Happy Thanksgiving

I have had the mental image of Alex doing the same "giddy glee" pose Sarah uses for a long time now, and I've finally capitalized. Anyway!

Thanksgiving, befitting its place on the calendar, has always been the awkward middle child of the three big holidays the end of the year brings. Halloween stands out by virtue of being so different. Christmas overshadows everything else. Thanksgiving kind of gets lost in the shuffle, but nonetheless I have some memories of it.

The number one Thanksgiving memory for me is the yearly agony of having to wait so long for Thanksgiving dinner. It took longer to prepare - far longer - than a normal dinner, and of course we couldn't ruin our appetites with snacks. The result was having to wait several hours longer than usual for a meal - but at least the uniqueness of it made it all worthwhile.

Closely following this is, of course, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I didn't know why Thanksgiving managed to stand alongside the Fourth of July as one of only two major holidays so closely associated with parades, but I didn't mind. When it came to watching the show, I cared about one thing and one thing only - the floats. Huge inflatable representations of my favorite cartoon characters, larger than life, right there on TV. The floats with costumed characters and crazy productions were cool, too. I was mesmerized, and whenever they cut away to one of the concert numbers or other non-float things, I got annoyed. The one float I always looked forward to the most was the Garfield float.

Truly a thing of beauty. I remember the year they retired this float. I watched the parade, desperately awaiting the arrival of one of my beloved childhood icons, and he never showed up. I was very upset. And also like seven years old, you gotta understand. Fortunately they replaced him with a new float, but I preferred the old one because the new one stood upright, and the bipedal characters were always tilted way forward. Old Garfield was right-way-up. He knew the score. 

Aside from the parades and some foggy memories of visits to the houses of various uncles, I have few memories of Thanksgiving. However, I do associate the cartoon A Pup Named Scooby-Doo with Thanksgiving, and I'm pretty sure that's because Cartoon Network held a marathon of it one year on turkey day and I flipped back and forth between it and the parade. I associate Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends with the Fourth of July and The Twilight Zone with New Year's Day for the same reason.

Batten down the hatches - two days from now the Christmas juggernaut steps up its game. We got our first major snowfall of the year this morning, so I'm in the right frame of mind. Christmas music, here I come!