There is some debate in my household about the best way to prepare a sweet potato casserole.
Martha, my wife, is adamant that no sweet potato casserole with an ounce of self-pride would be caught dead adorned in mini marshmallows.
Having grown up in New Jersey, where nothing is done until it is overdone, I disagree. It is the mini marshmallows, I argue, that elevate the sweet potato casserole from humble side dish to culinary confection. It’s an argument we’ve been pursuing for a quarter of a century without resolve.
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Thanksgiving is my favorite American holiday, one of the few whose spirit remains largely intact from its founding—plus football. It’s a day when family and friends gather for the purpose of expressing gratitude. What a lovely notion. I was traveling this weekend, and the airports were filled with young parents struggling with strollers, college students in sweatpants with duffel bags stuffed full of dirty laundry, soldiers and sailors, every kind of American making their way home. I didn’t hear a single person discussing politics, which was something to be thankful for all on its own.
My college-aged daughter got home a couple days ago, joining her older brother. Our little family is complete for a few days, an increasingly rare occurrence, and so I have some gratitude for that.
Today we’re going to see Wicked and have a good meal at a favorite local restaurant before spending the day tomorrow cooking and indulging the whims of whoever controls the Spotify. (I am going to try very hard to keep control of the Spotify out of my wife’s hands because if I do not, the entire day will be spent listening to the same five Norah Jones songs on repeat.) Sometime in the late afternoon, we will assemble in the dining room with heavy plates and we will offer thanks.
The election broke a lot of people’s hearts this month, mine included. As I’ve written before, it wasn’t the fact of Donald Trump’s victory that upset me so much; it’s that we chose his nihilistic, snatch-and-grab vision for the nation over one that sought to tackle tough problems together. Trumpism is a rejection of the America in which I used to believe. It’s an America powered by resentment, not gratitude, which makes it doubly stinging to give thanks this year.
Even so, butter tastes better than bile. And I don’t have to look very hard to find things for which I am thankful. First, I will always be thankful to be an American. Not because I am blindly patriotic but because I know what this nation gave my family.
They were immigrants, prevented by law from owning property or operating a business for no reason other than their religion. They left a nation of restrictions for one of opportunities. Three generations later, one of their descendants dropped out of college to tour this big country as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. As my ancestral compatriot Yakov Smirnov made millions observing, “What a country!”
American public schools taught me the good and bad of this nation. I learned about the Boston Tea Party and the Civil War, which was fought over the “peculiar institution” of slavery, not because of some vague nation of “states’ rights”. I learned about the Trail of Tears and Pearl Harbor and Martin Luther King Jr. And I learned that loving this country sometimes means standing up to it.
Although I could not disagree more with their vote, that’s what Donald Trump’s fans believed they were doing in electing their man, and that is what the rest of us will do to oppose him when he, again, crop-dusts the Constitution.
I’m thankful that Matt Gaetz will not be our nation’s attorney general. That Alex Jones is broke. That Steve Bannon spent four months in the clink and somehow emerged looking even more rosacea-faced than when he went in. And I’m grateful that Rudy Giuliani will one day go to his grave with his reputation as forever ruined as his dye job. The reasons for my gratitude may be petty but on a feasting day, pettiness can be delicious.
More personally speaking, I’m grateful that I still know right from wrong. Grateful that my kids are good people. I’m grateful for friends, and for laughter even when things don’t feel that funny. I’m grateful for continued innovations in snack food technologies; they really nailed it with Takis. And, of course, I’m grateful for being a very handsome young man.
My feeling is we should enjoy Thanksgiving 2024 as much as we can because Thanksgiving 2025 might look quite different. How much will Trump Tariffs raise the cost of turkey? What will happen to all of Macy’s DEI floats; can we get rid of Snoopy’s black spot? And what kind of cranberry sauce will they be serving in the mass detention centers?
The thing about sweet potato casserole that my wife doesn’t seem to understand is that the mini marshmallows aren’t meant to supplant the natural sweetness of the yams, but to complement them. Yes, sweet can complement sweet! Has she never heard of chocolate-covered Gummi bears?!?
We will almost certainly continue going round and round on this topic until one of us (me, if you believe the actuarial tables) falls over dead. The point is that we have never agreed on this subject and never will. But we’ve gotten through it together. And we’ve gotten through worse. We have held fast all these years and we will continue to do so. All of us.
Enjoy your holiday, friends.
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