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Sometimes a beloved tradition has roots in sheer necessity. For small children, Thanksgiving Day can be very long. Adults are flurried with the feast. It’s difficult for kids to find their niche amongst long-lost relatives and the unceremonious sucking noise cranberry makes as it slides out of the can. We found a way to capture the kids’ imaginations, allow them into the kitchen, and teach thankfulness. We call it Snoopy Thanksgiving. Here is a post I wrote last year explaining our tradition, going on it’s sixth year. It is my Works For Me Wednesday offering.
On Thanksgiving day, at about 11 am, our family celebrates Snoopy Thanksgiving. We have done this for several years, and I knew it was officially a tradition when our daughter announced at dinner when she has kids, they will celebrate Snoopy Thanksgiving too.
The origins of Snoopy Thanksgiving are simple and born out of necessity. The inspiration is the classic Thanksgiving special “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.” Peppermint Patty, Marcy, and Franklin invite themselves to Charlie Brown’s house for Thanksgiving. Only a truly panicked person would enlist his dog to cook a feast. Nobody has ever accused Charlie Brown of being the epitome of cool capability, so it is no surprise that Snoopy willingly steps in and helps. Snoopy is like that.
While turkey and pumpkin pie cook back at the dog house, a chef’s-hat-wearing Snoopy toasts toast, pops popcorn, pretzes the pretzels, and finds Mrs. Brown’s secret stash of jelly beans. He puts together a meal for the kids, sets up the ping pong table in the yard, battles a vicious lawn chair, decorates the table using gravity and a good arm, and digs in after Linus gives a speech written by the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. Yum.
Peppermint Patty, forgetting her manners and her sensible shoes (Birkenstocks in November, no socks?), decides to verbally thrash Snoopy’s Thanksgiving. Mindful Marcy sets her straight, of course, and everyone piles into the Brown family station wagon for a trip to the matriarch’s condo for a real meal. They sing.
Snoopy and Woodstock, dressed as crisp, prim pilgrims, eat a feast the moment the car is out of sight. Snoopy’s a scamp, a hold-out (and a heck of a pilot/novelist/lawyer/hockey player/dog), but that isn’t the point. He teaches a lesson to the kids: it doesn’t matter what you eat on Thanksgiving, as long as your heart is grateful for what is on your plate.
Our tradition is to serve pretzels, popcorn, jelly beans, and buttered toast a la Chef Snoopy to the kids mid-morning on Thanksgiving Day. While eating, they watch the Peanuts DVD. It’s a great way to tide their tummies over to the real feast, usually served around 2pm. They also love to help prepare Snoopy Thanksgiving. It’s hard for preschoolers to help baste a turkey, but they can butter toast and put jellybeans in a bowl. It is very kid-controlled and they take great pride in their preparations. They are involved in the day, while learning the importance of family and cultural tradition.
Pilgrims weren’t as prim as we imagine. I think they would smile and approve of a three-year-old thanking God for the green jelly beans and for the miracle that is popcorn.
*quote by G.K. Chesterton
I smoked my last cigarette on our wedding day, just over ten years ago.
It usually comes as a shock to people that I was a smoker: But you are so nice! You don’t seem like a smoker…
Yes, I am nice. I was nice when I was a smoker, too. I held doors for people, did my taxes on time, and helped with the dishes. Any convenience stores that were robbed during my tenure as a smoker are on someone else’s conscience. That goes for gum stuck under tables at Denny’s, too.
My smoking habit began in Boulder, Colorado, at the infamous University. Vices galore saturated the campus. Considering the chemicals floating and flowing so freely and cheaply, I am lucky I escaped with only a pesky legal tobacco addiction. A week ago we visited a brand new outdoor mall in Boulder. When I stepped out of our SUV I thought I was suddenly at a reggae concert—the unmistakable odor of tobacco’s wacky cousin filled the air. Parked right next to us was a middle aged man in a beat-up blue Saab firing up a pipe. Let’s just say it didn’t have bubbles in it. Boulder is the single 35-year-old man living in Colorado’s basement. Colorado shouts, “get a job!” and Boulder says “you just don’t get me, man…”
It took me seven years and two different schools, but eventually I earned a BA in English Literature. That represents a lot of coffin nails and cancer sticks. Too bad I didn’t know how to needlepoint back in those days. I would have stitched this:
Tobacco is a dirty weed. I like it.
It satisfies no normal need. I like it.
It makes you thin, it makes you lean,
It takes the hair right off your bean
It’s the worst darn stuff I’ve ever seen.
