Kage Baker liked Thanksgiving. I suppose there are those who don’t, but it’s kind of hard to imagine. It’s a cheerful, low impact holiday, except for the vast amount of cooking required – and then you get to eat it, so that’s got its own built-in reward.

Coming from a large family was always a help; many hands make short work, the saying goes. Sometimes they make whirling chaos as well, but that can be rather fun and enjoyable. Thanksgiving has always been a noisy holiday in our house, whether it was in the full-scale everyone-in-the-world-to-whom-I-am-related mega dinner days, or the quiet two-person feast Kage used to make for her and I.

Mind you, those little feasts were always enjoyed before or after Thanksgiving. The day itself was for family. Big groups. So many people you had to clear a whole room just to set up seating. Tables where you ran out of corners before you ran out of left-handers to seat on them (we’ve always had a lot of lefties); cavalry and football charges worked out in olives and stuffed celery sticks, arguments over which way the dishes were to be passed. The sorts of dinners where three males who all think they’re comedians try to lead funny Graces at once, and all the females over puberty come to the table with aprons on and end up eating with serving spoons …

Every family has its problems, of course, and holiday dinners are commonly where the familial sun goes nova. But Christmas is more dangerous than Thanksgiving; you can usually get through the day in peace, with no overt resentments or misunderstandings to ambush you. Maybe that’s what Kage liked about it.

Tomorrow I will spend a lovely day with my small, closest family, cooking and eating pretty much continually, as Tolkien says of Bilbo’s Birthday. Then on Friday I will load up my car and drive North – to be with the rest of my family at Dickens Fair. I’ll hold my breath and leap off into the deep end of Christmas! I mean to sink to the bottom, still ballasted with turkey and pumpkin pie, blowing peppermint bubbles in the champagne of the season …

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, Dear Readers.