Walking through my neighborhood home-improvement store recently, I was made keenly aware of the rush to winter. Rows of gleaming snowblowers posed like soldiers ready to battle with the inevitable feet of snow sure to fall in a Minnesota winter. There are 1,000 and one ways to throw, blow, push, melt, and slide away snow from driveways and paths. 

In the middle was a giant, inflated, lit-up turkey wearing a pilgrim hat. His eyes were slightly crossed (to emphasize the comical portrayal of a bird mythologized being suggested as our national avian symbol), and he was sitting squarely on his duff feathers rising from his backside. “It’s kind of excessive for Thanksgiving, don’t you think,” a fellow shopper decided. As if on cue, a motion sensor hidden on the garish beast’s belly detected us, and the turkey-pilgrim let out a burst of gobbles, rather happy-sounding considering the usual fate of such birds in the flesh.

I laughed. Excessive? Yes, of course! This is America, after all, and what day better than humble Thanksgiving — a quintessential American show of gratitude and reverence for a nation overflowing with opportunity and good fortune to all between her shores — to celebrate in excess. Besides, why should the Fourth of July get all the fun?

Thanksgiving is more than just a pause between Halloween and Christmas. It’s an exercise in contradictions, much like America itself.

Even when the economy is booming, Americans can be a thrifty bunch, what with doorbuster deals, loyalty cards, and a Black Friday that’s now stretched into a week or more. But on Thanksgiving, we’re willing to blow our budgets and empty our wallets for that 24-pound Jennie-O (a holiday staple that generally ranks at the bottom of Thanksgiving fare), even as this year promises to be one of the most expensive on record.

We complain about our family, and much ink is spilled on how to “get along” with extended members who may have different political or cultural views, yet we welcome them into our homes and around our tables. In fact, the weekend is so heavily traveled that it regularly breaks records as millions of Americans hit the road and take to the skies for often arduous and expensive trips across the country.

In an era of drive-throughs, delivery, and convenience-takes-all food consumerism, Americans take days, even weeks, preparing for a meal that is eaten in about the same amount of time as an NFL game’s halftime. That recipe for your great aunt’s 24-hour salad is dug out and painstakingly followed, even down to halving and seeding the grapes, as a nod to nostalgia and childhood memory. Turkeys are brined, stuffed, roasted, and basted, each step taking longer than a Friday night DoorDash delivery. Even the quickest method of deep frying will take over an hour for that 20-bound bird, plus it has the added American-style element of danger in lieu of Independence Day fireworks.

It’s vogue to scoff at traditions and the American tendency for excess and trash any tribute to our Pilgrim’s pride, but tradition is inherent in a holiday meant for gratitude and thanksgiving. It’s a day Americans can reliably count as a last respite before we drown in tinsel, wrapping paper, and lists. It’s a day absent of gift expectations and winter vacation nightmares. Stores are closed, malls empty, and leftovers relished. Even in the modern, changing world of the NFL, with games now being played in Europe and shown on streaming apps, we can count on the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys to be on living room televisions while beers are swilled and naps taken. 

An outsider might look at the crowded tables of pies and puddings, turkeys, hams, and roast beef and wonder where humbleness is in such a spread. Or gaze upon piles of mashed and cheesed potatoes, jellied cranberries, and every type of vegetable dressed in au gratin and doubt there’s room for giving thanks. But this is the American way. 

American writer William Faulkner wrote, “Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: It must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.” We appreciate all we have and share it. We invite our family and friends to partake in our abundance and traditions — however quirky or dusty they may seem. We have a lot to be thankful for, and we show it in a big way: an enormous feast, family crowded around a table, time-honored traditions, and even a gigantic, inflatable gobbling turkey in the front yard.