Imagine being the executive producer of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and managing about 1000 clowns. Along with them, overseeing the staff, volunteers, and sponsors along with the giant balloons, law enforcement officers, street vendors, and television journalists. Now doesn’t cooking a turkey dinner for twenty or so people sound like a snap? So let’s think of things to be grateful for:

• Double ovens – one to hold the 20+ pound turkeys and the other to bake the green-bean casserole.
• Smoke alarms that go off when the unwatched gravy boils over on the stove.
• Kiddie cousins who forget their shyness and dash about, getting under foot, and having a family reunion ball.
• Warring family factions who, for the next 24 hours, put down their differences about the outcome of the recent election.
• Visiting cooks who bring their assigned dishes and know how to make the gravy.
• A turkey temperature timer that has popped and dinner will soon be on the table.
• Doe-eyed dogs who hover under the legs of the turkey-carver, hoping for a falling scrap, accidental or intentional. Who cares if it’s the gizzard or the leg – they all disappear, untasted, in one gulp.
• A prayer of thanks for such delicious bounty to eat, good health to enjoy, and family conversations to savor.
• A good wine that goes down easy after the dishes are done and the last football game of the day is beginning.

Just goes to show that behind every great celebration is a great support system. No one does anything alone. If they try, they fall short of success.