"Musings on a Problematic Holiday"

I just finished enjoying a rather kind, warm, and beautiful evening with my partner and my family celebrating Thanksgiving in Luxembourg.

I roasted a turkey I ordered from a local butcher, and there’s a funny story here. Because of an advance ordering misunderstanding (neither the Luxembourgish butcher’s French nor my own French were quite good that day), they maybe presented me with a 4.5 kilo locally raised organic free-range turkey that they slaughtered for me just two days before. Which is pretty awesome, except it was also 22 euro per kilo, thus a bit over 100 €.

No, I didn’t pay that much. After about 20 minutes of clumsy conversation and my frantic explanation that no I definitely couldn’t pay that much for a turkey, and then the butcher’s explanation that there would be no way to find another buyer for it in any of the nearby villages, I got it for much much less.

(The end result though was that I did get to find out what a 22€/kilo turkey actually tastes like and damn was it amazing.)

Anyway, I was thinking today about how I was once convinced I should be ashamed of doing anything except street protests on this day, and how silly it was, and then I thought maybe to write something about it, and then remembered I already had two years ago.

So in lieu of something new, enjoy this essay I published in 2019 at A Beautiful Resistance.

And happy thanksgiving.