I think about this every Thanksgiving. Somewhere a woman is crying. Some of you understand her suffering. It is gravy time.

The turkey is out of the oven and waiting to be sculpted by some proud swashbuckler. The mashed potatoes are fluffed and sitting patiently. Aunt Stephanie’s creative broccoli and a Cranberry Something are lined up and ready to go.

It is time to create that unholy mixture of meat fat and flour that will suffocate all those subtle tastes labored on by the contributors to this feast. Even if it’s the only time of the year that anyone even makes or eats gravy people expect perfection. In the end, all the guests will taste is the gravy. All they will remember is the gravy. The dinner will collapse or succeed on the perfect, silken, salty beauty of this chemical mix.

They will make little puddles of it in their crater of potatoes. They will sluice it into the moist stuffing. They will let it flood their crisp veggies and make the turkey slippery with it.

Gravy is the glue that holds the dinner together. But it is not supposed to taste or look like glue. Neither is it supposed to look like an oil slick, nor pour out in chunks. It should not be mistaken for tiny dumplings.

Thanksgiving and its allegiance to tradition – for why else do we continue to eat this stuff? – demands that the hostess or the mother or the grandmother be the gravy maker.

But not everyone knows how, nor will they ever. I have been gravy challenged since the days when cooks slid marshmallows and cream cheese inside green jello and called it a salad.  My cooking and my tastes have progressed since then.  But then comes Thanksgiving and that means turkey and the trimmings which include gravy. And while I have fond memories of my grandmother’s and my mother’s and my mother-in-law’s gravy, it now represents nothing but heartburn to me.

So there you are with everything ready and you have to take time out to have a breakdown over this brown goop which tradition dictates cannot come out of a can or a bag. Not only are you expected to do it well, you are to do it effortlessly and in those last three minutes when the kitchen fills with starving guests, swilling wine, having a great old time as you dump flour into a pool of gurgling grease. You stir. You pray. It clots. You weep, more salt for the gravy.

Thank goodness for Thanksgiving’s timing. It’s perfect now that we’re officially in a recession. Thanksgiving is the ideal hard times holiday. No gifts are expected. The feasting is relatively low-cost. The food is traditionally simple. And even though it can be an over-eaters’ holiday, Thanksgiving can be good practice for the belt-tightening ahead.

You have your economical big bird centerpiece and some root vegetables. Nothing fancy is expected. There is no item on the menu that would break the bank, were there any banks left to break.

Thanksgiving is a holiday that suits commoners and budget-minded people who know that with a small outlay you can feed the family plus the in-laws and if, if you throw in a couple of extra yams, the neighbors, too.

It is a day to remember that our ancestors, the first American foodies, cooked what they could hunt down in the woods and find in the ground and were grateful. On Thanksgiving we also honor those who came later and discovered the casserole as a way to get the most from a little as long as you mix it with cheese.

On Thanksgiving we resist the trend to tiny foods on little plates with big prices. We stay home and cook big in the name of leftovers, so that Thursday’s turkey becomes Friday’s enchiladas and Saturday’s soup.

Thanksgiving is the ideal hard times holiday.

Thanksgiving asks only that its celebrants get together and share. All contributions to the table are welcome, including Aunt Julia and her jello salad with cream cheese.
Thanksgiving is a humble collection of peasant tastes. The bread we break together does not have to be artisan. The potatoes need only be boiled and mashed. There’s little exotic on the menu, although someone may slip in the special green beans that have been in the family since her grandmother discovered canned mushroom soup in a Ladies Home Journal recipe.

As for that irresistible indigestible menu item called gravy, what could be more of a hard times concoction than flour and water and meat scraps?

Beyond the eating and the talking, and maybe imbibing in a a jug or two of cheap wine, Thanksgiving demands no special entertainment. No karaoke, no tango dancers. Only the free and natural pleasures of TV football, maybe a little nap on the couch, a long walk before pie, perhaps some political give and take as long as the guests are of like mind and stay away from the knife drawer.

Thanksgiving, the least commercial of holidays, has always been a time to remember that true wealth, success and happiness are measured by family and friends. This year, more than ever, we need to keep telling ourselves that.

It is a sentimental time, a nostalgic time, a time to give thanks for what we have been given and are about to receive, and, holy-guacamole, let’s pray the pension fund holds and Obama hurries up with health care. Because this time next year we don’t want to be carving up the Spam.