IN PRAISE OF THANKSGIVING DINNERS. Christopher Hitchens said that Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday. He praised the “sheer modesty of the occasion”. He said in this essay: “Nobody acts as if caviar and venison are about to be served, rammed home by syllabub and fine Madeira. The whole point is that one forces down, at an odd hour of the afternoon, the sort of food that even the least discriminating diner in a restaurant would never order by choice.”
I am a big fan of Thanksgiving dinners. It is no accident that I and others eat more at that meal than at any other time during the year. But Hitchens is right in observing that Thanksgiving meals are not pretentious.