The Holiday Recluse
It's been over thirty years since I've spent or celebrated Thanksgiving or Christmas in what people think of as a traditional manner. For fifteen of those years I tended bar in a nightclub, or a small well known bar on South Street in Philadelphia. People would visibly show remorse because I had to work the holidays, but the fact of the matter is that I volunteered to work them. When my career as a bartender ended, I spent the next four years celebrating them with a friend and former coworker at his newly opened bar. Our tradition was to eat dinner and then engage in lengthy conversations over a couple bottles of Japanese Whisky. That tradition came to an immediate halt because of health reasons which also marked the end of my drinking career. I miss Japanese Whisky, but a new tradition emerged, holiday dinner in a diner.
Eleven years ago a lifelong friend and I began the tradition of having Thanksgiving dinner at Little Pete's Diner which was followed by a seven or eight mile walk around the city. Sitting in a dinner with a friend, staff and regulars who knew your name, and familiar enough to crack jokes at one's expense, was the closest to a family gathering that I wanted to get. For me it was very comforting, and without all the false niceties, holiday cheer, and mind-numbing small talk that overwhelms a family holiday gathering. Take away the alcohol and those family gatherings would end up being a crime scene if i were forced to attend. But like so many things today, life, and mostly forced change, has ended my much needed way of celebrating these holidays.
First, the 24 hour diners began to close because the lack of a nightlife and nighttime workers coming from the younger generations. The diners had an almost impossible time finding workers and customers under the age of 45. Actually it's closer to 55. Then the pandemic hit, which resulted in a massive wave of diner closings. An entire culture of Americana was coming to an end, or close enough to say the end. Afterwards it became difficult to find a diner that was open past 3pm! The final nail in my traditions coffin was that my lifelong friendship with the person I ate Thanksgiving diner with had run its course. Once again I tried to adjust.
A few years ago I was forced to replace my Thanksgiving dinner with a Thanksgiving breakfast at a local diner. It wasn't even close to being the same thing and it sometimes depresses the hell out of me, but it was better than nothing. I don't expect this tradition to last much longer as the few remaining diners are slowly closing and they're also closing more frequently for the holidays.
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