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by Joshua L. Weinstein November 27, 2025

Why I boycotted my favorite holiday

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. In 2016 I boycotted it. My father died five-and-a-half weeks before, and I didn’t feel like celebrating. Instead of spending the day in the warm glow of memories and the gentle embrace of friends, I

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Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. In 2016 I boycotted it.

My father died five-and-a-half weeks before, and I didn’t feel like celebrating. Instead of spending the day in the warm glow of memories and the gentle embrace of friends, I decided to go to the movies. The idea of sitting in the dark, watching someone else’s life, and feeling anything other than numb sounded good. So when some friends invited me to see a movie with them, it was as if the heavens were smiling on me, endorsing my plan.

We saw Manchester by the Sea.

I do not know if you know this movie, but it is relentlessly bleak. It makes Sophie’s Choice seem like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It is not the movie to see when you are boycotting Thanksgiving because your father has just died.

(For you cinephiles, I know. It’s brilliant. Two Oscars, six nominations, critical acclaim, huge hit at the box office, blah blah blah. Don’t see it when you’re mourning. Or when you feel like being in a good mood. It’s bleak as fuck.)

In some ways, the movie did what I wanted it to: It made me feel something other than numb. Problem is, it made me feel even worse. I guess my goal should have been more specific than “anything other than numb.”

It was a pretty miserable Thanksgiving.

And a perfect one.

I mean, friends cared enough to take me to the movies, so that’s good (although Dr. Strange or Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which were playing that weekend, would have been better choices in the moment). And in retrospect, I think it’s hilarious that I tried to drown my sorrows in a movie about death, depression, guilt, and tragedy. Set in New England.

I laugh that I chose to soak in misery, that I tried to boycott a day devoted to gratitude. A friend of mine says you find what you look for. That Thanksgiving Day, I looked for misery, and I found it.

Today, another Thanksgiving Day, I look back at the year. It has been sad. I grieved the death of someone I love. Friends have been diagnosed with cancer. My mother, who is kind and accomplished and beautiful, broke her hip. I had—and have—problems with my eyes.

Today, another Thanksgiving Day, I look back at the year. It has been beautiful. My brother Andy received a spectacular honor. I celebrated an old friend’s wedding. I made new friends. I traveled. I comforted people I love when they mourned. I cheered a friend’s success. I read books. I drank hot apple cider. I spent more than a month with my mother, and was reminded how kind and accomplished and beautiful she is.

I will celebrate in Malibu today, with friends I have known for a very long time, in a house overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I will acknowledge the challenges, some more difficult than others, that face us all. But I will look for the beauty. And though I have problems with my eyes, I will find it.

Every year on this day, I post a column I wrote 20 years ago. It may be self-indulgent. Or maybe sentimental. At the very least, it’s a much better tradition than watching Manchester by the Sea. I hope you enjoy and I wish you a happy and meaningful Thanksgiving.

***

WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA—Even here, a place I am assured is paradise, I find myself missing Maine—a place I know actually is.

Do not get me wrong. There is much to love about California. Waves crash below Pacific Coast Highway symphonically, as beautifully as their Atlantic cousins do at Bar Harbor. The “Hollywood” sign, perched in the verdant hills above my new hometown, manages to be both precarious and majestic. And Malibu, where billionaires share ocean views with skunks and rabbits, offers sunsets so lovely and nights so clear I sometimes think the breeze is God’s very breath.

Still, I miss Maine.

I miss Maine in September, when the fragrance of apples fills the air. I miss it in June, when daylight lingers forever, and the ferry to Peaks Island magically spirits passengers farther than the 15 minutes would suggest. I miss it in December, when snowflakes caress lollipop lights in the Old Port, and the whole town seems to gather in the window of Gritty McDuff’s.

But I most miss it now—whenever now may be.

This particular now is Thanksgiving. I know it is fashionable among some to deride Thanksgiving, to dismiss it as hokey or worse. I know that some people complain that it has become too commercial and has lost its meaning.

Those people lose.

For all its hokiness, for its emphasis on turkey, this very American holiday still has meaning. If it weren’t so important, this would not be the busiest travel weekend of the year. People do not abide cramped airplanes and congested freeways for the trivial.

I lived a dozen Thanksgivings in Maine. I spent them in mansions in Falmouth, in apartments in Munjoy Hill, in condos on Brackett Street. I’m thankful for them all.

One Tuesday about 10 years ago, two days before Thanksgiving, I had no holiday plans. I called my friends Neil and Stacey, who had been married all of a month.

“I have nowhere to go for Thanksgiving,” I told Stacey.

“Ohhhhh,” she said, genuinely sad for me. Suddenly she brightened.

“You’ll come here.”

I knew she would say that, knew she would invite me to her home on Emerson Street. That is why I called.

My friend Stacey is a combination of Martha Stewart and Uma Thurman—a smart, fierce, intelligent and beautiful woman who since that Thanksgiving produced a child who surpasses even Neil and Stacey in those qualities. I knew she’d build a memorable Thanksgiving.

