A Real New England Thanksgiving

Since everyone is posting about their Thanksgiving plans, here’s a northeastern take.

I think my week so far can be summed up by what I saw at the two airports I fly in and out of — Hartford and Baltimore. When I arrived at BWI on Sunday afternoon, employees were frantically putting up Thanksgiving decorations — right on time, I think, since Thanksgiving was four days away at that point. But when I landed, and was walking through the Bradley terminal, I saw a fully decorated Christmas tree.

It continued — I woke up Tuesday morning to snow covering the ground, while a weather report noted that D.C. was going to be in the 70s. A radio station around here has been playing exclusively Christmas music since October.

It's so cold here that all the dogs are even wearing jackets.

I went to the mall today to try and find black flats (don’t even ask me how that went. The only kind of shopping I hate more than shoe shopping is jeans shopping.), and the entire mall was a. on sale, and b. decorated for the holidays. After buying something, a sales lady told me mother to have a nice holiday. My mother turned to me and said, “I actually thought Thanksgiving already happened around here.”

Did I just never notice that New Englanders like to celebrating holidays before the rest of the country? I’ve also been complaining all week about how cold it is (it’s been about 30* colder than in D.C.), and my parents told me that I live in “the south” now (which is anywhere located below the Mason-Dixon line, according to northerners), and that I should just put on another sweater instead of turning up the thermostat (which is not allowed to creep above 68*, thank you very much).

My theory is that it’s just so bloody cold up here that people need something to keep them going till it finally gets warm in May. My mother’s theory is that Thanksgiving originated in New England, and therefore people feel the need to do the holiday better than the rest of the country — after all, I don’t know how many places around here do a “traditional Thanksgiving,” of pheasant and lobster.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go dig my parka out of the attic. I have a long day planned in front of the TV.