A Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving

Did you know that the only female Pilgrims left alive after those first awful years of sickness and starvation were four women and two teen girls? It is said that those six women cooked the food for the entire settlement and all of their guests on feast day! Can you believe it?

I can and I can relate to those ladies.

Let me just say this right now: I have a love/hate relationship with Thanksgiving. I love my family and friends, and it makes me happy when we are all gathered together. BUT, because I have the gift of being able to cook a turkey, all the side dishes AND desserts, and have them all done at the same time, historically I’m the one who ends up cooking the entire Thanksgiving meal by myself.

By the end of the day, my kitchen is a mess and I’m beyond exhausted. I have no energy left to be thankful for anything or anyone and I just want everyone to go home and let me rest. Hardly what our ancestors had in mind for a day of thanks.

I have a hazy memory from my childhood of that famous Norman Rockwell painting of Thanksgiving and I’ve been trying to recreate it ever since. I remembered it having a happy family gathered around a table filled with scrumptious holiday food, and a smiling matriarch sitting peacefully at the end of the table. I’d joke about having a Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving, but I always seemed to fall short.

This year I’m trying again. I announced to everyone that I will cook the turkey and dressing and that is all. I have it on good authority that my son has decided to make Chex mix (because I’m sure THAT is a traditional Pilgrim food!) and my middle daughter announced that she is bringing cranberry sauce, and then she quietly whispered, “From a can.”

So, our meal this year will be eclectic and rather bizarre. I will have to remind myself (numerous times) that the Pilgrims’ meals were probably made up of whatever they had on hand. I imagine they were so grateful to be alive that matching dishes and a perfect menu were far from their minds.

And you know, a funny thing happened when I looked up that famous Norman Rockwell painting that I’ve been trying to recreate all these years. My memory had been faulty. I was shocked to find that the table isn’t laden with food. There’s a turkey, celery and a fruit bowl. And that’s it! The leaves aren’t even cut off the celery and the fruit isn’t cut up. And while grandma at the head of the table is smiling, she also looks a bit tired to me now. Plus, that family around the table? Some of them look like trouble. If you look really close you can also see what looks like canned cranberry jelly!

All those years of trying to achieve a Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving only to find that I’ve been doing fine all this time. I’ve even surpassed it. There’s a lot more food on my table and I at least cut the leaves off my celery sticks. Sure, my table may have some weird additions (like Chex Mix) but the gathering together of my loved ones is a joy like no other.

I can relax now and stop trying to recreate something that only existed in my own mind. Norman Rockwell knew before I did that a perfect table of food was less important than the crazy family members you pack around your table.

This year I will spend less time striving for perfection and more time thanking God for his many blessings. Oh, and eating Chex mix.