Do you celebrate Thanksgiving?

bigsis144

Fri, Nov 18 2016, 11:01 am

I certainly talk to my kids about gratitude for our country on Thanksgiving, but we don't make a big-dinner deal out of it.

If we had family in town, I'd love to get together with them, but as it stands, all of our family lives far away, and with just 2 adults and 2 [very picky] kids, making a meal that's more than a symbolic turkey cutlet with some baked sweet potatoes is too much of a hassle for a weeknight (I've never gotten the day off for Thanksgiving from any job I've worked).

Sometimes I push off the celebration to Shabbos, and it's still not worth it to go all-out with a zillion different dishes. How much food are we realistically going to eat? So I'll pick 2-3 from the repertoire each year (turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie, cranberry cobbler, mashed potatoes, etc.).

debsey

Fri, Nov 18 2016, 11:32 am

We used to when I was growing up. Now, I don't cook anything special (though I used to get the free turkey with purchase from Shoprite and then cook it for whatever shabbos was coming up next) I do have a conversation with my kids about the concept of giving thanks and how it's something that should be done every day, not just once a year.

amother

Aqua

Fri, Nov 18 2016, 11:46 am

5mom wrote:

The pilgrims at Plymouth Rock had a very "Jewish" Thanksgiving. They recited תהילים קז, which is one of thanks (in Israel today, it is said on Yom Ha'atzmaut) and, because they had books by one Henry Ainsworth, a Hebraic scholar, whose notes on Tehillim קז include a reference to the Rambam requiring ברכת הגומל, the Puritans also said a prayer of thanksgiving.

Just from a historical point of view, ironically, the Pilgrims were actually quite intolerant. In fact, the one Jew who tried to make his way into their settlement, was sent back to Holland.

They were very happy to avail themselves of the tolerance that coming to a new land offered to THEM, but they did not extend that same tolerance towards others.

sweetpotato

Fri, Nov 18 2016, 12:05 pm

We do celebrate Thanksgiving, in the sense that my in-laws have Thanksgiving dinner every year and we go. My husband really loves the holiday, but mainly because he loves turkey. I decided that if my in-laws stop making Thanksgiving, I'll do it for Shabbos instead (turkey dinner Shabbat). I don't love the idea of making a huge fancy meal on Thursday, a non-Jewish holiday, and then a lesser meal on Friday for Shabbos the next day. It feels weird.

I also feel like a lot of frum Jews have the sense of "what's the big deal about Thanksgiving" because we have a big meal each week and Thanksgiving is often just a month or less after the chagim end. I can understand that sentiment.

My kids go to a Chabad preschool and they learn about Thanksgiving and have a special lunch in school. And they're off on Thanksgiving and the following day.

Fri, Nov 18 2016, 12:38 pm

The modern American holiday of Thanksgiving was instituted during the Civil War by Abraham Lincoln. It was a familiar idea, as harvest festivals and thanksgiving events had been held throughout history in many cultures, but our holiday is at best only remotely related to the Pilgrims.

tichellady

Fri, Nov 18 2016, 1:09 pm

debsey wrote:

we are supposed to remember yitziat mitzrayim every day but we still have leil seder once a year (or twice). I think thanksgiving is a similar idea- obviously we should always be thankful but spending one day to ritualize that as a community is impactful

5mom

Sat, Nov 19 2016, 12:18 pm

amother wrote:

Very true. I wasn't saying that the Pilgrims were tolerant of Jews or Judaism. The point was that the earliest Thanksgiving feast was derived from Jewish sources.

Although the holiday wasn't officially added to the calendar until Lincoln, it was observed all along. It's similar to the way that the Star Spangled Banner didn't officially become the American national anthem until 1931, even though it was widely sung as a patriotic song long before.

Amarante

Sat, Nov 19 2016, 8:18 pm

5mom wrote:

Anthropologically that isn't correct as every agricultural culture marks the harvest with some kind of harvest feast just as every culture seems to mark the Winter Solstice with a holiday which has lights as some kind of aspect.

I personally think celebrating national holidays is important in America as it is those kinds of things which bring disparate cultures together in our diverse society. What kind of message does it send when people deliberately remain separate from the non-sectarian aspect of the country in which they are citizens and live.

What great thing about Thanksgiving is how each culture tends to bring their own twist into it by either serving side dishes from their ancestry or revising the traditional Thanksgiving dishes into ones that utilize their cooking traditions. My Italian friends serve stuffing (for example) with Italian throwbacks and my Latina friends makes arroz con pollo (in addition to the turkey). It would be very sad if every diverse ethnic group in the US no longer celebrated Thanksgiving because it wasn't part of their own historical tradition.

