialism.

Because you see, humans have been doing this ‘eating a meal and saying thanks’ thing forever - not just in New England, or in Old England, or in Europe, but all over the world in every culture and even (gasp) among the indigenous peoples of what would one day be known as America. This is a tradition much, much older than any Pilgrim or any women’s magazine editor.

For as it happens, existence can be a huge pain in the ass. Famines and plagues and wars and genocides and assorted other catastrophes have hounded us throughout all of recorded history and continues to in the present. You don’t need me to tell you that - your pocket angst-machines can remind you.

Our ancestors knew that mere survival is an act worth celebrating - this was true for ancient tribes and villagers and it goes especially now for families and friends. Despite the world’s best efforts, we’re still here, making our way together, and we give thanks to whomever or whatever we feel deserves it - whether that be to some deity or deities or even just to one another.

This is the beauty of Thanksgiving: to give thanks for the people you love and who love you. 

Also, the turkey. And the stuffing. And mashed potatoes. Listen - I’m not immune to the cultural hegemony of the New Hamstermen’s delicious autumnal foods, okay? Gravy is wonderful and I’m only human for chrissake.

I know there are some who may ask what there is to be thankful for, particularly with the never ending glut of terrible and terrifying things that we see every day? 

Families continue to be torn apart. Food becomes more and more expensive. The climate becomes more perilous. The people who are supposed to help us are busy building ballrooms, fleecing taxpayers and hiding from the consequences. Just last week, the President of the United States floated the idea of executing United States Senators as traitors. Was he joking? Who can say? Who will say?

With all that going on, why would we celebrate a holiday that white washes our history?

It’s a fair point. The only thing I would say is this: holidays are what we make them. When we gather together on Thursday, there will be no Pilgrims there (unless that's your kink - again, no kink shaming here). Sarah Josepha Hale will not be watching to make sure you’re celebrating properly. The official national holiday may only be 162 years old, but the idea is timeless - a communal impulse so old and so natural to humanity that it likely predates written history.

And at a time when your subjugation to the quagmire of suck is the ultimate goal of the people in charge, drawing the folks you love together and fortifying one another with your shared gratitude is an act of defiance.

Thank you to the people out there doing something in the face of this void that we’re all staring down; the people who are helping in whatever small ways they can, who show kindness to those who need it in the face of cruelty and apathy.

Thanks to my lovely wife and my child and my family and my friends. And thank you for reading this.

And thanks most of all to whomever invented spatchcocking a turkey, because it cuts down on the cooking time for a full bird, cooks it more evenly and helps prevent dried out white meat. 

I’m just saying, the meal can be really freaking good. For all the well-meaning colonial whitewashing, Sarah did get one or two things right.

And now, for some silliness. First, a recipe for disaster…

CORN PUDDING - SERVES 8-10

Your mother tells you that you can just bring paper plates and cups, that you don’t have to worry about the potluck, but this is the year goddamnit - you’ve decided that you’re finally stepping into your own and part of that is contributing to the meal.

Also, Aunt Janet won’t be there, which means no corn pudding. Somebody has to bring the corn pudding and it won’t be Aunt Janet; she’s spending the holiday on a cruise ship with the owner of a small garden supply center; she met him on Hinge two and a half months ago. Who knows what she’ll be eating. Crab legs? Probably not pudding.

So okay, corn pudding it is. You can do this. 

Sure, you’ve historically had difficulty finishing things - your defunct mobile dog grooming business comes to mind, which in retrospect wasn’t the best idea for someone with severe pet allergies - but you have been living on your own in a rent controlled studio apartment for what now? Has it been fifteen years already? And you’re still kicking.

Problem: you don’t have Aunt Janet’s recipe. She’s incommunicado for the entire cruise - she doesn’t want “any grief” from your mom about Gene, which is the name of the man from Hinge. 

This means that you’re on your own when it comes to a recipe. Easy to do with the internet. Except wait, all of these recipes are a little bit different. Does Janet use Jiffy mix? Or would that be a cheat? Should you use creamed corn, canned corn, or frozen corn? Do they still have fresh corn at the super market? Do you use flour or cornstarch as a thickener? Do you use jello? That seems wrong, and yet this one jolly looking Southern cook writing on the internet swears by it.

As you sift through page after page of recipes, each authored by some new tradwife-turned-gourmet-chef, the questions start to pile up. You try to see your way through the tangle of options, but the more you read about corn pudding the more it becomes a cacophony of discordant choices.

