Let those Thanksgiving Zombies Loose!

I've been teaching creative writing for twelve years plus and have workshopped enough Thanksgiving nightmare stories to think of the long weekend holiday as the great American bloodletting. This is perhaps fitting, given that the original feast marked the survival of a band of colonists who would eventually slaughter most of the native inhabitants of my home turf in southeast Massachusetts.

But the bloodletting theme is appropriate in other ways. Cultures need to touch the forbidden or the outrageously extreme at times, in order to exorcise demons and live with more ease the rest of the year. The ancient Greeks used ritual drama to explore family issues such as sibling rivalry, betrayal and incest, during which audiences vicariously experienced these conditions and achieved, through "catharsis," release. The Northwest Coast indians held potlatch ceremonies in which a family gave away crazy amounts of wealth, thus renewing and redefining social relationships.

Hallowe'en and All Saints Day--along with Guy Fawkes Day in England--offer post-industrial cultures, cossetted in the latest med-tech and actuarial reassurance, opportunities to think about the death and putrefaction that will be our lot despite all our fine devices.

And Thanksgiving gives us a chance to gather the family 'round and let all the resentments, grievances and hurt feelings that have been simmering throughout the year a chance to break surface, and lay havoc to what's always supposed to be a nice, intimate happy family gathering.

The expectations of niceness and intimate happiness are crucial to the process of letting the blood flow because they tend to set far too high a standard for social interaction, making disappointment inevitable and recriminations more than likely. It's the hope that everything will go well this year that makes Aunt Gertrude so bitter when her brother Jack's notorious stinginess comes to the fore (he didn't bring the cranberry sauce AGAIN!); and Dad accuses Mom of having always despised Cousin Randall because not only does he chew with his mouth open and stare at teenage Suzie when he's drunk, but his father was a lowly janitor. And from then on it's all downhill, the jealousies and angers drawing on deeper and deeper crimes, real or imagined, until what's really bothering Gertrude and Jack and Randall finally is exposed, swollen and festering and ready for lancing.

Of course the lancing is the point. Covered abcesses don't heal. Families need, at least once a year, to reopen wounds, dig up the rotten corpses, unmask the leering zombies. Only then can they rebuild healthier relationships based on deeper understanding of what makes Jack stingy and Gertrude angry and Randall drink.

So this weekend, folks, have at it! Don't try to ignore or rebuff the tensions that will probably screw things up despite your best efforts. Dig 'em up, make 'em bleed. And as you make of the congealed leftovers of Thanksgiving dinner a sandwich that is probably better than the original feast, rebuild also stronger ties with those you are close to; ties that will strengthen and support you through the cold dark days to come.