Simple Living | Thanksgiving Table
It was a quiet Thanksgiving, two weeks early. We called it Pretend Thanksgiving. Silly, yes, because there was all that preparation and all that food and all that gratitude and not one pretend thing about it. It was just early, that’s all, in order to catch all of us at home at the same time at the same table for a festive holiday feast (in the end, sadly, one of us still couldn’t make it home).
I prepared our favorite dishes - roast turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, butternut squash gratin, kale and quinoa salad, steamed cauliflower with hollandaise sauce, stuffing (that I sadly forgot to add the toasted pine nuts to), and for dessert, apple pie. We sipped on wine and sparkling cider, and later, on hot tea.
The table was simply set with our white everyday dish ware, silver plate flatware, and stemless wine glasses. Down the center of the table, around the two vintage brass candlesticks and their freshly-trimmed tapers, I tossed a handful of oak leaves, tumbled down from the only oak tree around. The linen napkins were folded, but not ironed, as the boy in charge of such things decided they looked better “rumpled like the leaves”. I had to agree.
Loves? It’s okay to go all-out for a holiday feast. To fancy-make and fancy-bake, to fancy-decorate for a wondrous, exciting experience. Go ahead and do that, yes, yes, yes. But also? Go ahead and don’t do all that if you need. Make your holiday yours, no matter what the chatter says. Follow your joy. Should the idea of big and fancy feel too much? Trim and tailor it down to size.
Because understated is just as festive, and simple just as elegant. Small and quiet mark holidays just as well. Your candle light will still glint off the crystal, your silver will still glow, and you’ll find that rumpled linen is indeed just as beautiful as pressed.