You must quiet your mind. Conjure a mental image of Aunt Janet’s corn pudding. If you could only make that image real. But then the question creeps in: what is your corn pudding? Not Janet’s corn pudding; not just the average corn pudding that your family has come to expect - a side dish that doesn’t even make it onto everyone’s plate. If you could say any one thing to your family and have it manifested in a corn pudding, what would it be?

Your mind is swimming. That little voice at the back of your head starts to break through the din. ‘Who do you think you are? You can't replace Aunt Janet! You’re an impostor.’ Why oh why can’t you just pick a recipe and stick with it? How can corn pudding, something that seems so simple - so stupidly simple - be so complicated?

You throw your puffy jacket over your pajamas, slip into your boots and head out into the night to try and outrun your own negative thoughts. The streetlights cast a yellow pall on everything you see. Somewhere, a dog barks - is it displeased with you? Or barking at a racoon? A trash panda? Are you the trash panda? The moon disappears behind a disapproving cloud.

Your mind arrives at a memory - one that has been on your mind quite often recently. You were twelve and playing horse in the backyard on your own, miming your way through a particularly complicated dressage routine, when suddenly you heard snickering coming from the backyard fence. Todd VanderHoof from three houses down the street saw you and he was laughing at you, at the way that you whinnied and neighed replicated a horse gallop. And your face flushed and your blood nervously vibrated in your veins like iron shavings drawn to a magnet and you panicked, so you tripped over the wooden dowel you were using for a jump bar. You looked down and your knee was bleeding and Todd laughed even harder so you rushed inside the house and part of you never came back out again.

Now you’re in Whole Foods, a place you rarely go for economic reasons, but this is Thanksgiving and you will spare no expense. You don’t care what Todd or Aunt Janet or Mom or anyone else thinks. You rub your bleary eyes and then you announce aloud to the world and to the rest of the shoppers in that aisle: you are making the best corn pudding you can - you don’t care what anyone else has to say and you will fight them if they try to get in your way.

The fluorescent lights somehow get brighter. Your head aches. You can’t remember the last time you slept. Your lips are dry and you feel like you should sit down and the lights only get brighter, brighter, brighter.

You jolt awake, gasping for breath, and look around. No longer in Whole Foods. How many days has it been? 

You’re laying in a puddle of drool on your threadbare rug in the middle of your studio apartment. Was it all a dream? Except there, on the floor next to you, you see a recipe scrawled on a brown paper bag. Is it Aunt Janet’s? Is it something else, a recipe from heaven or from hell? You peer into the corner of your studio where your stove and refrigerator live and see the groceries awaiting…

What you’ll need is: 

½ Cup (8 Tbsp) Unsalted Butter, plus more for the baking dish and for serving

1 ½ Cup Whole Milk - your brother Dave’s dairy issues be damned

4 Cups Fresh Corn if you can find it - you can substitute frozen or canned if you are willing to accept defeat

4 Eggs of the Chicken

4 Tbsp Granulated Sugar

¼ Cup Corn Starch

1 ½ tsp Kosher Salt - table salt would be an abomination

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. While you enjoy the momentary warmth it brings to your otherwise freezing studio apartment, butter a baking dish
2. Use the blender you got as a Christmas gift a few years back when your mother briefly got super into juicing to pulverise 2 cups of the fresh corn. Pulverize it the way that you pulverize the doubts that cloud your mind. This is catharsis. Also, reserve the other 2 cups of corn.
3. Heat the butter and milk in a small saucepan just until the butter has melted. Then, beat the eggs and cornstarch together in a separate bowl. Watch as the egg yolks and the egg whites lose their individual identities and are reborn as one new, glorious, golden liquid. Add the pureed corn and whisk. Then, stir in the milk mixture, the sugar and the salt. Finally, using a spatula, fold the reserved two cups of whole corn kernels into the mixture.
4. Pour the mixture into the baking dish and top with extra pats of butter for browning. Look at what you have wrought. Is this what it felt like for Aunt Janet the first time she made corn pudding? If so then why do you feel so hollow? Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.
5. Remove the pudding from the oven and set it on the beverage cart you use as counter space. Ask yourself: is it… is it you? Does this corn pudding capture your essence? Will it be good enough? Can anything ever be good enough? 

You shake your head. This should feel different. You should feel reborn, just like the eggs were made new when you scrambled them. Instead, you are overwhelmed by your own emptiness.