MagentaYenta

Sat, Nov 19 2016, 8:38 pm

5mom wrote:

Actually historians think that the thanksgiving ordered by Gov. Bradford had its roots in the time that the Pilgrims were waiting in Leiden Germany and a thanksgiving was observed. It was quite common for the governor prior to Bradford to choose days of feasts or fasts. By the time Bradford ordered his thanksgiving to be observed, things had stabilized a bit for the colonists. They now had adequate food supplies and were recovering from the deaths of over half the Pilgrims. In his journals Bradford wrote that he thought the feast would be a positive note for his community who was facing a harsh winter. Jews had nothing to do with this. (And contrary to some Jewish sources, Bradford declared thanksgiving on 11/29/1623, not 1621.)

By the time Roosevelt made Thanksgiving a national holiday Americans were already celebrating in their own communities. Different states and towns had different thanksgiving dates. Same with different ethnic and religious groups. Roosevelt thought that consolidating these holidays into one official date would benefit the economy.

etky

Sun, Nov 20 2016, 3:16 am

Thanksgiving was huge in DH's family and still is. The only other yearly occasion that warranted (almost) mandatory attendance of the entire extended family and which generated such a fuss was the Seder.
For me, growing up, it was much lower key simply because we had no extended family to get together with. For our small immediate family we'd do something symbolic - not a full size turkey but rather turkey parts or something with turkey in it for a main course. I remember eating in the dining room - which we did on Shabbat and chagim - rather than the kitchen, which also marked the meal as somewhat festive. Sometimes we'd watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade on TV. That was about it.
Here in Israel we started out marking Thanksgiving in the early years of our aliyah (I've been here over 36 years) but it was very out of sync with what everyone else was doing and it quickly became too much of a bother. Once or twice we went to a Thanksgiving dinner in one of the hotels and a few other times we made a meal with other ex-pat friends. That also eventually fell by the wayside as life b"h got very busy.
Now my nod to Thanksgiving will usually include a Thanksgiving-ish dish or two that get served on Friday night. We still feel the 'chag' though because DH always calls his family while they are gathered for the meal and we are sent the annual Thanksgiving family photo.
DH still gets very nostalgic for Thanksgivings past Sad

Iymnok

Sun, Nov 20 2016, 3:54 am

We did growing up for Grandma.
After she died, the turkey at an amazing price was the shabbos seuda with more relatives as guests since everyone had enough time off to drive in for shabbos.

Rav Moshe does not see how it is muttar within the laws of "Ubechukoseihem lo seleichu".
The turkey is arbitrary since there was other game to eat and their survival of that winter didn't make much of a difference to the existence of this country.
It is not celebrated in public, so to forgo it would not cause animosity from our neighbors.

Sun, Nov 20 2016, 7:50 am

Rabbi Michael Broyde wrote a detailed analysis of the responsa literature and related issues concerning Thanksgiving, published in the journal "Halacha and Contemporary Society," 30 (1995), 42-65.

Excerpts abound on the web, but the full text can be found here:
http://www.tfdixie.com/special/thanksg.htm

PinkFridge

Sun, Nov 20 2016, 8:06 am

Well, if I were really doing 21st century Thanksgiving, besides the cooking, I'd go to the parade, then listen to or watch the pregame show, and then, to commemorate the Pilgrims and our founding fathers having fought for the right for grown men to inflict severe body injury and possibly TBI with long-lasting repercussions, watch the game itself, while fressing on turkey and pie.

And I might draw the straw to be the designated driver to bring the family member who's waiting in the best black Friday line a serving of the meal.

IOW, I think that if one does something, anything, to celebrate or even does some thoughtful contemplation, one is more than yotzei Cheers

And on behalf of many of our members, and others I know IRL, I'm grateful for you that you have this opportunity to get together with family in a meaningful, non-confrontational way and hope you enjoy!

zaq

Sun, Nov 20 2016, 3:46 pm

amother wrote:

Z

Quite true, but that does nothing to tarnish the shine of the holiday itself. We don't have to make the holiday about the Grim Pills at all, but about our gratitude to this country, which despite its many flaws has still been one of the best host countries our people have ever known, at least until now. (Not that I forgive FDR for closing the borders to refugees from the Holocaust and sending them back to die, nor am I very sanguine about what the country will be like with Donald ~~Duck~~ Trump as president.)