The best part of Thanksgiving, bones and all

Thanksgiving, as it is often said, is the truest of American holidays: full of appetite, without apology. Every other event on our civic calendar asks us to remember something noble, or mourn something tragic, or celebrate something great or abstract, but Thanksgiving only asks us to hunger together, and then to eat. In any year, this would be a simple path to commonality; This may be the last truly unifying experience available to us as Americans. This year, as we sit at a feast in a time, a place, and a nation that seems to be actively working to become more brutal, more indifferent, more willing to make people suffer for the sin of being poor or sick or born in the wrong skin or of the wrong parents or on the wrong side of an arbitrary line, the absurdity of it all is magnified. We feed others, we feed ourselves, and what else is there? At the table, at least, we can control something: the menu, the rituals, and any little ferocious beliefs we hold about the holiday itself.

Despite its name, Thanksgiving, to me, is less about giving thanks and more about faith. I’ve given up belief in the story of the day, the washed-up mythology of happy colonists befriending happy Native Americans, and I don’t want to question too deeply what may remain of any belief I have in America as an ideal. But I believe in the less sublime truth of the meal itself: I believe that priority should go to turkey legs to those under six, because they make great pictures, and that the bird’s cook and carver should claim their spoils—the crispest parts of the skin, the prettiest little bits of breast and thigh—as they work, not as they serve the meat. I believe guests should only be offered one cocktail option, and it should be stiff and made in batches. I think you should always take care to compliment the cranberry sauce or potatoes, that the correct number of pancakes is half the number of guests plus one, and that whoever is doing the dishes should get their plate ready first. I think soup has no place at the Thanksgiving table, where slow ingestion dulls the momentum of dinner and conversation; If it must be served, it should be scooped into small sturdy teacups or mugs, and sipped (no spoons!) as an appetizer standing up. I think going around the table and detailing what we’re thankful for is a terrible, inevitably competitive practice and a model of bad game design: it unfairly disadvantages the person assigned to go first, who can’t beat anyone, and the person who comes last, because by then all the obvious gratitude for the big ticket is spoken for.

Above all, I believe that all Thanksgiving traditions — the menu, the gathering, the full pursuit of a Norman Rockwell fantasy — are optional, and that like any apparently strict framework they provide fertile ground for sly music and willful rebellion. However, within the confines of the holiday conference, I believe in the supremacy of the turkey sacrifice. And just as the suffering and inadequacy of the meal itself are necessary steps toward the glorious leftovers to come, so for me the bird is merely a prerequisite for its bones. For most home cooks, eating a turkey once a year is a gastronomic absurdity, unnecessarily perfect, and inevitably difficult to prepare. We shouldn’t make a turkey for Thanksgiving at all, really, except for the fact that after its time in the spotlight, it becomes a turkey carcass, and that carcass is one of the greatest gifts of the entire blessed year, because once you’ve carved the meat and chosen the cuts, you can throw it in a pot, cover it with water, put it on the stove, and make the turkey stock. Few things in the world are better.

I’ve written before about my love of stocks, and with each passing year my passion grows. I like the practice of making them, and the metaphor within their practicality: nothing is wasted, even the most selective bones have something to offer. Mostly, I love the solution itself, which is dark, rich and creamy with collagen. Turkey is often forgettable, while chicken turns out a bit over the top, but in water its flavor transforms and deepens to create something of an impressive grit. No recipe needed: Combine all turkey scraps in a large pot, add any leftover vegetables or herbs that look appealing, add cold water, and simmer for as many hours as you like. As the skeleton softens and cooks, the kitchen is filled, for the second time that day, with the warm smell of meat, but the nervous edge that accompanied the previous roasting is gone. There’s no noise of chaos this time, no clock-watching, no spreadsheets to impatiently monitor. By the time the inventory is done, after two, four, or six hours; You can leave it on forever, in fact, just skim off the foam and add water to it if the level seems low – leftovers from the previous meal are stored away. Perhaps all the guests were gone; I hope someone else has been assigned the task of dirty dishes. Boiling turkey gravy after Thanksgiving is a gentle meditation, cleansing, and reclamation of the home.

We are a small and somewhat restless brotherhood, devoting the glorious second life of the turkey as soup. I count among my brothers Michael Dukakis, the former Massachusetts governor and onetime presidential candidate, whose enthusiasm was so great that he demanded bones from the Thanksgiving tables of his family, friends, and eventually the general public. “Michael Dukakis would very much like your turkey carcass,” Boston globe books In 2015. (Five years later, after an overwhelming response, the city’s public radio station Update provided: “Mike Dukakis no longer accepts turkey carcasses.”) I’ve always been inclined to follow his example, perhaps by taping a note in the elevator of my apartment building saying that, if anyone has turkey bones they won’t use, I’ll be happy to stop by and pick them up. This year, I think I’ll finally do it. A bird carcass picked up by a neighbor, rescued from the quiet shame of the garbage, is something to be thankful for. This is also something I believe in: at the end of one holiday lies the beginning of the next. ♦