Well, Bless Your Drumsticks - It's Thanksgiving

As Americans, Thanksgiving is part of our soul. It's family, and friends, and food, but much more than that. Thanksgiving leaves a mark on us: it is at once unique to each family, but still universal enough to convey a feeling of warm nostalgia far away from the actual day and trappings of festivity. Some of our favorite authors are fond of Thanksgiving as well. Along with them, we wish you the happiest of Thanksgivings:

As our house was the largest and most conveniently located, it was traditional for these relatives to aim themselves our way every year at Thanksgiving; though there were seldom fewer than thirty celebrants, it was not an onerous chore, because we provided only the setting and an ample number of stuffed turkeys.

-Truman Capote, The Thanksgiving Visitor

Thanksgiving dinner was good. Pa had shot a wild goose for it. Ma had to stew the goose because there was no fireplace and no oven in the little stove. But she made dumplings in the gravy. There were corn dodgers and mashed potatoes. There were butter, and milk, and stewed, dried plums. And three grains of parched corn lay beside each tin plate.

-Laura Ingalls Wilder, On the Banks of Plum Creek

Thanksgiving was coming, and Aunt Fay cooked around the clock in every spare minute. Cooking and baking and grating and freezing. I did some of it in an apron that swept the floor.
I suppose she was cooking for the McKinneys too. She was making enough for thrashers, as people say around here: a twenty-two-pound turkey and four pies. But then she said she was taking a Thanksgiving dinner to Mrs. Vorhees too. "She don't have anybody to eat with."

-Richard Peck, Strays Like Us

"I long to see my boys together, and have begged the wanderers to come home to Thanksgiving, if not before," answered Mrs. Jo, beaming at the thought.
"They'll come, every man of them if they can. Even Jack will risk losing a dollar for the sake of one of our jolly old dinners," laughed Tom.
"There's the turkey fattening for the feast. I never chase him now, but feed him well; and he's 'swellin' wisibly,' bless his drumsticks!" said Ted, pointing out the doomed fowl proudly parading in a neighboring field.

-Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys

Booker and Charlene invite me to Thanksgiving dinner with the Kanes. His grandmother lives in a small house in South Memphis, and evidently she's been cooking for a week. The weather is cold and wet, so we're forced to remain inside throughout the afternoon. There are at least fifty people, ranging in age from six months to eighty, the only white face belonging to me. We eat for hours, the men crowded around the television in the den, watching one game after the other. Booker and I have our pecan pie and coffee on the hood of a car, in the garage, shivering as we catch up on the gossip.

-John Grisham, The Rainmaker