Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Invite a stray to dinner 

by Julie Carter

Every year the winter holidays seem to get closer and closer together. Memories blur from one to another and the “where was I, who was there, what did we eat and why so much?” runs together in the same mental fuzziness. 

It appears that the season is marked with a landslide of commercial shopping offers and a blaze of seasonal colors blending the oranges and gold of fall into the red and green of Christmas.

I am a product of my raising and holidays are no exceptions. Growing up, we were a big family with not a lot of options of places to go from our middle-of-nowhere home along the Colorado mountain range. We pulled out the big oak table, added a half dozen leaves, dragged over anything a person could sit on, piled the table full of food and through the noise of a dozen kids and at least that many adults, we shared the day.

Those memories remain vibrant in my mind when many holidays since have not. There wasn’t a plan to "make a memory" but to simply celebrate the day. Following tradition required planning and a ton of work, but always ended with full bellies and some fun and games amongst the kids. Oh, and the off-key singing in the kitchen during the dish washing session.

I'm fortunate to still live in a rural setting where those kinds of family values are not a rare sight. However, I have also lived long enough to see a fractured world where there are a good number of people with no place to go. In this, they feel melancholy on a holiday that should be filled with reverent thanks and much joy.

I have been part of a sharing of Thanksgiving Day with people that gather simply for the fellowship, although the pie might be some incentive. That mimics how Thanksgiving got started. It was the celebration of a bountiful harvest with people who had yet to become friends.

That pumpkin, squash and hunted-game day happened in 1621. In 1777 and repeatedly after that, Congress and Presidents Washington, Adams, Madison and Lincoln made Thanksgiving declarations that directed the honoring of the day of thanks. In 1944, President Roosevelt made it an official holiday to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. 

So for nearly 400 years we’ve been setting an abundance of food on tables to honor that first harvest fellowship meal. The roast turkey fare is suggested to be traditional but culinary historians believe that a good portion of the early Thanksgiving meals consisted of seafood, which is often absent from today’s menus.

However, it has been suggested that the first meal was more likely to have been chicken fried elk steak but then that’s the cowboy version. It might also be noted that the majority of those years were without football or shopping.

The world today finds families scattered across the miles and lives screwed down to time frames that don’t allow for long distance visits for dinner. But still, Thanksgiving comes. So if your life is bountiful, share it with someone who is lost in transition.  Invite a stray to Thanksgiving dinner. 

Julie, an occasional stray, can be reached for comment at jcarternm@gmail.com.