Finding Gratitude

The Sayette family at last year’s Thanksgiving celebration

Guest contributor Alexander Sayette shares his thoughts about Thanksgiving 2020.

Among all of this year’s the colorful construction-paper hand turkeys, not one will have “I am grateful for 2020” scrawled across its finger-feathers. While this realization and other light-hearted pandemic moments (such as the image of my own desperate father hoarding the final few rolls of Charmin Ultra Strong last spring) can soften the story of COVID-19, this undoubtedly is a time of devastation. I didn’t want to see even one COVID-19 Halloween costume because even humor fails when you’re worried about the lives and safety of five elderly grandparents and stunned by the already nearly quarter of a million deaths in this country alone.

As Thanksgiving approaches, the festivities of the holiday season seem out of place in the mood of the current time. With “Turkey Season” comes the obligation to embrace the most “not 2020” feeling possible: gratitude. While it may seem paradoxical to search for the things we’re grateful for in a year full of disruption, fear, and sorrow, out of the shadows of despair, emerges gratitude for what we still have to cherish.

My family recognizes that this year, nothing is a given. Our traditions are up in the air. Who will make the stuffing? Who’s going to mash the potatoes? And above all, who’s going to be here to share this food with us? The heart of our Thanksgiving lies with traditional dishes such as turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce AND canned cranberry “sauce” (it’s a hot button issue!), green beans, and a Dutch apple pie. We aren’t unique in this way, and to millions of Americans, these same foods elicit memories of past Thanksgivings enjoyed with people whom you love.

I asked some of my family members why food is so important to our Thanksgiving traditions. My sister and mother agreed that “turkey and stuffing are key” in more than just their flavors: they connect us to memories, to a sense of tradition tied to these particular foods. I find that the squeaking of the can opener on a can of cranberry sauce places me in our kitchen many years back when my mother sliced open her finger on the razor-sharp edge of the lid. Although she was rushed to the nearest Urgent Care, in just an hour she felt fit enough to successfully call out cooking orders to the rest of the family. The turkey always tastes moister when we remember the times a parent has quickly covered up a visibly gruesome scene—discovered at the turkey carving station by my sister or me—with a frantic, “Don’t worry, that’s only turkey juices.”

Although certain dishes are tasty in their own right, it’s the meaning they collect through past memories that makes all the effort worth it. As my mother remarked: “You have memories associated with those foods that reach back over your lifetime, and it’s all connected to Thanksgiving.”

While past years have required us to make sacrifices (including many long, traffic-filled hours) in order to bring family together over a single, over-the-top meal, Thanksgiving during a pandemic will require more from us than ever before. Although some years we host a larger group, I have always shared Thanksgiving with my mother, father, sister, and grandmother. COVID-19 has made us separate the food from the traditions, and in order to have a safe Thanksgiving, food will be out of the question. On what we hope will be a warm and dry fall day in late November, my immediate family, my aunt, and her boyfriend will spend the afternoon with my grandmother in her backyard in northern PA. In her backyard, we’ll sit apart with masks and talk about how much we miss each other and the normalcy of past life. But after we finish talking about the horrors of our time, I know that we’ll start to smile as gratitude washes over us, just being around each other and knowing how much we value this togetherness. If all goes well, this outdoor “non-meal” will be our Thanksgiving celebration. The world is sweeter with apple pie for dessert, but where traditional Thanksgiving foods and rituals help to remind us of why we’re here together, this year, we’ll need nothing more than family (well, maybe we still can bring the apple pie!) to keep our traditions alive.