Sunday Song: Christmas Dinner, Country Style

It is time for the song of the week.

One of my favorite, obscure holiday songs comes from Bing Crosby. It is called Christmas Dinner, Country Style, and it is set to a square dance format. Now, it might be the three years that we square danced in physical education (fourth, seventh, and ninth grades) that draws me to this song, but I enjoy it. I especially like the way it provides a focus to thaning Mother after the meal is prepared and presented. There is a space for gratitude that is missing in many things - songs, ideas, and the ways we view holidays in particular.

I would like to make this into a Thanksgiving song, and I might just do that. While Bing's version functions as a Christmas song, I feel like there aren't enough Thanksgiving songs out in the world, so why not make more?

This holiday that is coming up is not one of my favorites, but I do like the idea behind it - taking a day to be grateful for what I have and who I love. I have not had a "traditional Thanksgiving meal" for many years, mainly because I do not like the food that is part of the traditions. I prefer other foods, and I am going to partake of those other foods during my upcoming break from work.

What I don't like about this holiday is the push towards consumerism that happens just as soon as the dishes have been cleared away from the table. Buy, buy, buy is the message - not sit in gratitude and think about what we have but go out and get the most that you possibly can! I do not participate in Black Friday sales. I do a bit on Cyber Monday, but not Black Friday.

The song that I selected this time around comes to us from a time when Americans were feeling pretty good about themselves. He performed it in 1963 - the space age - a time where Americans were inspired to do as much as they could do to advance science and technology. I wonder if folks back then had nostalgia for "the good old days" of the 1900s and 1910s. Of course, they had to remember the Great Depression as well as two world wars when looking back. We have not had as much turmoil in the 2000s than they did in the same part of the 1900s. We have avoided world wars - so far - so there hasn't been as much to navigate for us as for our great-grands and great-great-grands.

I often think about my great-grandparents and what they went through in their lives. Raising children in the Great Depression after going through the political unrest of the late 1800s as well as the Industrial Revolution, they then had to survive two world wars, several conflicts in South East Asia, and all sorts of things. I met all of great-grands on my mother's side of the family, but all of the people on my father's side passed away before I was born. I am named after my great-grandmother on my father's side, and, coincidentally, my great-great-grandmother on my mother's side - my parents did not know that until after I was named. My great-grandmother was thrilled but was sure it was a coincidence - which it was! 

For them, Thanksgiving was a time of reflection and travel as well as being grateful for the places, people, and things that they had available. There were treats, but not as many as we have right now. My families came from Appalachia, rural Missouri, and Georgia, so I am sure that while food was plentiful most of the time, much of it was generated by them and came from the gardens and fields rather than the grocery store. The traditions that they had are no longer part of what I celebrate.

My father's mother, my grandmother, was determined to have traditional Thanksgiving celebrations. Her birthday, yesterday, was a chance to show off her extended family and to make as much food as she possibly could. We had the full menu when we went to her house, which we did until I was in junior high school. It was always a performance. We had to clean the house from top to bottom to get ready for her annual open house. We had to dress up in fancy new clothing, and we always had a formal portrait session. It was not my favorite time. Thanksgiving included lots of being around people, lots of small talk, and lots of command performances. These are all things that I do not navigate easily.

My grandmother (she hated that term) and I spent the last two Thanksgivings of her life together. I was in school about an hour away from her home, so it was convenient to go to her house for the break once the dorms closed. The first year, we were talking on the phone about what we would eat. She told me that she would get a turkey and asked if there was anything else I wanted to eat. I told her that I did not like turkey, so not to get a large one. I figured that she could find a small one and then eat it by herself. There was a strange silence on the phone. After a bit, she said, "I don't like turkey either. Should we just get a ham?" I am not a turkey eater, but I do love ham, so that's we got. At the end of the conversation, she told me we would get a pumpkin pie and something else. I told her that I didn't like pumpkin pie. She answered much more quickly that she also didn't like pumpkin pie and stated that we would get cherry and pecan pies for our holiday. I enthusiastically agreed, and our menu was set!

I asked her why she always insisted on having turkey and pumpkin pie on her Thanksgiving tables. She told me that the rest of her family loved those dishes, but that she never did. She and I enjoyed our dinner - with things that we were truly grateful to eat - and were able to become closer as humans. I am thankful that I did not have to eat turkey and pretend with her during those last two years of her life. I am thankful that we got to know each other better and could find some commonality in our experiences.

It has been 33 years since my grandmother passed away from complications of colon cancer. I am traveling some of the same pathways that she did with my own experiences of colon cancer. This year, her presence is a bit closer because of my recent journey through some of what she experienced. My own journey is mainly over - we are just monitoring things now rather than having to go into chemotherapy and radiation - but I have been thinking about her lots.

I will give thanks for her and for all of my family members on Thursday when I sit down to eat my favorite meal. It won't be turkey or pumpkin pie, but I will be grateful nonetheless.

Thanks, Bing, for the inspiration.