Thanksgiving: you love it, I hate it

Georgia Kreischer '22

Editor in Chief of Design

On this very special holiday, both the food intake and the amount of bathroom breaks one takes in a single night rises, which beckons the question: who actually likes Thanksgiving? I do not. The constant tension in the kitchen that eventually moves to the dinner table, then spreads like a virus all throughout the house. Almost sickening enough to make a person lose their Thanksgiving appetite completely. Consumers of this dinner fail to consider that the amount of food they are eating is double what a human stomach is built to hold.

Most kids who grew up watching The Peanuts over the holidays probably think they know the history behind Thanksgiving better than anyone, but for the poor souls that have no clue what this reference means, History.com is in your corner. The pilgrims sailed to Plymouth, got insanely sick on the way there, and tried establishing their home. Saved by Squanto, a local to Plymouth, the pilgrims learned how to cultivate their own food and threw a gigantic feast to celebrate. Lost in translation is the mistreatment of the natives and the destruction of their culture, but to the Pilgrims, stuffing just seemed a little more important to keep in the traditions.

Back when Squanto was still around, he taught the pilgrims how to cook using very traditional native foods. In my opinion at least, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top do not scream “traditional native foods”. Thanksgiving slowly lost its original meaning when early presidents would use the holiday to celebrate their victories in war. Presently, it is rare that one would see families cooking foods from the original feast or even recognizing that Thanksgiving is more than just an annual party-day.

Pitting Thanksgiving against another holiday like Christmas or Halloween would be like saying they had equal value, which they do not because Halloween is obviously superior. However the Louisville student body loves to be a part of holiday-themed debates. Although many holidays were listed on a poll sent out; out of Christmas, Halloween and Thanksgiving (three of the most popular holidays in America), 153 people preferred Christmas, 90 people preferred Halloween, but only 46 people preferred Thanksgiving out of the 175 responses. However, when asked their least favorite holiday; Thanksgiving had 32 votes, Halloween had 18 and Christmas only had 10 (for some reason everyone hates St. Patrick’s Day, which scored a whopping 98 votes).

Thanksgiving is the time I dread the most, because it embodies the worst part of almost every other holiday: the forceful gathering of family. At least during Christmas you get a gift for sitting at the table and talking about school for hours, but the only thing gained from Thanksgiving is washing dishes and indigestion.

I mean, let’s run down the typical conversations: “How’s school going?”, “Any boyfriends/girlfriends?”, “Do you remember me from…?”, “You look so grown up! I remember you in diapers!”, “You really slimmed down since last year,” or “Wow, you really filled out that outfit!”, and the ever-popular “Where are you thinking of going to college?”. While everyone could answer these questions in less than one hundred words, they ignite the angriest side of me and drain the energy out from children of all ages.

Some see family they barely know, others spend anywhere from 4-14 hours socializing, which even for an extrovert can be a lot to ask. If your Thanksgiving is usually good, I hope this does not change your opinion of the holiday. However, if you find yourself agreeing with any (or all) of these statements, know you are not alone. Millions upon billions of people suffer through the long weekend that is Thanksgiving, because we all know that the holiday does not just begin and end with the dinner.

Logistically, it starts weeks in advance, as kids bear witness to their mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents and miscellaneous relatives stress over buying food, or cleaning up the house, or making sure all their preferred dishes are pulled out, along with about 30 other useless worries. Then there’s the routine of too many people in the kitchen, making the other “professional chefs” spiral into “Holiday Hayfever,” which is a term I like to use when an individual has lost complete control over any and all emotions between the months of October to January. You have the sick feeling of eating too much while you clean up the kitchen, and later you’re forced to sit with the thought of, “I wonder if I’ll still feel like this tomorrow morning?”.

Thank you Squanto.

Happy holidays folks.

Interested in reading more about Thanksgiving? Check out History.com and their piece on the full history of the Thanksgiving Day Holiday. https://www.history.com/topics/thanksgiving/history-of-thanksgiving