To Feel Visible at Thanksgiving and the Rest of the Year...

I stand in the aisle at the grocery.  It's that time of year with the big family-based holidays quickly approaching and the magazine covers reflect that. Thanksgiving is less than a month away and the glossy magazine covers reflect that. I love Thanksgiving. Its a holiday based around family and friends spending time together around a shared table, sharing a meal, and an afternoon - even if that afternoon involves a number of people yelling at a football game on the television. There doesn't seem the level of commercialized demands as Christmas gift giving. Growing up it was when my mom brought out the good serving dishes and we got special treats not always on the table, like olives. The glossy covers reflect the changing of the seasons with the fast approach of Thanksgiving. I've already begun making my Thanksgiving plans and I want to use linen napkins I've been collecting from thrift shops. One thing is missing...

I see the glossy magazine covers designed to entice people and encourage in them the sense of a a big family tables laden with the seasonal feast. Covers full of food and candles, beautiful tablescapes and rich colors, and perfectly cooked turkeys. Everywhere is turkey. I, like many other Americans, don't eat turkey at Thanksgiving or any other time. Some like me (the vegans and vegetarians), will grace their table with a turkey-like substitute as their main dish. I will be serving a my traditional puffed pastry, mushroom & nut filled, meatless Mushroom-Walnut Wellington. I my eyes scan over the covers boasting of Thanksgiving food, I find only one that doesn't include a turkey. I might as well be invisible, or at least that's how I feel. An entire segment of the population suddenly feels invisible.

Most of the time, I don't mind being the oddball out. I've felt that way in some way or another most of my life, but sometimes it would be nice to feel like a visible part of society. There are jokes about "that one vegetarian family member," that reach beyond my family (although I have heard them there more times that I would like to count). I want to feel visible as more than a food joke. I love cookbooks and skimming trough recipes, but the magazine with their glossy covers are passed over. Turkey doesn't feel like Thanksgiving to me and the magazine covers covered with dead poultry don't include me.

As vegetarians, we become accustomed to be isolated. There are some things I just can't find in my hometown and the small cities surrounding it, leaving me to sometimes have to order hard to find things or pick them up when I head to larger cities. I've grown accustomed to this, but one in awhile I would like to not feel like the oddity as I stand in the grocery store check out seeing the glossy magazine covers boasting what a Thanksgiving meal could/should "look like." Sometimes, I don't want to feel the invisible punchline told around the holiday dinner table.