No Pumpkin Pie Today

November 24, 2022, Thanksgiving Day

My decades-long, personal tradition forbids me from eating pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving Day. Also included in my tradition is that I must eat pumpkin pie on Christmas Eve and/or Christmas Day. Actually, I allow myself to eat pumpkin pie on any date throughout the year, except on Thanksgiving Day.

Allow me to explain. It's because pumpkin pie is mentioned in the song "Sleigh Ride," which I considered to be a Christmas song when my age was in single digits in the 1960s. The song appears with Christmas songs on the 1961 album "Holiday Sing Along With Mitch" by Mitch Miller and the Gang, a Christmas album to which I have listened every Christmas since 1961, the year I was born. I still have my parents' original album on vinyl, plus two copies on CD.

Here is a link to the song:

https://youtu.be/Vx4UJ57NcDo

These are the lyrics that resulted in my personal tradition:

"There's a happy feeling
Nothing in the world can buy
When they pass around the coffee and the pumpkin pie"

As an adult, I realized, I think in the mentally foggy 1990s, that in reality this song technically isn't a Christmas song.

Now at age 61, I am once again following my childhood-borne tradition: no pumpkin pie for me today. Of course, I will continue to follow my tradition during every future holiday season.