Thanksgiving Message from Brother James Butler, FSC

Dear La Salle Family:

On a frosty morning a few weeks ago, one of my colleagues here at La Salle greeted me with a question: "Why aren't you wearing an overcoat out here?" I thought about it, looked at him, and responded truthfully. "It's still October. I never wear an overcoat till November 1^st." While it was a frosty morning with a temperature hovering in the mid-thirties, something more powerful was at work than the impulse to keep these aging bones warm: ROUTINE.

Routines structure our days, years, and lives in ways that can be quite helpful in the efficiencies they present. On Sunday mornings, I set up the organizer for the pills that will keep me among the living for the week to come. Every month on the 12^th (the date of my birth), I remember to change my razor blade. Wednesday is dry cleaning day (20% off and 99 cent shirts), when any suit that has been worn five times goes in to be refreshed. The twice-yearly change between standard and daylight savings times reminds me to flip my mattress. (Small wonder that I earned the nickname "the model husband" from a prior Mothers' Club).

Perhaps no holiday is more supported by a collection of annual family routines and rituals than Thanksgiving. Each family has its collection of traditional foods—from the nibbles provided to those watching the parades or games while the turkey's roasting, to the assortment of side dishes, to the selection of pies that ends the meal (I was fascinated as a child by the inclusion of that mincemeat pie which appeared to be baked only to be thrown out untouched each year.). Relatives and progeny have their place in a rotation. Whether married children come to you or the in-laws, whether the loser gets them for dessert, and who goes to get Gi-Gi from Normandy Farms: these things are all pre-ordained. In larger clans, different participants are assigned predictable culinary contributions year after year. A trusted sister-in-law may get to bring the required second turkey. Someone newer to the family may get a contribution less essential to the feast, the string bean or sweet potato casserole, for example. And the ne'er-do-well bachelor brother-in-law? "Why don't you just stop at Wawa and get a bag of ice, Bud."

I have spent maybe five or six Thanksgivings out of the country, occasions that threatened the stability of my own unquestioned routines. For the most part, my companions showed a healthy indifference to this uniquely American custom. I remember yet two that were different, though, holidays that demonstrated the pull of the familiar. In 1995, an Australian Brother was determined that I should have my national holiday meal (served in the Southern hemisphere's late spring)—even though the rare Australian turkey seldom weighs above eight pounds and would no doubt discover its buzzard roots on Ancestry.com. More moving was the scene in Bethlehem during the second Intifada. With access to Jerusalem's supermarkets denied, it seemed we predominantly American Brothers would have to make do with whatever meat was at hand in the freezer. Sixteen years later, I can still remember the look of triumph on a member of the facilities staff's face when he bounded into the community dining room Tuesday evening holding two turkeys by their (still-attached) necks, the Israeli army having proved no match for the ingenuity of local underground markets.