Thanksgiving. More Than A Chic Centerpiece.

Deep breath. OK, start your Thanksgiving engines.

It's time to dust the chandelier, polish the silver, arrange the flowers, shake out the lace tablecloths and fold the linen napkins.

Next, grab the good china and the crystal. Don't forget the place cards, the table runner or the candlesticks.

After all, this isn't just a dinner table you're creating. It's a "Thanksgiving tablescape!"

Photo by Kathy Sargent.

Don't look now, but you need to hustle to the wine shop to find something that pairs perfectly with turkey. Will it be a fruity viognier, whatever that is? Or a decidedly German "Gewurztraminer?" Then again, you can never go wrong with an inoffensive sauvignon blanc.

Shoot. You might as well grab a few bottles of bubbly, while you're there. Wait. The person who writes "Vinography: A wine blog" claims that champagne "works well with everything on the table." So why not pick up the perfect bottle? The blogger suggests a "1997 Nicolas Feuillatte cuvee 25," which runs about 50 bucks a bottle.

Heck, buy a case. Christmas is coming.

Before you know it, it'll be time to dazzle the guests with your adventurous menu: mashed potatoes with capers and crispy shallots, rosemary-infused focaccia rolls and a brined turkey drizzled with maple syrup, smoked or roasted.

Relax. I'm kidding.

Look, I appreciate a beautiful table. And an elaborately orchestrated meal. But the fact is, you don't need exquisiteness for a memorable Thanksgiving.

For as long as I can remember, this has been my favorite holiday. I've shared Thanksgiving with family, friends, co-workers and neighbors, in small apartments and elegant dining rooms. Every feast was wonderful in its own way. Shoot, I once enjoyed a Thanksgiving picnic on top of Old Rag Mountain. Truthfully, I've never seen a table setting that could compare to that view of the Shenandoah Mountains in November.

But my absolute favorite Thanksgivings were spent at a wobbly card table covered by a freshly ironed bed sheet.

In my grandmother's living room.

I didn't realize it at the time, but my father's mother was impoverished. She lived with my mentally handicapped aunt in a cramped two-bedroom house on the wrong side of a small town.

Her place was so small it didn't have a dining room. Still, she insisted on cooking for the clan.

So on Thanksgiving morning, we'd move out her living room furniture and set up a series of card and drop leaf tables. Four lucky adults got her kitchen chairs. The rest of us perched on metal folding ones.

When I phoned my brother the other day to ask whether he remembered a centerpiece on the table, he laughed.

"The turkey," he replied. "There wasn't room for anything else."

The food was plain, plentiful and delicious. And everything was homemade - except the cranberries, which came out of a can. A tribute, in a way, to my grandfather, a janitor at the Ocean Spray factory, who died on the job just before I was born.

No one would have taken a picture of my grandmother's table for a magazine. Or a cookbook. Her good dishes looked exactly like her everyday ones. And the only real silver on the table was six teaspoons with someone else's initials - a gift from a rich lady in town who wanted to thank the woman who'd bathed and fed her dying husband for years.

Each year, six lucky family members got to eat their pumpkin pie with those spoons.

The Martha Stewart crowd would find little to love at my grandmother's humble Thanksgiving table.

Except the laughter, perhaps. The antics of rambunctious cousins who hadn't seen one another in months. And the genuine gratitude of people who believed they were rich.

You know what? We were.