And she did.

Stacey had turned her little apartment on the hill into something Martha herself would envy. She didn’t merely bake cookies, she individually cut them into festive shapes—little turkeys and pilgrims and cornucopias. I wouldn’t be surprised if she personally churned the butter. The place glowed in pumpkin-scented candlelight and the guests basked in the warmth despite the cold November night.

But the perfection of that Thanksgiving was not in the alarmingly delicious turkey or the tasteful decorations. It was in the joy of the moment: The promise of a new marriage, the laughter of comfortable friendship, the purity of offering thanks.

We all have had our challenges in the years since then, but days like that Thanksgiving offer strength and hope.

Thanksgiving in Maine always does.

It does in California, too, and in Florida, where today, I will spend the holiday with my family.

Today is the first Thanksgiving in 14 years I’ve spent with them, although my heart was with them for each.

Today, in Miami—another place I’m assured is paradise—my heart is in Maine.

Thanksgiving is somehow less cozy when it’s warm outside, but it’s just as meaningful.

Today I give thanks. For my family, for my friends, for nieces and nephews I barely know. For apple-scented air. For the promise and hope of the coming new year. I am thankful for Thanksgivings past and future, for crashing waves, for skunks in Malibu and—today especially—for Maine Thanksgivings.

Eight years later

As time goes by

A Very Important Halloween Message

by Joshua L. Weinstein October 12, 2024

Eight years later

A few years ago, I got sick. Extremely high fever sick. Hospital sick. Undignified Stomach Issues sick. I don’t remember much about the first few days I spent at Cedars. I remember shivering, and I remember a nurse wrapping a

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A few years ago, I got sick. Extremely high fever sick. Hospital sick. Undignified Stomach Issues sick.

I don’t remember much about the first few days I spent at Cedars. I remember shivering, and I remember a nurse wrapping a heated blanket around my feet, but it’s all very blurry.

Except this:

There’s an IV line in each arm, and even though I’m doped up on Dilaudid, I’m in deep pain. Someone—probably a nurse—comes into my room and asks, “Are you comfortable?”

I cannot raise my head from the pillow, but I smile imperceptibly, and, with some effort, I manage to say, “I make a living.”

I cannot help myself. Weinsteins are required to give that answer to that question. It is reflexive. Programmed. Installed by my father a very long time ago.

Alvin N. Weinstein was a learned, accomplished man. He spoke four languages—several of them well—and was a scholar, a brilliant lawyer, and a concert violinist who was partial to Gavotte en Rondeau from Bach’s Partita No. 3 in E Major BWV 1006 and Pop Goes the Weasel.

He had a remarkable mind that was capable of impressive and ridiculous feats. He could, for instance, spell any word backward.

We’d be at dinner, and someone would say, “Dad! ‘Rhododendron.’”

He’d answer, really fast, “N-O-R-D-N-E-D-O-D-O-H-R.”

(For the record, just now I had to ask Alexa how to spell “rhododendron.” Dad could spell it backwards.)

That remarkable mind of his enjoyed the silly as much as the serious. Actually, it excelled at serious but was even better at silly. He had schtick, my dad.

When the family would get in the car to go somewhere, Dad would announce, “We’re off! Like a herd of turtles!” Except he’d pronounce “herd of turtles” the way Curly, of the Three Stooges, would: “Hoyda toy-tulls.”

No matter how serious a situation, if there was an opportunity to laugh, Dad would take it.

In the months before his death eight years ago today, there was plenty serious. A reckless and irresponsible doctor had prescribed him a drug that helped lower his blood sugar but also caused cancer. The lazy, incompetent physician then missed (and missed and ignored) a symptom that should have been obvious. Suddenly, my larger-than-life father, a guy whose license plate said, “BIG AL-45” (he was 45 when my mother got him the personalized tag) was in and out of hospitals.

Here is a story I have told before, and I’m sure I will again:

Before one surgery, a nurse asked him the standard pre-surgery questions:

“What’s your name?”

Dad answered. The nurse consulted my father’s medical chart.

“What’s your date of birth?”

Dad answered. More consulting.

“Any allergies?”

“Yes,” my father answered.

The nurse looked confused. The chart said Dad had no allergies. The nurse flipped through papers on the chart. What are you allergic to, the nurse wanted to know.

“Bullshit,” my father told her.

Not long after, a nurse asked my dad the same question that another nurse would ask me years later.

“Are you comfortable?”

He was not. He was gravely ill. But he got this look in his eye, this mischievous John Belushi glint, and he said, “I make a living.”

When Dad was a young teen in Middle Village, Queens, he and his friend Seymour Strom (it was a time when there were people named “Seymour Strom”) used to go to the soda fountain at a drug store near where they lived. Ice cream cost a dime or something, and a soda cost a nickel. An ice cream soda—ice cream and soda—was 20 cents.

