My Least Favorite Holiday

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Thanksgiving is my least favorite holiday.

That deserves qualification. “Least favorite holiday” is for me a bit like saying, “Least favorite delivery method for Diet Coke.” I love Diet Coke however it arrives but getting my favorite drink from the fountain at McDonald’s ranks ahead of having it from a glass bottle, which is preferable to having it from a can, which is of course better than having it from a plastic container. I will still enjoy the last of these -- and I will still enjoy what happens tomorrow.

Christmas, my favorite holiday, is an entire season. My mother’s family celebrated it from December 24 to the Epiphany; my more scrupulous Episcopalian cousins mark it from Christmas Day to Candlemas; Starbucks seems to think it corresponds to the entire duration of the college football campaign. Regardless, the joy is not all compressed into one single evening or morning, much less a single meal.

The Fourth of July, my second favorite holiday, offers fireworks, long days, swimming, bunting, jingoism, and a focus more on fun than food.

Easter, which ranks third in my affections, offers children in pastels who run across grass, shrieking and cooing in search of treasures. It offers marshmallow peeps, and a story of rebirth that can be repurposed to meet the demands and hopes of almost any theology.

Thanksgiving has always struck me as a frantic rush, a desperate push to pull together a massive meal that will be consumed in a single frenzied hour. Perhaps it’s the legacy of having been married five times, to five very different women who each took Thanksgiving very seriously and who put immense pressure on themselves to produce a sublime experience for all their guests. Throw in two more girlfriends, and over the years, I have been a turkey day sous chef to seven different women with whom I shared a bed and a life. My reassurances to each of these that everything would be just perfect even if the turkey was dry, or the stuffing too soggy, or the pie crusts too limp? Those reassurances never went over well.

All five of my ex-wives loved Thanksgiving. All five considered it the holiday most charged with obligation to “get things right” and “make sure everyone gets along.” All five had a recipe of which they were proudest – or several. Victoria, my final bride and a superb cook, often made entire meals – the turkey, the trimmings, six or seven sides, and the pies. It was her annual offering, an extraordinary feat in which she took justifiable pride but for which she suffered mightily in body and spirit in the days leading up to the holiday.

With most of these wives, I could never quite figure out when to stay out of the way, when to step up and take over without being asked, when to ask for instructions. I got very good at the washing up after, but the preparations were – over and over again – a tense, serious, joy-annihilating affair.

My second father-in-law, a retired Navy pilot, offered some advice. “You’re probably going to get yelled at anyway, so just get in there and do what needs to be done.” Jim had had exactly one wife, and years of experience figuring out “what needed to be done.” As his newly anointed son-in-law, I didn’t find the second part helpful, but I came to accept the brutal wisdom of the first. If you can’t do what needs doing, you can at least absorb some anger and fear.

When Eira and I belonged to the Kabbalah Centre, and we were surrounded by Orthodox Jews and Israelis who celebrated neither Christmas nor Easter, I began to understand Thanksgiving somewhat differently. For those who are not culturally Christian or who find the swaggering patriotism of Independence Day to be brazen and off-putting, Thanksgiving is the one holiday they can both understand and embrace. For a few years I watched a whole series of Israeli expats absolutely throw themselves into preparing turkey feasts, often offering Mediterranean twists on the American tradition. (It is also quite easy to do a glatt kosher Thanksgiving meal, as virtually every traditional item can be prepared without dairy.). Watching religiously observant friends from Haifa or Kfar Saba find a way to marinate in this very American holiday? That was fun.

My favorite Thanksgiving of all came in 2013. I was in a dual-diagnosis rehab in Malibu, heavily medicated, still in complete shock at how quickly and completely I had lain waste not only to my career, but to my family’s security. Heloise was four, David only eighteen months old. Eira, who had not yet told me that she planned to seek a divorce, picked up a complete kosher Thanksgiving meal from a deli on Pico. She packed the food in a cooler, strapped the children into their car seats, and drove up the PCH to collect her disgraced, bloated, shame-drenched husband. We had a picnic in Trancas Canyon Park, just down the hill from the rehab. David sat shyly on my lap and let me feed him. Heloise wanted only the rolls and the kosher pecan pie, not the turkey. Both children seemed wary.

I wanted everything. The antipsychotics I was on -- Abilify, Depakote, and Zyprexa, not supposed to be taken together but effective at quashing suicidality -- had rendered me docile, tearful, and ravenous. I had gained a huge amount of weight, and having jumped eight waist sizes in the space of two months, I lived in sweatpants. I finished everything Eira brought, and then lumbered onto the playground to get a few minutes with the children before returning to the ministrations of the rehab staff. I found I could push the kids on the swings still, and that was a comfort. My bloated body was alien to me, my old life was gone, my future bleak and terrifying, my disgrace all-encompassing, but oh, how wonderful to be able, if only for a moment, to give my son and daughter the very thing they wanted.

“Higher, papa!” cried Heloise, and I pushed harder; “Hoo hoo!” shouted David, his tone conveying he wanted the same as his sister, and soon I had them both soaring towards the gray and bleak sky. The fog shrouded the hills, but for a moment, it lifted from my brain. I was still a father, even now. I was still wanted. I was still needed. Eira had not brought the children here to eat Thanksgiving lunch with a bad and broken man – she had brought them to remember they had a papa, and to remind that papa he still had children, and that when a papa has children his choices narrow down to one thing: stay alive. You don’t get to go.

For so much of my life, gratitude had always been tinged with shame. From the time I was very small, I had always had this keen sense that I was the recipient of undeserved love and unmerited grace. If only they knew how wretched I really was, why they’d surely all run away. I had shown the world my wretchedness and done my best to drive them all away so that I could choose the end I was sure I deserved, and damn it all, on a Thanksgiving morning eleven years ago the mother of my children spoiled my self-loathing by packing up a glatt kosher turkey and a parve pecan pie and two squirmy children. She put them in the back of an SUV, and she drove them to tell me that I was still needed. It was another debt -- but one I could repay by staying. Pushing my children on those swings in Trancas Canyon Park, I felt a thankfulness I had never known, and a gratitude great enough to make me stay.