I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas - Lewis Black [6]
But why Costa Rica, you ask? Why would I leave my native land as the days get shorter and shorter, the weather gets crummier and crummier, and the world gets crazier and crazier?
For years my friend Neil and I have chosen to leave the United States for an annual vacation. This all began about ten years ago, when we both realized we were raging workaholics and we desperately needed to set aside a few days each year to ensure that we got a break of some sort.
But why Thanksgiving, you ask? Isn’t it the beginning of the holiday season? Isn’t this the time to sit around the hearth (if one has a hearth) with one’s family (if one has a family), in order to refresh the warmth of your blood ties and bonds?
Not if your mothers can’t cook.
When your mother has no concept of how to cook a turkey, let alone the mashed potatoes, the stuffing, the gravy, the cranberry sauce, the green vegetables, the apple and the pumpkin pies, and as a kid you can see your folks hoping someone will invite your family over for Thanksgiving dinner so that your mother doesn’t have to cook, you learn pretty quickly that at Thanksgiving, it’s time to get the fuck out of Dodge.
I can remember the last Thanksgiving I spent in the United States. I went with Neil and his lovely wife, Laurie, who has since passed on, to have Thanksgiving dinner at Neil’s parents’ house. Neil always said that his mother could go head-to-head with mine in a gastronomic demolition derby. And he was right. Neil’s mother prepared a meal that was just as unbelievable as my mother’s cooking. I knew then that we were moments away from a reality show I’m sure would be a huge success. We could call it WHAT THE FUCK AM I EATING?! (Hey, if there’s a show called I Didn’ t Know I Was Pregnant, or, as I like to call it, Jesus Christ, Am I an Idiot or What? then my cooking-show idea could certainly work.)
But back to the two mothers. That something potentially mouthwatering could be put in the oven and come out as the illusion of food is a trick few cooks can pull off. In short, Neil’s mother and mine completely redefined the definition of cooking.
The joy of these kinds of meals—such as there is—is in the chewing. There is barely any taste. And aroma? Don’t make me laugh. A turkey done until it has been sapped of any moisture, as if it was created from the dust of the Kalahari, has no scent to it at all.
It is as if killing the turkey the first time wasn’t enough. Cooks of this particular caliber don’t even want the memory of its potential deliciousness to linger. But at least the turkey didn’t suffer alone—it had plenty of company. There were potatoes screaming for gravy that never made it to the table due to some hideous kitchen accident. And the green beans seemed to be weeping as if they wished to return to the field of their birth, hoping for a fresh start. In truth, I can’t remember the rest of the meal; I believe I have repressed the memory of it. But Neil was right. His mother, in her own fashion, had created a meal that I thought only my mother could have laid waste to.
You hate to talk about your mothers’ cooking this way, but it’s this kind of consistently bad holiday cooking that made us flee the country on a national holiday, as if we were warned that we were about to be hit by a natural catastrophe, only ours was man-made and, disconcertingly, taking place in our mothers’ kitchens.
But a twice-killed bird is not the only reason I have an aversion to what should be my day of thanks. As wonderful as so many find Christmas, it still hits us with the force of a hurricane, as it begins, with a vengeance, at Thanksgiving. And then there it is, twenty-four hours a day, as we are pounded relentlessly with music and advertising and everything that tradition and history and the media can throw at us.
Thanksgiving is the beginning of a relentless assault on our senses. To leave then and return