Who Would You Invite...

Heavy sigh.

I am responding to a post on Thanksgiving by my friend, Mamalicious. For starters, the party would be small enough that everyone would fit around one 10- to 12-person round table. Better yet, make it an odd number. I remember what it felt like to be the one among the couples at parties. I was ok by myself, but invariably, someone would comment on the empty chair, with the suggestive wink, you know, "we'll have to work on getting someone in that chair beside you." For sure, there would be child-care, I'll pay, maybe at Mamalicious' house, just down the street.

Then, I would have my partner, Rachel, my friend Mary from Yellow Springs, Victor from Nashville, Mike and Kendall from Dayton, and Rachel's choice of four people. I would bring in Laurel and Cindy from Chicago, because they always have news of the Spirit that brings smiles, reflection, and a challenge to keep thinking.

Mike and Kendall would insure that the conversation would be witty. Mary would be sure there would be good dinner music and a long walk before and after the meal. With all of those people at the table, I don't think there would be a poet, writer, or philosopher whose contributions would add much more to the conversation. Besides, I know all of those people, and I don't get to see them enough. I can meet interesting strangers at Mamalicious's party. :-)

I love the big family parties, seeing the people you don't ever get to see except once or twice a year, and eating food you would not normally prepare at home. But, I have to confess, I get overwhelmed with the bigness and the manyness and the noisiness. I like it up to a certain point, and -- who knows what brings that point into being or when? -- then it is time to go.

I think the combination of not enough sleep the night before, and the third glass of wine, and realizing that I hardly saw a snap of the Packers game finally brought the point early in the evening for me. Back at home, I turned on the Jets/Cowboys game and immediately fell asleep on the sofa with Henry, Zen, and Caty piled around me. That nap was delicious. Later on, the Colts game (yea!) interrupted the nap, but not for long.

Thanksgiving this year was good, sweet people, my new family. We put out a tablecloth and permanent markers, had everyone sign the cloth. One of the parents drew her daughter's handprint, a great idea! The idea is that we will throw the tablecloth onto the table at future gatherings, and as more friends and children are added, the cloth represents all of the memories of all of those present, all of the meals, all the stories, all of the years. It's so sentimental, I'm sure I'll be out looking for a clear cover for it for the next occasion, to keep it from getting too soiled meal after meal.

Feast of St. Andrew

A few years ago, I started a practice that lasted just about three years, but it was great fun: celebrating the Feast Day of St. Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland. The holiday sometimes falls on Thanksgiving or that week, and sometimes, as this year, later. November 30 is the annual date. In the "for what it's worth" department, this feast day determines the beginning of Advent; the Sunday closest to November 30 is the first. Why I think of it in terms of Thanksgiving and not so much in relation to Advent, I am not sure. Maybe I'll figure it out by the end of this reflection.

I love Scotland. My heritage is some part Scots, but mostly Irish, and who cares, because I'm thoroughly a Southern American. Being from the South means that many families tell stories of origins. I know that most of my family told stories of County Cork, and ports of entry in the 19th century, not the 17th or 18th (no Pilgrims in our orchard, just Irish Protestants). So, my love for Scotland was learned, not a cradle birthright. I guess I have to credit Rachel B., her bagpipes, and that trip we took back in 1993, touring the Highlands and Western Islands. Then, in 1999, another stay with Rachel B. and Scott in Edinburgh, with another Western to Southern Islands (Islay, Kilmartin Glen, and fly fishing in the hills around the city), firmly situated my sense of familiarity with certain features of Scotland that I continue to love: single malt very peaty Scotch whiskey, folk music, the pipes, and pub food.

I have these friends, a colleague in a former job, and his partner, whom I associate with Scotland. They also have vacationed there. One went to graduate school there. I bounced off of this friendship with my first St. Andrews feast day celebration. They brought haggis, I cooked lamb and winter vegetables, 'nip and tatties, and, of course, a selection of Scotches that led us on a tour of memories of lochs, glens, distilleries, and favorite pubs. We concluded the meal with a fine selection of cheeses and a selection of ports. Port has some "rules" of obscure origin, having to do with bishops.

There are many traditions associated with St. Andrews Day. I must admit, my parties were selective in honoring traditions, but some, like a reading of the Selkirk Grace with the proper brogue does stand out in my memory.

I don't think I ever had more than a dozen people at the table. The order of lamb shanks, Frenched, always raised an eyebrow at the market, but this was a cost I gladly spent for an evening of brilliant story-telling, toasts of such eloquence and humor that bring a smile to my face even now.

What ended the tradition? I'm not sure, probably many factors, most of all, moving away from Dayton! I would love to try it again, or something like it, a holiday celebration that served as an antidote for the excesses of Thanksgiving, and opened the gate for the coming Advent season, which is loaded with parties. I guess I like a break, a threshold between one party season and another. The marketing of Christmas, after all, starts immediately after Halloween. It's just too much. Something there is that doesn't love the red-and-green onslaught so early. Like a betwixt-and-between transition, the Feast Day of St. Andrew marks the shift from all the over-burdened busy-ness of Thanksgiving.

Without the Feast of St. Andrew, Halloween, Presidents' Day, Veterans' Day, and Thanksgiving are all on the same avalanche to Christmas. St. Andrew stops the slide. The lamb, the haggis, the Scotch, they interrupt the insipid white potatoes, white meat (including pork, the other white meat), white gravy, white pasta much more effectively than the prodromal introduction of Christmas food onto the Thanksgiving sideboard, the cranberries, the deep winter cruciforms of Brussels sprouts, broccoli rabe, and kale. Before Thanksgiving slides into Christmas, give me the gamey chop or leg of lamb, the earthy parsnips mashed into that helpless potato. Give me Stilton on a Honeycrisp apple slice and an oakey Cabernet Sauvignon.

Those of us gathered for the St. Andrew feast were mostly transplanted to that city. Everyone at the table was there because they had returned from Home to this home away from Home, back to this chosen place, back from the travel-bound obligations. They could come from home and go back home with the distance of a pleasant errand. Work would resume. We would see each other on Monday, or in the coming week. The last of Ordinary Time would be over.

In order to celebrate like those few St. Andrews Day feasts, here in this new chosen place, the ingredients would have to be similar. All local friends and colleagues, a special menu unrelated to the Pilgrim feast, a long evening of stories and songs, the cozy familiarity, and then settling back into the mundane while shifting into a new season of life.

Are these ingredients close at hand? I would like to find out. Let Thanksgiving be Thanksgiving, and keep it from the inexorable slide into Christmas. I need something else, an evening so different, such an interruption of the same, to draw up the wooly blanket of the coming winter and to set the candle's glow against Advent's dying light.