Cancel Christmas. Thanksgiving is all we need.

Why Thanksgiving is the best holiday

Thanksgiving.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Harry Todd/Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images, Sudowoodo/iStock, -slav-/iStock)

Last Christmas, I went full matriarch. My family of four ditched our Brooklyn apartment and headed to my dad's home in London, where, surrounded by dogs, children, and the technicolor tumbleweed that is discarded wrapping paper, I put on an apron and spent eight hours preparing a preposterous amount of food for 17 people. Afterward, shattered and convinced it had all gone disastrously, I fell in a heap on what I'm fairly certain were those same kids and dogs. Later, I gathered my people and resigned as the maker of our family's Christmas meal. No one objected and this year everyone's going to the pub for lunch.

At the height of Christmas 2018 chaos, I remember thinking how, just a month before, I'd spent Thanksgiving night drinking Prosecco in my friends' hot tub on their beautiful deck in upstate New York. I was nicely buzzed, effortlessly full, and my kids were asleep. It was eerily perfect. Now, post Christmas lunch fiasco, I was trying to separate my kindergartener from the war game she was playing on her uncle's new PS4 and mend the first LEGO set of a hysterical 4-year-old who'd eaten nothing but meringue nests and chips since 6:30 that morning. This was not festive fun. Compared to the Thanksgiving we'd just had — and the ones I plan on us having for years to come — this was a horror show.

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Ruth Margolis
Ruth ​Margolis is a British ​journalist living in the U.S. Her work has appeared in ​The Guardian, ​The ​Daily Telegraph and BBCAmerica.com.