The Five Cocktails & Stages of Thanksgiving Day Grief
Credit: Awkward Family Photos.
Let me take you back to pre-COVID times, when gatherings weren’t restricted by the CDC, to a bygone Thanksgiving when you didn’t think about a stranger’s particulate spray or if your weird uncle coughing at his own jokes was a character trait and not a sign of his impending demise…
It was November 28th, 2019 - Thanksgiving. Beto O’Rourke recently ended his presidential run (“I bet-y-o didn’t see that coming,” your weird uncle said, coughing wetly into his fist), Disney+ is a thing, Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year is “climate emergency”, European parliament officially declared an Oxford Dictionary’s word of that year, and Mercury has been out of retrograde for a full goddamn week, so, naturally, you were looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner with the family you see in person maybe twice a year but constantly see on Facebook posting stuff about crystals and guns and some blurry pictures of dogs. So many pictures of dogs.
You made the trek the day before to your parents’ house where you spent an enjoyable night laughing and watching the sort of shows parents watch: Impractical Jokers, Judge Judy, the local news. Of course, you brought some alcohol, drank most of it, and passed out in the twin-sized bed in a room full of boxes and totes that replaced whatever “your” room used to be, and, in the morning, you wake up to the unmistakable clatter of pots and pans and low holiday music crooning from a radio - the early cacophony of Thanksgiving’s onset.
Enter the first stage of Thanksgiving Grief: Denial.
It usually unfurls like this, with a slight pounding in your head sloshing with last night’s too-much-of-a-good-thing as the rising sun stabs directly past your eyelids and into your brain, you swear to God. You think about how nice it would be to do nothing on the holiday. To enjoy the free, middle-of-the-week day off. To not travel for hours and be forced to sleep uncomfortably in a bed built, you’re convinced, with the Inquisition in mind.
A strange sorrow fills in then, and you’re burdened with a grief reserved for the condemned, the stricken: Why me? Of course, you know why you. Because it’s tradition and family and the way it’s always been, and that’s the crack your imagination peers through. What if? What if the holiday was reinterpreted, recast - made to be what you want it to be?
Well, too late, Bucko. That turkey waits for no person, let alone an imaginative turd like yourself! But still, there’s no effing way this all needs to begin at, what? Eight in the morning? Wait, no. It’s seven o’clock and the pans, they are uh clamoring. So you throw your body from your Iron Maiden and stagger into the kitchen. There’s coffee (Folger’s, probably, Duncan if you’re lucky), some toast and cold bacon, and the remnants of last night’s bottles.
Whatever: you know the lay of the day ahead, and there’s an air of freedom that comes with the holiday, a certain I Don’t Give a Heck that makes an early morning drink seem not only possible but deserved. Besides, the TV is turned to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which, you know, kind of sucks to watch, and you want a little upper with your downer to help get through the three hours of Al Roker and Savannah Guthrie feigning amazement at giant Pikachu and Olaf balloons. (“Team Rocket, blasting off again, Savannah!”) You remember, as if from a dream, that year a Sonic the Hedgehog balloon caught a breeze, snapped a light pole from its base, then hit a woman and put her in a coma for a week.
Pouring alcohol into your coffee, you, too, long for a short Sonic-induced break from the world. You, along with Al, can’t believe the turn in the weather.
What if, Savannah?
Cocktail #1: RAGAMUFFIN PARADE
Before the Macy’s parade, there was a second trick-or-treat for poor kids called the Ragamuffin Parade but it couldn’t compete with Macy’s and was soon cancelled and isn’t that just so American? About as American as drinking in the morning.
1.5oz Bourbon
1.5oz Sweet Vermouth
3 dashes Angostura Bitters
3 dashes Chocolate Bitters
4oz Black Coffee
Optional: 0.5oz Simple Syrup
Pour it all in a cup.
Stir it.
Drink it.
Nap?
The second stage: Anger.
By noon, the extended family is rolling in. Some cousins and their significant others who, by the way, don’t want to be there. They hover at the fringe of every space like dog hair gathering in corners, cobwebs full of crossed arms holding phones doom scrolling months before “doom scrolling” is coined (oddly, it won’t even make Oxford’s short list for WotY…shame).
Eventually, grandparents arrive, and uncles, some aunts, and before you know it, someone is asking about your love life (It’s complicated…) and why you post what you do (they’ve never seen people with so many piercings), when you’re going to get a real job (Let me know when you’re ready to get your head out of them books), and unsurprisingly you feel the rage filling into a bar like something in a video game, a red line growing over your head.
It’s a sort of magic, you swear, when you find the leftover wine in the back of the fridge, the hastily shelved juice from breakfast. You are Houdini himself pulling a rabbit from your hat, though Houdini didn’t do that. Regardless, you produce a potion to round those edges and to keep your anger from spilling into an explanation about the science of calories-in, calories-out for weight loss to your step-aunt in a really condescending way.
And you know what? Sangria goes great with a heavy, salty meal like Thanksgiving, anyway. You dare someone to say something; that red bar above you looms, wishing they would.
Cocktail #2: SANGRATEFUL (FOR OLD WINE)
Well, someone better give thanks…
1 Bottle of Red Spanish Wine
4oz of Orange Juice
2oz Lemon Juice
4oz Spiced Simple Syrup
1 Orange, sliced into wheels
Up to 4oz of other fruit juices you may have (cranberry, pineapple, etc.) and whatever fruit you might want to add in.
Optional: 6oz of Brandy
Optional: Soda Water to top
Mix it all together the night before and let it sit and marry; you can prepare up to four days ahead of time.
Pour a glass over ice and top with soda water if you want to lengthen it, or drink as is.
