e gave thanks in Florida this year. We didn't know that would sound like the punch line to a political joke when we made plans for a family reunion in Tampa over Thanksgiving.
We wanted to trade cold winds and chapped lips for warm breezes and sun-baked skin, but Florida's weather proved no more predictable than its politics. As nighttime temperatures dipped into the 30s, our northern legs displayed as many goose bumps as those Southern chads did dimples.
Three generations, five states, and 96 electoral votes were represented around our beachside groaning board. The national divide evident in the election returns was just as visible around a holiday table where voters for Vice President Al Gore sat alongside those for Texas Governor George W. Bush and Green Party rebel Ralph Nader. One grandparent for Bush, the other for Nader. More than one Democrat canceling the vote of a Republican spouse. Two of three college students in the Nader camp.
More remarkable than the diversity of our opinions was our lack of passion for the choices we had made on Nov. 7 (except, of course, for the anti-Hillary contingent that may never be reconciled to having the first lady in the US Senate from New York). A family not given to reticence in political discussion evinced no abiding commitment to the presidential candidate each had supported. Word from CNN of the filing of every new court challenge to the Florida ballotting elicited comparable groans, no matter which party was identified as the plaintiff.
Indeed, as the partisanship of the combatants got sharper, the discourse within the family grew more mellow and more impatient with the elevation of personal ambition above public service. No one in this crowd was buying what these candidates were selling about their desire to enfranchise every voter and to respect the rule of law. About that fiction there was no disagreement: However this began, it is now about winning and nothing more.
Winning is no small matter within this family, which has been known to change as many rules in the middle of a game of charades as election commissioners in Broward County have in the middle of a manual recount. The battle for control of the CD player the other night nearly came to fisticuffs when an upstart nephew tried to dislodge Aunt M.J.'s beloved John Denver in favor of the Dixie Chicks. He won, but not without a fight.
More than most holidays, Thanksgiving is about tradition. We make creamed onions because Aunt Patty always made them. It doesn't matter that Uncle Peter is the only one who eats them. It's a way to honor the past. We mash the broccoli because our mother always mashed it. It doesn't matter that no one likes it. It's a way to honor her memory. Two of us sing ''Master of the House'' from ''Les Miserables'' and four others perform a painfully off-key rendition of ''Joey,'' an 11-minute Dylan paean to the late New York mobster Joey Gallo, for no better reason than that we have done it before.
By any measure, this was a surreal Thanksgiving, for our country and our family. There were no creamed onions or mashed broccoli. The turkey was deep-fried, not oven-roasted. The day's game was beach volleyball, not schoolboy football. There was no president-elect or transition team. Florida's ballots were still pregnant, waiting to be delivered.
But the idea of democracy, like the concept of family, assumes a certain resiliency. If the foundations are deep enough, both can withstand a measure of uncertainty. On the eve of Thanksgiving, we were disappointed to deplane into temperatures nearly as cold as those we had left behind. Our expectations had been dashed. On Friday, the sun burned through the clouds and the thermometer passed 70 degrees. Florida, belatedly, had delivered us as it eventually will the nation.
Eileen McNamara's e-mail address is mcnamara@globe.com.
