Let’s make the best of it for this Thanksgiving: Miamians don’t really like turkey anyway
So you want to host a giant Thanksgiving dinner with friends and family in Miami and pass around the COVID like it’s mashed potatoes.
You shouldn’t. Because in 2020, spending Thanksgiving with the people who live in your house is lit. Even if it’s just you and your dog.
Sure, conventional wisdom says that we will be tragically and forever ruined if we can’t spend the holiday drowning in too much food, too much drink and too many people who are one sentence away from obliterating our last nerve.
But with a pandemic raging and COVID cases rising, medical experts warn we must rethink how we plan to spend this holiday if we want to be around for the next one.
We plan to be around for the next one, drivers on the Palmetto notwithstanding. And once you think about it, celebrating Thanksgiving in a small way is actually a lot less work. Plus we’ve gotten used to hunkering. We are hunkering experts now. We don’t even need the magic of Santa’s Enchanted Forest to lift our spirits, which is good because like everything else that is holy and good, it’s canceled for 2020.
Here are all the blessings that will shower down upon you if you have a quiet, uneventful Thanksgiving:
YOU WILL REMAIN IMMUNE TO HOLIDAY-SHAMING
Remember back in the spring, when everybody in Miami was social-distance shaming everybody else? Imagine how much worse it will be if someone posts a photo of you on social media with 20 other people in the dining room. You know how you’re privately slagging that friend of yours who went to a wedding last week? If you host a big holiday dinner while COVID runs wild, you will be Topic No. 1 in your friends’ WhatsApp chats until Christmas.
YOU HAVE A PERFECT EXCUSE FOR NOT COOKING
Cooking a massive holiday dinner is a time-consuming ordeal. This year, if you order takeout, you are generously supporting local businesses at a crucial time in our city’s history plus your cousin can’t tell your mom you’re lazy and/or that your mashed potatoes are lumpy.
YOU ABSOLUTELY DO NOT HAVE TO MOP YOUR FLOORS
No guests are coming, so put away the stick
mop. Let the cat hair pile up and turn on some football.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO WATCH FOOTBALL
Don’t care what the Dallas Cowboys are doing? No problem. You can binge-watch “The Queen’s Gambit” or all 15 seasons of “Supernatural” or even “Cougar Town” if you are so inclined. You can watch “Love Actually” early. Nobody is going to make you change the channel.
NO POLITICAL ARGUMENTS!
You can brush off that idiot uncle who loathes [fill in the name of the superior candidate for whom you voted] with a quick phone call, then hang up and go fight with randos on Twitter. They don’t share your DNA and are easier to block.
YOUR KIDS DON’T HAVE TO ACT POLITE
They can hide in their rooms and make inappropriate TikTok videos, which is what they’d rather be doing than talking to old people anyway. Also you don’t have to see them make that face when you try to make them eat stuffing.
YOU DO NOT— WE REPEAT, DO NOT— HAVE TO EAT TURKEY
Wouldn’t you rather eat croquetas and a massive slab
of Tortilla Española? Sure you would. Nobody in Miami likes turkey, anyway. The only way to get anybody to eat it is to wrap it in bacon. Besides, we’re all waiting for the roast pork in December.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO SHARE THAT GOOD BOTTLE WITH THE BOX-WINE LOVERS
No wasting the good stuff on someone who can’t tell Franzia from a 2015 Chateau Lafite Rothschild. And you’re not driving anywhere, so go ahead and pour that third glass. Cheers.
YOU CAN SKIP THE PUMPKIN PIE
Can we just all agree pumpkin pie is the worst dessert? Is there even sugar in it? Stop putting vegetables in desserts. Eat some ice cream. Eat some flan. Hell, dunk DoubleStuf Oreos into a glass of milk till they’re soggy. All are improvements on pumpkin pie.
YOU CAN LEGIT PRETEND IT’S NOT HAPPENING AND DRINK SANGRIA BY THE POOL ALL DAY
You do you.
Connie Ogle: 305-376-3649, @OgleConnie