Is There a Holiday for Kvetching?

I know I should be writing an inspiring Thanksgiving post like so many bloggers will be doing this week, detailing all of the things for which I am grateful. God knows I do feel filled with gratitude for so many aspects of my life. Is it my natural rebelliousness, then, that makes me want to bitch and moan on the very day that everyone else is thanking the universe? Perhaps it’s the specter of the Evil Eye that prevents me from engaging in unabashed expressions of thankfulness. Or possibly just my wild mood swings which have been running rampant all week. Will heavy doses of tryptophan tomorrow exacerbate those? I think the real reason for my need to complain is that kvetching and gratitude are somehow so interconnected in my Jewish psyche that I simply can’t do one without the other.

While I do have issues with the Christmas hysteria that is about to swallow up the Western hemisphere, I really do like Thanksgiving. I’m looking forward to our gathering with family and friends and my 18-lb. organic free range turkey is brining as we speak. I have great memories of the Thanksgivings of my youth, most spent at my grandparents’ Lake Shore Drive apartment in Chicago. Some orthodox Jews don’t make a big deal out of such a secular holiday but my family always went at it whole hog, if you’ll pardon the expression. My grandmother would buy a kosher turkey and baste it with schmaltz (no butter allowed with meat dishes in a kosher home). We’d eat most of the traditional foods except for the particularly goyishe dishes like green bean casserole with Durkee’s fried onions on top, and it was a fun time for the most part. I don’t remember ever engaging in any formal expression of thanks, though, I think we were too busy stuffing our gullets. The four-day weekend was always a treat and, being the pop culture addict that I was, I always looked forward to the Thanksgiving-themed episodes of my favorite TV shows.

Who can forget the “Bewitched” where Aunt Clara, eager to see her Pilgrim friends on Thanksgiving Day, accidentally transports the Stephens family and neighbor Gladys Kravitz back to 17th century Plymouth. Ironically, it is Darrin the mortal who gets accused of being a witch when someone sees him lighting a match. Soon he is on trial for witchcraft with none other than Miles Standish presiding. Only Aunt Clara has the power to get them out of there but she can’t remember the spell. Samantha acts as Darrin’s defense attorney (as if that would have been allowed in the 17th century) and successfully gets him off just as Clara whisks them back to their home at 1164 Morning Glory Circle.

Do you remember the episode of “The Brady Bunch” where Greg directs a film about the First Thanksgiving starring his entire family? (I was hopelessly in love with Eve Plumb’s Jan Brady at the time—she had just gotten her braces off and I thought she looked so cute in her Pilgrim gear.) There was also a memorable Thanksgiving episode of “All in the Family” in which all hell breaks lose when Mike Stivic informs Archie during dinner that they have no intention of baptizing their son Joey or exposing him to religion at all. Whenever I see old episodes of that show I realize how my own sensibilities are changing. Archie Bunker may have been a bigot, but at least he was honest about it and he underwent the biggest transformation over the years. Rob Reiner’s Meathead was such a knee-jerk liberal that his point of view now comes across as shrill and insincere. No wonder he and Gloria eventually divorced.

I enjoyed “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” in which Charlie Brown invites the whole gang over for a Thanksgiving feast prepared by Snoopy and Woodstock. When they make toast and popcorn for dinner, the children are horrified and they blame Charlie Brown. It is only Marcie’s impassioned speech about the true meaning of Thanksgiving that saves the day (and prevents Charlie Brown from being completely ostracized). I never identified that much with the wise-beyond-their-years Linus and Marcie. I was more like self-deprecating Charlie Brown with a strong dose of Peppermint Pattie’s surly cluelessness thrown in for good measure.

I remember at least two Thanksgiving episodes of my favorite 1970s show, “The Waltons.” In the first, John-Boy has an accident in the sawmill that causes severe vision problems just as he’s supposed to take the scholarship exam for college. Turns out he needs major surgery or he might go blind which causes all sorts of Turkey Day drama. In the subplot, the moonshine-making Baldwin sisters have enlisted Jason Walton’s help to whip up a new batch of “the recipe” to send to President Roosevelt as a Thanksgiving gift and the dotty sisters get it in their head that they want to adopt Jason which of course does not sit well with Jason’s parents’ John and Olivia. The other Thanksgiving episode is one of those reunion movies in which the characters were catapulted into the future with no regard for the chronology of the original series. This movie takes place in November 1963. John-Boy is now a TV news reporter and you can only guess what traumatic national event he covers in Dallas that month, just before Thanksgiving.