You take the pan of corn pudding and topple it over into the garbage. You can’t bring yourself to try it - how can you know the taste when you don’t even know yourself? What sort of hubris would ever convince you to bring corn pudding - Aunt Janet’s dish - to the dinner table? How could you ever compare?

Thanksgiving is in a few hours. If you leave now, you’ll have time to pick up some sides from KFC to bring. Perhaps they’ll give you extra plates and napkins, since you didn’t get any and neglected to tell your mom to make other plans for cutlery.

And now, some father-son bonding time.

GO COUGARS!

Roger stands in front of the peg board. He’s sorting his wrench sets, more as a distraction than for any practical purpose.

The door from the mudroom opens. Noah takes some tentative steps into the garage.

“Dad?” begins Noah. “Mom said you needed to see me?”

Roger hangs his 17 mm Pittsburg on the wall. “Yeah, bud. Have a seat for a second will you?”

He gestures to a wobbly old swiveling shop chair, its green vinyl seat cracking with age. Noah has a memory of the rickety old chair nearly falling apart last time he sat on it, so he opts to stand behind it and drape his arms over the chair back.

“D’you need help with something shop related?” Noah asks hesitantly. He can’t remember doing anything worthy of punishment, but he still can’t help but worry that he’s done something either wrong or embarrassing or both.

“No no, nothing like that.” Roger rests his hand on the work bench. “Look, bud. You’re…” he trails off. Noah waits as his father thinks through his next words.

“...your son?” Roger shakes his head. “Thirteen? Noah?”

“You’re old enough, I think,” continues Roger. He rubs the back of his neck. “Old enough to hear some things… about the Danville Cougars.”

“Oh,” says Noah, a bit surprised. His Dad loves talking football, but there’s something strange in the way Roger’s choosing his words. “Yeah. They play on Thanksgiving.”

“Every year, they do. It’s tradition. Listen to me: it’s the most natural thing in the world for you to love the Danville Cougars. I love the Cougars because your Gramps loved the Cougars. His dad loved the Cougars too. Everyone knows that we Becker men love the Cougars. That’s how these things tend to work. And I’m sure you catch some guff at school because of the Cougars.”

“Not really,” interjects Noah. “I mean a little, but mostly because of the whole 'cougar meaning older woman' thing.”

“You know about that, huh? The meaning of Cougars? Sweet gravy, did you grow up fast.” Roger scratches his greying stubble. “Well, you will continue to catch guff. The older you get, the more guff you might catch. And, gosh darn it, I want you to be prepared, even if it’s a bit awkward and unpleasant. People might make fun of you. So, it’s important to me that you know the truth.”

Noah nods, but his mind starts to wander to his Playstation.

Roger takes a deep breath. “They weren’t always called the Cougars. Before that, they were known as the Danville Fightin’ Redmen.”

The son blinks. So that’s what this is about? “Oh. Yeah. I can see how that’s bad. Teacher says a lot of sports teams had derogatory names for indigenous people.”

“Teacher told you that, did she? But did she mention that before the Redmen, they were briefly called the Danville Brown Shirts?”

“No she didn’t. Why Brown Shirts?” asks Noah.

“Because it was better than the original name: the Danville Grand Dragons.”

Noah’s eyes bulge out. He can’t believe what he’s just heard. The words slip out: “Like the KKK?! Oh Jesus!”

Roger suddenly gets very rigid. “We do not take the Lord’s name in vain. Not in this house.”

“I’m sorry. I meant to say Jimminy but, uh, wow that’s really bad, Dad.”

“It is. And I’m not here to make excuses for it. The original owner made his money through some very unsavory dealings. I won’t go too far into those details. The team started out as a social club for ex-Confederate soldiers and slave catchers and sort of morphed into a sports club once football became popular. This was a long time ago - I’m just letting you know, man-to-man, the facts about our favorite football team so that you’re prepared. Facts like that the stadium is built on an Indian burial ground.”

Noah shifts his weight uncomfortably from foot to foot. “I think I remember hearing about that.”

“And that the team's practice and training facilities were built on the ashes of a women’s sanitarium that burned to the ground in a mysterious fire in 1897. Nobody knows how the inferno started, but everyone thought it was suspicious that Old Man Calhoun, the owner of the G-Dragons at the time, kept his wife there and that she mysteriously vanished after the fire.”