You definitely find your weird uncle’s jokes funnier when you don’t understand what he’s saying. Come to think of it, he probably feels the same about you.
The third stage is slippery: Bargaining.
Somehow, a football game is on. Well, one of them. It’s either them Cowboys or them Lions or the other game no one cares about, not even your uncles and cousins or the one “aunt” who isn’t a blood relative nor is she married into the family but is always wearing the same football jersey when you see her…
You try to convince them of a movie instead. Maybe Elf is on TNT? A Christmas Story on TBS? Alas, it’s no use, so you relearn what you’ve forgotten, which is that it’s easy to get swept up in football fervor, that it feels good to root. Get him! What a lousy call. Chug! God, you think, it’s like the human spirit was built to gnash and growl and fist-pump. You, too, believe the refs are blind, that the other team has been juicing and snorting and bribing, and that next year it will be a better season.
Suddenly, you’re ready to give it all away for the idiot refs to get their heads out of their asses. Do you hear me, God? I’ll become a better person if you strike dead that team’s quarterback where he stands…
Cocktail #3: Cowboy & Lion Gal
Name a more iconic duo than a beer & shot? A QB and WR? A ripper & sipper? Cowboy & Liongal. (Not to be confused with the two football teams that, your weird uncle says, never play each other on Thanksgiving, which you guess is about as much as your family knows about the history of the holiday. Go team.)
1 Can of Craft Beer (brought by a cousin who wanted to try it but didn’t “get it”)
1 Shot of Rye Whiskey (for every touchdown)
Pop that top, pour that brown; it’s time to get down. (Guitar music twangs in the distance…)
The fourth stage is hard: Depression.
By dusk, most of the cousins are gone because they had to go to their S.O.’s dinners, or said so to escape, and everyone else was tired or old, or both, and so it’s just you and your parents and an aunt or two who are still playing euchre. The food is all but picked over or packed away. Greasy Ziplocs of mashed potatoes, turkey mummified in tin foil, jiggly bowls of gravy.
It’s all gone, just like what’s their name who ghosted you, and suddenly you become aware of people beyond your parents’. You worry about friends and how they were doing. Did they go somewhere for Thanksgiving or stay home, alone? Are they living the day you wished you were or are you living the day they wished they could?
You should have invited someone. Or all of them. But you didn’t and they were probably all alone and you’re still single (thank you, grandma), and the pumpkin pie is gone and you didn’t get any at all - and there’s just that old bottle of scotch, heavy with dust, pushed to the back of the cabinet. Eye the leftover sweet potato casserole, hear one of a bajillion familiar lines from A Christmas Story (on the TV now; thank you, grandma) and figure, okay, one more. For those not having the day they wished they were.
Cocktail #4: CASSEROLE’D FASHION
Where there’s a will, there’s a way (to make leftovers into a cocktail syrup).
2oz Blended Scotch
0.5oz Sweet Potato Syrup*
1 dash Vanilla Extract
Add ingredients to a tin; add ice and stir for a 60 count.
Strain into a glass with a large cube of ice and garnish with a lemon medallion.
Let the dreams come.
(Note: Sweet Potato Syrup—Add 4oz of cooked sweet potato, 4oz of water, and 4oz of brown sugar to a pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to medium and simmer for 10 minutes, then remove from heat and allow to cool for 20 minutes. Strain through a coffee filter to remove solids [they’re delicious, eat them].)
The final stage: Acceptance.
You’re on the couch when your parents wake you up. It’s still dark. The TV, an infomercial. Your stomach is a furnace, your head an aquarium and your brain’s floating on the surface and, for some reason, your knee hurts? They ask, in that hushed whisper parent’s use when they shake their kids from sleep, if you still wanted to go Black Friday shopping. You know, they say. For grandma?
You close your eyes, take a deep breath, and feel the lusty tug of sleep.
Yes. Of course you want to go.
And you are up and full of water and coffee but still, you lag. A lack-of comes to mind, like moderation and planning before vitamins and nutrients. But the thought of a whole breakfast makes your stomach punch up into the back of your throat.
Luckily, your parents have been on a smoothie kick - because of that one aunt who thinks sugar from an orange is chemically different from table sugar - and you laugh peering into the fridge with half open eyes, already thinking about the glorious two-, maybe three-, hour nap you’re going to take later.
This is it. Your life. And it can only get better from here, you think. You promise. That what if? from yesterday morning rising again to front of mind.
You were wrong back then, we all were, but in 2019, it got you through December, and even now those blips of Thanksgiving’s past play like an old movie at times. It’s odd how the good can cling to memories like chewed gum and the bad, in retrospect, seems more like an inside joke you’ve lost the heart of.
You couldn't have known what the coming years would bring, but at least, in that moment, riding in the backseat of your parents’ car through the pre-dawn morning towards a mega-store to go to war with a crushing throng of people that have been lined up for hours waiting for the door buster items, you think things are as good as they get.
Cocktail #5: ORANGE-SPIRATIONAL MARY
It’s like a Bloody Mary, but generally positive about things and aspirational about the future. You’re doing great, sweety.
2oz Gin (or Vodka)
3oz Carrot Juice
2oz Bloody Mary Juice
1oz Pear Juice
1oz Orange Juice
2 dashes Hot Sauce
1 dash Worcestershire Sauce
1/2 tsp Grated Ginger
Pinch of Salt & Pepper
Optional: Tajin Rim
Mix everything together and pour over ice.
Drink, and keep on keeping on, and living the dream, and another day in paradise, and whatever else you like to say when faced with the existential dread of life. Good news: everything ends, even bad times.