I like it.
~Graham Lee Hemminger, Tobacco
For a long time I managed to hide my habit from my parents until my younger brother caught me and ratted. Ironically, it probably added a few years to my habit because I had been tiring of sneaking smokes. I could do it in the open, and in the open I did.
Until I met my future husband.
I had the feeling he wouldn’t like my dirty, dirty habit. He was clean cut, happy, hardworking, athletic, and sweet. He was nice. I couldn’t picture him smoking any more than I could picture a red-bandana’d golden retriever puppy smoking. Impossible. My cigarette consumption plummeted as the amount of time we spent together grew. I made sure he never, ever saw me with a ciggie dangling out of my mouth. I didn’t want him to visually connect me with cigarettes. Consequently, my smoking habit became the hacking elephant in the room. Surely he knew. He never said anything, though.
We became engaged on a spring break roadtrip to San Francisco. I didn’t smoke the entire trip because I couldn’t, so I was a jittery mess for the first several days. But I was having the time of my life and soon I was able to chalk up being a jittery mess to my newfound status as Bridezilla. We planned to marry six months later, on September 7th, 1996. During that half-year I continued smoking here and there. I knew my cold-turkey moment was coming. I knew it would be on my wedding day.
My last cigarette melted away that day. I was in my parent’s bathroom, looking in the mirror as I took long drags. I blew rings into the air, the only trick in what could have been a big bag of tricks slung over my shoulder. Smoke rings are the size of dinner plates. They wobble. Particles dissipate. Gone, like my habit.
Five hours later, a ring of gold rocked onto my finger. It doesn’t wobble or scatter, scared by air. It is still there.
I made a good trade.
(this would have been my post on September 7th, 2006, our tenth anniversary…but I was doing laundry…babygirl was born the next day…)
In December 2005, both my grandmothers died unexpectedly. My Grandma Mary passed on December 1st. My Grandma Alice passed on December 23rd. Losing them was the final kick in the teeth after our two pregnancy losses of 2005. Annus horribilus, indeed.
I miss my grandmothers very much. Shuffling through old greeting cards, I read blessings they wrote in pin-neat cursive. My Grandma Alice wrote large and sharp. She pressed the pen to the paper with force and conviction, evidenced by microscopic troughs in the cardstock where blue ink bled kind words. She liked to send diaper coupons and comics clipped from The Denver Post, breezy notes just to say hi, I love you, I think of you.
My Grandma Mary was fond of holiday cards. Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, Christmas, Birthdays…all were remembered with cards addressed to Miss Gretchen. Usually a crisp five-dollar bill was tucked inside. She continued this tradition into my adulthood. When I had children, they were blessed by her thoughtfulness, her commemorations.
Every room in our home has something they once owned. My dining room set is from my Grandma Mary. A little hand-carved box on our mantle once belonged to Grandma Alice. For awhile, we had her dryer. Every time I opened the dryer door hot air tumbled out of the rumples and smelled just like her house, just like her. I’ve been known to get emotional when confronted with laundry. It was compounded tenfold when my children’s pajamas smelled like my recently departed grandmother.
A new year began without them. 2006 was a year they weren’t meant to meet. Neither would they meet my little baby daughter.
I look at Beatrix. At two months old, she’s winding up her newborn weeks by flashing smiles and coos. There are moments when I cry because the path of my pink burbling baby girl and my grandmothers will never cross here on earth. She will never get a Valentine from Grandma Mary, or pluck a flower from Grandma Alice’s bountiful garden. How your great-grandmothers would have loved you, I tell her. Beatrix looks at me.
We consider each other. When I first found out she was on her way, I knew it was because her grandmothers were gone. Not in any type of mystical, reincarnation way, but because out of sorrow we must intentionally seek out life’s joy. Beatrix will be three months old in December. She slipped into our lives quietly as my grandmothers left their earthly bodies. I can’t help but connect these three darling ladies, who had my heart, who have my heart.
In our search for the perfect name, naturally Mary and Alice were mentioned. For several reasons, we decided it would be best to give our baby a name which didn’t leave anyone out. During our search I looked up the meanings of my grandmother’s names.
Mary means bitter.
Alice means sweet.
Bittersweet.
How very.
Beatrix would not be here if not for the pregnancy losses, either. It’s a lot to take in and a lot for a little girl to carry. Someday, when she hears the story, she will put two and two together and realize if not for sorrow, there would be no Joy. No her.
“Beatrix” means joy.
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