One day, Dad and Seymour went to the soda fountain with an ingenious plan to save a nickel.

They sat at the counter.

“I think I’ll have an ice cream,” Dad said.

“I think I’ll have a soda,” Seymour said.

They paid their dime and nickel and the guy at the counter—the soda jerk—handed Dad a bowl of ice cream and Seymour a large glass of soda. Dad and Seymour immediately combined the two and—voila!—had a 15-cent ice cream soda.

The jerk was having none of it.

“Fine,” he said, “but I’m not going to give you spoons.”

Dad was a step ahead of him.

“That’s OK,” my father said.

I imagine he got that John Belushi look in his eye as he and Seymour each pulled a spoon out of their pocket.

And I imagine the guy behind the counter laughed, too.

I’m pretty sure my father wanted him to, because Dad wanted to include everyone in the joke. Keeping laughter to yourself is petty. Sharing the schtick is generous. My father was generous.

Dad grew up during the Great Depression, was an Infantry officer in the United States Army, had two older sisters. He knew challenge. And he matched every challenge powerfully. With intellect and a sense of humor.

Eight years ago today, on Yom Kippur 2016, my father did something that made no sense. He died.

I remember that morning. I remember hyperventilating. I remember being very sad. I remember telling someone that I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that I’d never be able to talk to my father again.

Someone replied with what I’m sure was meant to be helpful but was incomprehensibly stupid.

“You can still talk,” he said.

I started to say it’s not the same, but arguing with stupid is folly.

It’s a long time, eight years, and I can’t remember exactly what Dad’s voice sounded like. But when I hear Pop Goes the Weasel, or when my mother, my brothers, my sister, my nieces, my nephews say “hoyda toy-tuls,” or when they get a certain glint in their eye, I hear its echo.

And when I find humor during difficult times, or bring someone else into the joke, or deliver my father’s line, his voice echoes from within. An imperceptible smile is still a smile.

Why I boycotted my favorite holiday

Seven Years Later

As time goes by

by Joshua L. Weinstein August 17, 2023

As time goes by

Today – Aug. 17 – always was special in my family. A day to celebrate. On this day in 1958, my parents married. Every year on their anniversary, I’d ask my dad the same questions my brothers and sister did.

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Today – Aug. 17 – always was special in my family. A day to celebrate. On this day in 1958, my parents married.

Every year on their anniversary, I’d ask my dad the same questions my brothers and sister did. “How long have you and Mom been married?”

“Hmmmm,” he’d answer. “How old is your brother?”

“40.”

“Then we’ve been married . . . 39 years.”

Then I’d ask, “You ever think about divorcing Mom?”

“Divorcing her?” he’d ask, shocked at the notion. “Noooo!”

A pause.

“Thought about killing her though.”

Don’t even. He was joking. It was a different time.

And then he’d follow up with a story about a time Mom got exasperated and told him she was going to leave.

“That’s OK,” he answered her. “I’ll go with you.”

None of these are great jokes, but they got better every year. With time, they morphed from corny to comforting. I looked forward to calling my parents on their anniversary and going through our annual schtick. I looked forward to hearing my mom roll her eyes – she has really loud eyes – at it.

Even now, I smile when I think about it.

And I miss it.

Dad died almost seven years ago, and the meaning of this day changed. It’s still something to celebrate, but it’s tinged with sadness.

For all my life, August 17 meant one thing. Now it means something else. Strange how that goes, how something as permanent as “meaning” can change, and how dates that have no particular meaning suddenly become fraught. December 7^th, 1941 meant nothing on December 6^th. And 9/11 meant nothing on 9/10. Only in America does the Fourth of July matter.

(My father, incidentally, was born on the Fourth of July, so Independence Day always had two meanings in my family. Now that day, like today, like Father’s Day, has another. And October 12, the day he died, has a significance it never did. A different kind of anniversary.)

There’s this cliché about time healing all wounds. I don’t think it’s true. Time changes the way wounds feel, just like time changes the way celebrations feel. One year I don’t like what isn’t, another year I don’t like what is. One year I like what isn’t, another year I like what is.

I’ll call my mom today, as I do every day. We’ll talk about Dad and his silly jokes. I’ll ask what she’s doing and I’ll hope she’s spending at least part of it with my sister, who lives nearby and who celebrates her own anniversary today.

I sent my sister a text message a little while ago.

“How long have you and Jon been married?”

She answered:

“How old is Ben?”

Why I boycotted my favorite holiday

Eight years later

Seven Years Later

by Joshua L. Weinstein October 31, 2022

A Very Important Halloween Message

This year, I am very pleased to have arranged for the eminent educator Dr. Science Person to record a special Halloween video. Watch if you dare. But consider yourself warned: This is no ordinary spooky story. This is a spooky

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This year, I am very pleased to have arranged for the eminent educator Dr. Science Person to record a special Halloween video.

Watch if you dare.

But consider yourself warned: This is no ordinary spooky story. This is a spooky story about trains. Now you’re scared.