There are, I am sure, many ways that kids learn about Thanksgiving.  Classically, there is the story of the Pilgrims told in countless schools…complete with hats made to wear home and traced hands transformed into turkeys.  But how is Dante learning about the holiday?  Two words, my friends: Williams.  Sonoma.

In the onslaught of catalogs we are getting these days (a trial to my recycling bin now and to me round about February when I call each of the many vendors to ask not to receive any more paper catalogs), we received a very slim, Thanksgiving focused Williams-Sonoma catalog of fall feast foods and kitchen tools.

Dante is pretty excited about all the catalogs this year – not because they are full of things he wants, luckily I think we have another year or two before that phase – but because of all the big, bold typeface.  He loves identifying letters right now.  And so, that is how the love affair began: “W. I. L. L. I. A. M. S…two S! O. N. O…two O! M. A…do again!”

When the catalog was trundled off to the bedroom I didn’t think much of it.  But at bedtime, Dante holds it up and says, “Story!”  This is your chosen bedtime story?  I asked if he wanted to practice the letters and got an “All done letters.  Story.”

And so the story of Thanksgiving in our house, at least for this year, is about turkey and pie and stuffing and mashed potatoes.  And it is about food processors, roasting pans, food mills, knives, gravy separators and egg poachers.  Now that we are a few days into reading this story, it makes sense.  Dante takes his food very seriously.

We routinely have French Toast on Saturdays and yesterday I learned that Dante has been watching closer than I thought – I suspect there is a parenting lesson in that.  I told him I would make French toast for us.  He ran to the fridge and got the eggs and bread for me.  I was clearly not moving fast enough in my pre-coffee haze.  A two year old running through the house with a carton of eggs, that, my reader-friends, is just as good as caffeine.  Really.  Try it at home.  Dante also got his handy-dandy step stool and helped me actually make the toast.  And here’s the kicker, he really helped.  He didn’t get too much shell in the eggs (we cracked each on onto a small bowl first to make sure we didn’t spoil the whole meal with an egg disaster).  He is a sloppy egg scrambled but he had the right idea.  And he knew just how to dip both sides of the bread and then handed it to me because the griddle was hot.  I have to say I am pleased – when Dante turns 18, if nothing else, he can live on French Toast and fruit.  I have certainly known 18 year olds with worst culinary and nutritional standards.

While we will be making an effort to explain the real meaning of giving thanks come Thursday, I suspect we are a couple years away from that really making sense as well.  In the meantime, maybe I have missed Dante’s point.  Maybe that Williams-Sonona catalog IS his toy catalog this year…