I read a story in the Arizona Republic recently that mentioned the “homemade” tortillas at Los Hermanos in Superior.
Now, I like Los Hermanos tortillas as much as anybody; they’re the best you can buy anywhere, in my opinion. But they aren’t homemade. They better not be; the county health department would be paying a visit if they were.
They are handmade, however. At least they were awhile back when I went into the tortilla factory next door to the Los Hermanos Restaurant to buy a dozen. Fresh off the griddle and still warm, they were too much of a temptation and one got eaten in the car on the way home.
Not that homemade isn’t good. It is; I love homemade tamales (hint, hint) and bribe friends every year to set aside a couple of dozen for me. In fact, that’s one thing I have never ordered in a restaurant, because I’m spoiled. The homemade label has a reputation, however, and we are going to keep reading about the delicious “homemade” pies, “homemade” soup and “homemade” you-name-it because it sells stuff.
Speaking of selling, brace yourselves, we’re entering the season of non-stop multi-media advertising blitz selling everything Christmas.
Poor old Thanksgiving is the poor stepchild among the pantheon of holidays in recent years; even Dia de Los Muertes gets more media play than Thanksgiving. And recently-past Halloween is creeping up on Christmas, Mother’s Day and Valentines as a big commercial event. It’s not just candy for the trick-or-treaters, either; people are spending big bucks on elaborate costumes, paying big-ticket prices to go through professionally staged haunted houses, employing hundreds of thousands of people seasonally all over the nation. It is a multi-billion dollar industry now and growing.
And then there’s poor old Thanksgiving, my favorite of the holidays, definitely on the back burner for crass commercialism.
We were up in Flagstaff a few weeks ago for me and a couple of friends to hike up Humphreys Peak -- I’ll spare you the details of huffing and puffing up to 12,633 feet, the highest point in Arizona; but it was spectacular. Anyway, while we were hiking, my wife went shopping – she has her priorities in order, she’ll tell you. In one of the up-scale stores there, Dillards or something, she saw all the Christmas stuff already going on display. In fact, it had been on display for weeks in many other places. I think I saw some stuff at Wal-Mart, some lights or something, in September.
My wife remarked to the young, twenties-something clerk at Dillards that she could remember as a little girl, waiting with huge child’s anticipation for the day after Thanksgiving, when her mom and dad would take her and her sisters to the mall (she was raised in the big city, Tacoma). Halloween had been over a whole month, Thanksgiving was properly observed and now – what all the kids were waiting for – Christmas.
The staff in their favorite shopping mall had pulled an all-nighter, on Thanksgiving Day, no less. They came back after dinner with their families, stayed all night and transformed the mall into a holiday wonder-land, Santa Claus, Christmas trees, elves, reindeer and all; the little girls stood, mouths agape, awe-struck at the newly created spectacle, lights glowing, glittering, twinkling throughout the huge mall, from one end to the other.
Television was in its infancy in the early 1950s, so the kids hadn’t been bombarded for months with commercials hawking every sort of toy they could imagine and then some. The big, fat Sears and Roebuck catalogue had been out for a few months and that was the primary source for a Christmas wish list. In later years, Sears sent out a special Christmas catalogue a month or two early and low-key as it was, it was still exciting.
How times have changed.
Now the Christmas season makes up half of some retailers’ annual income, a make-it-or-go-broke critical commercial time. Naturally, they are going to start promoting as early as they possibly can. I understand their situation, it’s just that I would like to see some attention to Thanksgiving.
Or maybe not, come to think of it.
It’s hard to imagine my nice, contemplative, peaceful, fulfilling holiday with family and a few friends getting the Christmas treatment. But it could happen, I suppose. If they could figure out a way to capitalize on the old story about the Pilgrims and Indians sitting down to celebrate a good harvest and sell us something besides big turkeys and hams and other good stuff to eat, they would. And maybe someday they will.
Meanwhile, I’ll enjoy and appreciate what I have.
And hope for some homemade tamales pretty soon.
