Thanksgiving to all and to all a goodnight.

I realize it's been awhile, but I'm back. What better time to rejoin the world of bloggers, but at the most wonderful time of the year. Let's get to business, I have lots to discuss.

First, I would like to talk about Thanksgiving. I have discovered that my favorite holidays are the truly American ones, no matter how sordid and twisted the true story of "what was" has become. The Fourth of July and Thanksgiving are ours, and nobody can take them away or replicate them. These two holidays know no religious bounds-they are just American, and we all share them. Sure the declaration of Independence wasn't signed by all of our forefathers until November of 1776, and we all know that the Pilgrims didn't show up on Plymouth Rock to a welcoming delegation of Native Americans. We know that for the most part, that everything we grew up learning about these holidays is a romanticized version of the truth, but not unlike most other cultures in the world we have taken these days and made them our own celebration of the fundamentally good things-and as days of thanks for our freedom.

The 4th of July and Thanksgiving are also my favorite holidays because of a little thing we like to call FOOD. I enjoy that both of these holidays have their own pies respectively. Any holiday that has a pie associated with it is a good one in my book. My dad must feel the same way, his birthday is Columbus Day, and he decided years ago that apple pie would be the official birthday baked good of his birthday as well as Columbus Day. It goes to show that I am my father's daughter that I judge the relevancy of a holiday with it's baked goods. We would carefully place birthday candles in the top of the pie, but if it was one of the ones with the full pastry top there was always the risk of losing the irretrievable birthday candle through the outer crusty shell, only to have it surgically removed by my mom prior to serving. Luckily Thanksgiving does not involve birthday candles or candle risk management.

I have some great memories of Thanksgiving, and some not so great ones, but on the whole I'm one lucky gal. These are a few of my favorite things:

1.) The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC.

This was and is to me the most important part of Thanksgiving. Yeah, I said it. I love the parade. It's magical. The tradition of loving parades was handed down to me genetically on both sides. My (maternal) Grammy always loves a parade. She dragged my mom and my uncle to every parade under the sun in Pittsburgh growing up, which I'm sure later inspired my mom's four year career as a majorette at Oliver High School. She wore big white boots with brown and orange pom-poms on the front, a spiffy uniform and twirled a baton with the best of them. She told us stories of how they always prayed they wouldn't be behind the horses in the parade so they didn't have to pretend they were marching in a mine field.

Meanwhile, my dad was the drum major at our shared Alma mater. Those were the days! He wore a tall white furry hat and a a full drum major uniform, much like we see in college these days. Dad was the cats, and he kept everyone in line and steppin' right.

So it comes as no surprise that the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is/was and will be a family favorite. We are super music nerds, so we actually get up early to see the parade broadway pre-show. I think of it as our preliminary research for our detailed analysis of the Tony awards in June. I remember as a kid waiting eagerly for several very pivotal floats: Spiderman and friends ( the Marvel Comics float), the Sesame Street float (still in the parade to this day), my favorite kids group of the moment, and that one car/rocket ship thing that I later learned oddly resembled phallus, that typically delivered somebody like "The Jets" or "Menudo" to Herald square in style. My sister and I would anxiously await our favorite floats, only to be disappointed that most of them changed every year.

We would watch the whole parade from beginning to end and still do. I did a brief stint in my twenties when I couldn't stay conscious for the parade, and would wake up drooling on myself mid-way through the Terrier Group in the National Dog Show. I have since learned that copious amounts of coffee and sitting on the living room floor remedy my narcolepsy. One way or another we watch the parade, and we love it-we love it even more now that DVR and cooking a brined turkey breast have come into fashion-nobody is up at 7:00 a.m. anymore!

2. The Thanksgiving Pageant

Most any adult you poll would report that at one time or another during their elementary school career, they too participated in a Thanksgiving Pageant. I couldn't tell you if they do these things anymore, but I AM here to tell you that the 80's version was about as politically incorrect as they come.

Let me set the stage. I was a late bloomer. I was always tall, and always the tallest kid in the neighborhood and my elementary class. Most of the time, I was unfazed by it. My mom says that I was born thirty, which later explained why I thought elementary school was so stupid. Don't get me wrong, at times I had a blast, but it was events like the Thanksgiving Pageant that would prove to be glimpses into themes that would continue into my adult life.