Noah picks at the flaking vinyl on the chair. “That’s, like, that’s straight out of a horror movie. That’s really weird.”

Roger takes a deep breath, as though a huge relief has washed over him. “That was very difficult for me to share but important for you to know. I’m sure your mother’s told you that I’m not very good at sharing, so thank you for listening to that. It must not have been easy to hear.

“Much like how it’s not easy to hear that, in the 1970’s, the medical and training staff were secretly collecting fluid samples from some of the star players and selling them to known eugenicist researchers at universities around the world on the black market.”

“What do you mean by fluids? Was this, like, a sex thing?”

“No no no,” Roger reassures him. “That’s a completely different scandal. The sex scandal happened in the early 2000’s. No, this was decades ago. I’m talking about blood and spinal fluids and a little bit of bile.”

“But so there was a sex scandal?” asks Noah.

“Yeah but that’s just pro sports, that happens all the time.” Roger leans against the workbench. “You’ve heard me talk about Herbie Rotwald, right? Famous Quarterback from the 1990’s? The Galluping Galumph? Three time league MVP? His statue sits out in front of the stadium?”

Noah frowns. “Oh no. Not Herbie Rotwald. You bought me a replica jersey of his that I’ve been wearing for every game the last five years. What did he do? Steroids?”

“No, the team never did steroids. As far as we know, at least. The only performance enhancing substance they ever did was cocaine. Unless you count blood transfusions, which is what I was just about to tell you. Herbie Rotwald used to completely replace all of his blood with the blood of a new seventeen year old boy before every big game. The boy had to be taller than five foot ten, and he had to be a redhead. For years, everybody thought there was a vampire or a serial killer in Danville. Turns out it was just Herbie, who as it happens was also a serial killer.”

Noah rubs his face. “And this is the team that’s playing at noon on Thanksgiving.”

“Yup.”

“And you’re planning to watch them play.”

“Every year.”

“Dad,” began Noah. “I know you love football, and I love spending any time I can with you that doesn’t involve cleaning the gutters or hearing you lecture about prog rock. But we could do literally anything else with our time and energy. Why do we support this team if they’ve been involved in so many terrible things in the past?”

“That’s a good question,” Roger allowed. “But you have to remember: every team is like this. What are we going to do? Not watch football? I’d rather open and operate a beach resort in Siberia.

“But listen to me now because this is important.” He put his hand on his son’s shoulder, his sincere eyes peering deep into Noah, ‘’No matter what we discover about the past and no matter what terrible, embarrassing and morally objectionable things they do in the future - and we’re hearing hints of a sports betting scandal on the horizon that involves human trafficking - please please please just remember this one thing: 

“For all of our sins at least we’re not Ohio State fans.”

 Sorry, as a Michigander and a Wolverine, I couldn’t help myself. Please forgive me. They play on Saturday after all. 

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT 

I wrote a couple of things this past month! If you missed them, or if you would like to revisit them again, here are some links:

BARGAINING IN THE LATE CRETACEOUS

A conspicuously named brontosaurus tries to navigate the politics of an oncoming asteroid, to mixed results!

OF LOVE AND WORMS

A journalist interviews a journalist about her love affair with the worm inside a Politician who may hold a passing resemblance to a certain Secretary of HHS!

COMING UP!

On Tuesday December the 2nd, the first bits of the Gospel of Travis arrive! For those of you on the subscriber’s list, expect an email! For those of you who are not, check back at the website or, you know, subscribe. Which leads me to…

If you liked this newsletter (you have impeccable taste) and know someone who might like all or part of this, please forward it to them! I put this stuff out there in the hopes that people will enjoy it. The more the merrier.

If you would like to be informed when more posts like this hits the old website and have not already become a subscriber, please consider becoming a subscriber! It’s free (unless you’d like to pay, you absolute hero you). The algorithm is a fickle beast and the Face Eaters prefer you look at content from their big cash daddies, so the best way to stay in the know is by joining the email list.

If you would like to support me without signing up for a monthly paid subscription, first of all, let me say: well hello there. I like the cut of your jib. Anyway, you can do that by sending me a small donation at the link. Money goes to site maintenance and then invariably to childcare and/or coffee. In return, you will be the recipient of me batting my eyes at you in appreciation.

That’s it! Newsletter complete! Thank you so much for reading! The next newsletter will be before Christmas where we will succumb, as we must do, to the seductive siren call of the all powerful Yule log. 

Have a great Thanksgiving!