As many in the partying world understand, Thanksgiving no longer is just about
turkey and dressing, visiting family, and giving thanks for this best of all
possible worlds.
No, for many of us, the holiday is all about the night before Thanksgiving and the wonderful opportunity bestowed upon us by the powers that be to go out and get smashed. Yes, fellow Americans, our hallowed holiday of Thanksgiving has given us one of the top four nights in the calendar year to tie one on. In fact, Thanksgiving Eve may be in first place now, gobbling up worn-out New Year’s Eve, tired old St. Patrick’s Day, and the ancient costume party known as Halloween faster than you can say, “Pour the gin gimlets and pass the giblets, Jim.”
What accounts for this fast-rising phenomenon of party mayhem? First and foremost: the lack of rules. Thanksgiving Eve celebrations (sometimes known as pre-Thanksgiving parties) come with no baggage of traditional songs or required costumes. It isn’t a real holiday, so who cares what happens on Thanksgiving Eve?
The next factor is the allotted recovery time. What makes for a better happy hangover day than eating a big meal cooked by someone else, lying on the couch watching men mindlessly beat each other over a funny-shaped ball, and then having three more days to moan and groan until it’s time to crawl back to the cubicles?
The big cities have been at this for years. New Yorkers get to hang out in taverns near the launch sites of the big corporate balloons used in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Chicago joins in with a Thanksgrooving event at a joint called Visions, the Thanksgiving Eve Massacre at Club Euro, and the 12th Annual Ramada Rumble boxing match in Rosemont.
Now if you’re feeling a bit insecure in your Springpatch Thanksgiving Eve partying pants, just take a look at Wednesday’s Pub Crawl listings and you’ll immediately feel an uncommon pride rising up from your innards, awakening a long lost belief in our city’s ability paint the town as well as any burg on the map.
So let us give thanks and hope the authorities don’t read this and decide
that the Night Before Thanksgiving would be an opportune time to conduct vehicle
safety checks for the good of the community.
This article appears in Nov 18-24, 2004.
