Thanksgiving was always my mother’s favorite holiday. It was near her birthday, she loved the family coming together, and gratitude was the lens through which she viewed her life. Even as she was dying, almost 13 years ago, she felt grateful. She felt thankful for all of the abundance she had experienced in her all too short 52 years of life. It is hard to think about Thanksgiving without immediately being flooded with her image and her energy in my mind and heart.
As Thanksgiving is approaching I have so many memories. Memories of going to my grandparents’ home in Philadelphia, memories of being on my father’s shoulders at a cold Thanksgiving parade, memories of watching the parade floats being filled with air as I joined the sea of other high school teens near the Museum of Natural History the night before Thanksgiving. I remember one Thanksgiving when my mother decided she would make a turkey-free Thanksgiving on the theory that she was hosting, she was vegetarian, and it was her birthday. That Thanksgiving, my relatives were outspoken about their acute deprivation, and spent the evening asking, “Where’s the turkey?” And then I have memories of those first Thanksgivings without my mother, looking around the dining room table and wondering how this holiday could ever feel good again without her.
Holidays are a time for memories and tradition. When I asked a group of parents at our last Kesher meeting about their experiences with Chanukah and Thanksgiving, they shared so many memories. Some were memories from childhood, but many also shared the efforts they have taken to create new rituals and traditions now that they are parents. They are thinking about how to create a sense of gratitude and appreciation amidst a culture of consumerism and self-absorption. They struggle with what it means, now that they are the “grown ups,” to take back these holidays, and to make them their own. Sometimes this means finding the appropriate balance, individuating from one’s family of origin while also remaining respectful to tradition and the older generations.
As Thanksgiving approaches I feel the fusion of my past and my present- I miss everyone who sat at my Thanksgiving table as a child while I also eagerly anticipate all of the new and re-cycled rituals that we have. This holiday offers me a chance to create a thread of continuity, to talk about my memories, to talk about my mother, to talk about how even with loss, even with disappointment: there is so much for which to be grateful. While Thanksgiving is not an explicitly Jewish holiday, it has always felt so consistent with Judaism – for it is all about gratitude and blessings. It is all about marking time and making it sacred. I do believe that rituals at their best are indeed about creating “a castle in time,” as Abraham Joshua Heschel describes. If we can take this holiday time to use rituals and traditions, big and small, I do believe it can become a part of a larger spiritual practice of appreciating our lives and being aware of all that surrounds us.
These traditions can be as small as having hot chocolate and watching the parade on TV or witnessing the floats being blown up on West 77th and 81st Street next Wednesday evening. It can be getting pancakes at the local diner, or calling a long-distance friend before Shabbat. If we can take these small moments and really focus on creating connection, we will hopefully be better practiced for that regular Tuesday morning when we are running late, oatmeal has just spilled all over the kitchen floor, and our kids are fighting about who sits in the middle chair!
Additionally, it is wonderful to think about how to make this holiday a time of giving, a time of reaching out beyond yourself. Pick up a wish list of a young child in our Families for Families program and clothe a needy little boy or girl (more information below), help at a soup kitchen, write a check to a cause that you care about, bring a can of food to a food pantry, visit a homebound elderly person through the Dorot program. If you can make this season about more than just how to negotiate sets of families conflicting traditions, and where to find the perfect pie, it will indeed be a time of thanks-giving.
Shabbat Shalom.
Ilana received her B.A. from Harvard College and a Master's Degree in Education from Bank Street College. She was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and now lives there with her husband and three children.
- Gratitude - October 31, 2014
- The Tower Of Babel - October 24, 2014
- The World Was Created For My Sake… I Am But Dust And Ashes - October 3, 2014