I Was Too Busy to Cook Thanksgiving Dinner for My Family—So I Stopped Doing It
When the multitude of holiday magazine stories, morning show centerpiece tutorials, internet recipes, and Instagram images flood the media this time of year, I still feel a guilty twinge. For a couple decades, I had planned, prepped, and cooked the traditional Thanksgiving dinner in my big suburban kitchen, and my family loved it. It was our favorite tradition and holiday. And we all watched the Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV, like I did growing up, every year. At the time I worked for Filene's in Boston, and though I had to open the holiday windows at the department store at dawn the next day-Black Friday-I was glad to be at home running the show for Turkey Day.
Then when the kids were grown, I got the chance to run the real show: the actual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. I moved to New York to work for Macy's but commuted home to Boston on the weekends to join my husband who stayed put. Our two millennial daughters eventually moved in with me into a typical small New York apartment. The job, apartment, and commute lasted for seven years. The marriage is still going strong.
In New York I did my best to manage a huge new job, build a professional life, and keep my home life in Boston as normal as I could. One casualty was the home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner. Working on the parade meant 24/7 devotion to the cause for weeks in advance, starting before dawn on Thanksgiving morning, walking the 2.65-mile parade route, followed by pure exhilaration and exhaustion at noon when Santa made his way into Herald Square.
As I contemplated the enormous demands on my time and endurance levels, standing for hours on the street watching Broadway rehearsals, shepherding VIPs backstage at the balloon inflation extravaganza, heading off all manner of potential PR crises, and gritting my teeth through clown college, I knew there was just no way I could cram my whole family into our tiny galley kitchen. Even if I had one scrap of energy left to peel an onion.
"Our kids were super skeptical, and I was unsure if a restaurant Thanksgiving would be disappointing or perhaps kind of sad."
But what do time-challenged and space-starved New Yorkers do for Thanksgiving? They go out. Lots of them. So we started a new holiday tradition, unsure of how eating in a restaurant would feel. Our kids were super skeptical, and I was unsure if a restaurant Thanksgiving would be disappointing or perhaps kind of sad. Would we be able to hear each other in a noisy New York boîte? Would the food match up to all our favorites? Maybe this New York thing was just too much of a sacrifice after all.
But guess what? It felt great. We found a famous New York steakhouse near 34th street with a drool-worthy Thanksgiving menu. It was warm, welcoming, intimate, and unconscionably delicious. And no shopping, planning, prepping, styling, cooking, or clean-up for me. No one needed to get up to clear the table between courses, so we could actually enjoy the meal and talk to each other without interruption. And picky eaters got to order exactly what they wanted. We made it our new tradition for seven years, inviting friends and family to join us, celebrating with boyfriends and their families, out-of-towners, and eventually fiancés and husbands.
Now back in Boston and happily living full-time with my patient husband, I appreciate that our kids are still proud New Yorkers and don't visit home much. So our Thanksgiving family tradition in our special NYC eatery stuck, and we will still make it there to celebrate being together-in a restaurant-again this year.
Me, I'm just happy to have Thanksgiving and Black Friday off for only the second time in 33 years. By now, I've learned to keep that guilty twinge to myself.
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