Do you or your family make any special dishes for the holidays?
The Macy’s Thanksgiving parade is over. Santa has rolled down 34th Street. I watched with tears in my eyes. I do every year. That means after today, the Christmas holiday season is officially here.
Today is a holiday too though. And really the one that is focused mainly on food. I don’t know what the definition of “special” is for this prompt. But I know that whatever my husband cooks is pretty special. He has perfected the menu for today. He contemplates changing it up every year, but he always settles on our old favorites. Green bean casserole, sage and sausage dressing, braised red cabbage. Alongside the classic mashed potatoes and gravy, turkey, and cranberry relish. This all comes after we snack on cheese and crackers, a relish tray, and my mom’s Roka blue cheese vegetable dip.
Yesterday, as Josh and I were sitting in our backyard with the dogs, both of us home from work early, he referred to today as a “celebration”. And that struck me. Historically, we could say today is a celebration of that first feast with the pilgrims and Native Americans hundreds of years ago. But it got me thinking what he and I could be celebrating today.
Since his mom passed away four years ago, we have celebrated these holidays with just the two of us. We’re fine with that. We’re both introverted and anti-social to varying degrees and so cooking a meal for ourselves is our ideal way of honoring the holiday.
Thinking of today as a “celebration” is interesting. This is a day to be thankful. For me, I’d like to celebrate and be thankful for the fact that it’s been a good year. I was never so happy to see a year end as I was last year. The first half of the year had me struggling to survive my job. Then in the second half, I was embracing the freedom from it and adjusting to a new job. A new life. This year, I’ve had the entire year to continue feeling the freedom to be myself. And honestly, it’s taken this whole year to figure out who “myself” really is. What I found out is that I really like who I am now. Much more than I ever have before.
For Josh, I don’t want to speak for him, but perhaps his celebration is just that he has gotten through another year at his job. He’s that much closer to retirement now. I feel like his job is personally determined to kill him like my old one was. But he’s hanging in there. We still have each other, and we have two amazing rescue dogs (and one ornery cat and one geriatric cat who probably shouldn’t still be alive, but is). I don’t see these animals as my kids like some people do, but I love them and care for them as much as I would human children. And really, maybe that’s what we need to celebrate today. Our thankfulness for our little family. Two humans, and 4 animals, living together…not in peace and harmony, there’s nothing truly peaceful about it, if there was, we wouldn’t need the baby gates keeping the dogs and cats apart. But we are living together in mutual love. We love them, they love us, and Josh and I love each other. That’s really all that matters. And that’s definitely a good reason to celebrate.
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