I can’t remember whether “The Partridge Family” ever had a Thanksgiving episode, but Mrs. Partridge, aka Shirley Jones, has resurfaced this month to beg Americans to forsake their traditional turkey dinner. “I have a special fondness for birds—and not just partridges,” says Jones in a new video produced by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. “All birds feel pain and fear,” she says. I’ll be kind and not describe the images of turkey farms in this video considering most of us have yet to shove our birds into the oven. I hope animal lovers will forgive me when I say how grateful I am that we will NOT be feasting on “Tofurky” tomorrow, as Jones suggests. At least our turkey didn’t spend its life in a cramped cage—it got to roam free and eat wholesome grains before someone wrung its neck for our dinner table. Oh, Shirley. Don’t you remember the “Partridge Family” episode in which you were all dressed up in chicken suits hawking fried chicken?

Oh God, I’m doing it again, aren’t I? Taking another sidetrip into the cathode ray tube that doubles as my brain to avoid looking at my own problems in the here and now. I guess I don’t feel like publicly kvetching on Thanksgiving after all. Let’s just say it’s been a challenging time for me lately as I come to terms with the fact that my fear-based way of looking at the world is no longer serving me very well, in fact it’s driving me batty—something’s gotta change. When I first started therapy I thought that awareness was 9/10 of the battle. As soon as I started realizing what I was doing to cause pain to myself and others, I’d be able to stop doing it and all would be resolved, right? Not hardly. Being aware of negative behavior patterns IS a necessary step towards growth, but when you achieve this awareness without yet having the ability to substitute those patterns with something healthier, it actually feels worse (at first) than being unaware of the behaviors to begin with. Does that make any sense or am I starting to spout New Age mumbo jumbo? I realize that it’s hard to talk about my “issues” without really getting into them which I can’t bear to do right now—I have too many vegetables to cut. Besides, all this negative talk so does not fit my Blog Character!

As I sink into all the good parts of the Thanksgiving holiday, I will also express a heap of gratitude to everyone who has ever stopped by this blog, even if was just to search out things like “mary ellen walton nude,” “six feet under female rabbi,” “the blisters chicago band tweedy,” and “one tree hill lesbian kiss” (all real searches that led to my site in the past hour). I appreciate every hit and every comment, and every opportunity to blabber on and on about topics that I find interesting. And now on to the mass genocide of the Meleagris gallopa, better known as the much maligned (according to Shirley Jones) Thanksgiving turkey.

Comments

[OldOldLady Of The Hills]

Enjoy that bird, Danny...no matter what Shirley says...I do dearly hope your Thanksgiving Day is filled with the warmth of family and friends and the great great food I KNOW you will be eating...Do give my love to all who might need a little extra, tomorrow....and HUGE ENORMOUS HUGS to you and Kendall.

[Pearl]

happy thanksgiving, danny, to you and your family.

p.s. personally i like your kvetching, as i'm known around my parts as a consummate kvetcher, too.

[Mark Daniels]

However you've chosen to mark this day, Danny, I hope that it's been a good one. God bless you and yours!

Mark Daniels

[Rosie]

happy thanksgiving, danny!!

there is a holiday for kvetching...it's called festivus. (remember the 'airing of grievences?')

[justin kreutzmann]

I do hope you had a good feast of friends (OK, yes I am reading a Jim Morrison book right now).

And I do want to thank you for reminding me that the Brady Bunch episode with Greg directing a Thanksgiving movie made want to be film director...or maybe it's just the tryptophan talking!

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

Four hits from searches in one hour! That's impressive. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving, Danny. And keep kvetching, and reviewing movies, and telling us about your adventures in obscure corners of medialand, it's lots of fun for us readers.

[nappy40]

I hope you had a great holiday, Danny. And who really eats the green beans and onion caserole?

[Neil]

I went to a Thanksgiving dinner with a non-Jewish family for the first time in my life last night. And they actually held hands, bowed their heads, and said grace -- just like on TV! It was so cool.

And then all the men separated from the women and watched a million games of football in the living room -- just like they do on TV!

I don't watch football. I hung out with the women in the kitchen, so I'm not sure if I will be invited back again.