My favorite essayist, Joseph Epstein, a man whose books line my library and whose style I study (painfully realizing that my simple lack of comparable erudition makes me unable to emulate him) has written a good essay about Thanksgiving. It's not one of his best, but everything by him is good and I like this slant:
For some time in America we have, of course, been living under Kindergarchy, or rule by children. If children do not precisely rule us, then certainly all efforts, in families where the smallish creatures still roam, are directed to relieving their boredom if not (hope against hope) actually pleasing them.
Let us be thankful that Thanksgiving has not yet fallen to the Kindergarchy, as has just about every other holiday on the calendar, with the possible exceptions of Yom Kippur and Ramadan. Thanksgiving is not about children. It remains resolutely an adult holiday about grown-up food and drink and football.
He's right. Thanksgiving, like Halloween, is ageist (yeah, it's a word, a stupid neologism, but still a word). Halloween is all for the kids. Thanksgiving is all for the adults. When I was a kid, I always liked Thanksgiving but never really "got it." Now that I'm an adult, I get it. From fathers leaving their children at home to drink on Black Wednesday; to ignoring the kids during the Lions game, while cooking dinner, while sleeping off the dinner/hangover; to mothers leaving their children at home to shop on Black Friday. It's all about the adults. And like Epstein, I ain't apologizing.
