Mulled Vine

To all my American (and Canadian) friends, some of whom have no idea that Thanksgiving is not widely celebrated outside these countries: Happy Thanksgiving!

Coincidentally I am reading (wading through) Philip Roth’s “American Pastoral” and just yesterday read this superb little passage:

“And it was never but once a year that they were brought together anyway, that was on the neutral, de-religionized ground of Thanksgiving, when everybody gets to eat the same thing, nobody sneaking off to eat funny stuff – no kugel, no gefilte fish, no bitter herbs, just one colossal turkey feeds all. A moratorium on funny foods and funny ways and religious exclusivity, a moratorium on the three-thousand year old nostalgia of the Jews, a moratorium on Christ and the cross and the crucifixion for Christians, when everyone in New Jersey and elsewhere can be more passive about their irrationalities than they are the rest of the year. A moratorium on all the grievances and resentments, and not only for the Dwyers and the Levovs but for everyone in America who is suspicious of everyone else. It is the American pastoral par excellence and it lasts twenty-four hours.”