Everyone talks about this time of year as a calendar opportunity to give thanks, and I don’t quite get it. What I figure, year after year of people talking about all the traveling they have to do, the traffic, the annoying family members, and the fact that The Today Show has both hosts reporting from traveling hotspots: Meredith in Atlanta Airport and Matt downtown at Grand Central Station, only proves that all that really comes with this holiday, is stress.
And here I am having panic attacks about cooking a five-course meal. Are there even any turkeys left in Manhattan grocery stores? I wouldn’t know, because I haven’t even started shopping yet. And that’s the thing - throughout all of this, sold out trains and delayed planes and a turkey at 350 degrees for three hours – it is seemingly only after overcoming these obstacles that we’re supposed then come to a spiritual clarity of thankfulness.
Whatever happened to being thankful that things were easy? Perhaps this kind of bitter clarity can only come from living in a city where everything is, all of the time, difficult - difficult with money, with living, with commuting, with meeting a decent man. So why should I spend the day slaving under the false pretense of thanks? Well I’m not this year. This year I’ll eat my turkey not thinking about thanks and pilgrims and those cut-out cardboard turkeys in the shape of a hand – no, I’ll just enjoy it and this city and how I've made it this far.
By all means New Yorkers should do this more often. The smart ones have figured it out and won’t be leaving the city tomorrow. They’ll stay up late, like me, and walk over to the west side and watch them rehearse the parade and blow up the floats. They’ll look at the day once removed knowing in their hearts what everyone has yet to catch on to - that giving thanks just once a year, and going through hell to get it, is highly overrated.
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