Mrs. Kuholski's first grade class was responsible for telling the first part of the Thanksgiving story. We were divided up into equal parts Pilgrim and Indian. I of course wanted to be an Indian, because they got to wear colorful vests fashioned out of inside out brown paper grocery bags and headbands with feathers. I felt that if I was going to be up there, I would rather be accompanied by a stunning head piece and paper vest of my own design, not to mention I saw no point in playing a WASP-y pilgrim. If I was going to be up there I wanted to exercise my acting abilities by playing a disenfranchised paper vest Indian. But alas as a predecessor of things to come-I was chosen to be a pilgrim. We were told that we had to wear a white shirt and dark pants or skirt, and were handed a piece of 81/2 by 17 white construction paper and were advised of how to make this into a pilgrim bonnet. I remember finishing up folding my hat and thinking, "These people have gone crazy. They want me to stand up in front of the entire school, God and all our parents wearing this?"

There was no getting out of it. Due to my extremely active pituitary gland, I decided it would be best to be in the chorus, why draw undue attention to myself while wearing misuse of construction paper on my head? You must also understand that my mom, God bless her heart, had been an elementary school art teacher herself, so she knew how these things rolled. She was always terribly optimistic with me, I know secretly hoping that I wouldn't roll my eyes back in my head on stage while doing my box step. I came home and told her, "they want me to wear this hat, and Mrs. Kuholski said we have to wear white on top and black on the bottom."

My mom found a white turtleneck and a black skirt for me to wear. She also had found a half apron that I was convinced was so old, it most certainly had come over on the Mayflower. Apparently, she must have thought that my ensemble was missing something because in a game time decision she added a little black vest that I had which had little gold coins sewn randomly all over its front. So now I was a gypsy-napkin hat-pilgrim. This is the stuff therapy sessions are made of. Therapists have been paying their kids college tuition for years just off of holiday pageants.

Nonetheless I am sure I marched proudly off to school in my get-up, ready to stand proudly in the chorus and sing a song that talked about Indians and Pilgrims being best friends forever. I got to class that day to find out that Bethany Scholl had come down with the stomach flu and would not be able to perform her duties as partial narrator of the pageant. The only thing I can guess is that they looked around the room that day, saw my gypsy coin vest glistening in the florescent lights and said, "Chelsey must be the narrator, it is clandestine." Maybe this is where my stage anxiety started. They gave me a paragraph, said "memorize this, kid-and we go on in an hour." I couldn't have explained it to you then, but what I experienced was most definitely an anxiety attack. My worst fears had been realized. I poured over my paragraph of American historical lies, and decided I was going to do this, I had to do this, I had to do it for the honor of my family and for my gypsy vest.

We filed in, single file. I am almost positive my mom and dad have a picture of me going into the gymnasium. They have many pictures of me waiting to "go on." I was always very serious, lips pursed, wide eyes, and demonstrating "excellent self-control." Soon the moment approached, it was time to step up to the single mic, in the single spot light. This was it. While Bethany Scholl was home puking her guts out, I was saving the show from imminent peril and a most-certain pan in this week's issue of Variety. The crowd silenced. My pursed lips parted, "The Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock..."

As I finished my speech, the crowd went wild. The singing commenced, and I had delivered my first public speech, while wearing a napkin on my head.

3. Consistency.

Thanksgiving is not about being fancy. It is about being consistent. We typically always had the same things for Thanksgiving dinner growing up and we were fine with it. I was looking at Turkey recipes tonight and I decided that I don't need my turkey to be "perfumed by herbs." It's fine the way it has been for the last thirty years and it will continue to be delicious. I'm all for being all foodie every other day of the year, but on Thanksgiving, give me Pillsbury Crescent rolls or give me death. Creativity does not score bonus points.

I hope this Thanksgiving you will celebrate one of the last bastions of Americana with us. I hope you are with the people you love, whoever they are, and I hope you use the time you have to thank God for for your blessings and the fact that no matter how crazy it might seem sometimes, we live out our days in America. Regardless of how we all got here, Thanksgiving is ours together, one nation, indivisible, with Turkey and Stuffing for all.

Happy Thanksgiving!