shoveling the turkey and stuffing the snow
As Home for the Holidays begins for the penultimate time... and I imagine every time I finish with one of these movies for seven days that I will never see it again, this is it. It is probably not true for some of them, but it is an interesting way to think about it. Anyway, as Home for the Holidays begins for the second-to-last time, as this month of Thanksgiving-related films comes to an end, it occurs to me that I have not spent much time on the literal aspects of the holiday. I have talked about meaning, I have compared our animosity-laden relationship with our family members to the same between colonists and natives in the pre-United States America. I have talked about family gathering in general and holiday traditions in the abstract. But never the concrete. (And this, the day after the holiday.) The turkey, the mashed potatoes, the cranberry sauce, and whatever else crowds the table. Writing for Science News Letter back in 1951, Watson Davis explains, “Even today when a...