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The Untraditional Traditional Thanksgiving

What a colorful time of year. The trees are changing hues and the fallen leaves blanket the street, sidewalk and yard like a beautiful harvest carpet. My husband even gives us a few weeks to enjoy kicking and stomping our way through the noisy foliage before he heads out on his yearly mission: to fight the offending leaves from his lawn without mercy, until every last one has been eradicated. It actually almost pains me to see another one fall once he has painstakingly “de-leafed” the area with his leaf blower, mulcher (an impressive anniversary gift I gave to my husband), lawn tractor, super vac and anything else in his arsenal of top notch yard weapons.

 

This year, I even added a yard toy of my own, a six-foot inflatable turkey (because I so love corny holiday decorations) and the oversized bird would simply look silly on a green lawn. My addition of this fabulous inflatable is part of my annual Thanksgiving tradition tribute. That is, Thanksgiving tradition in our family changes just a little each year, which may seem like a contradiction. Is there such a thing as a “changing” tradition?  Perhaps a better way to describe our holiday is that we simply find different ways to celebrate the same holiday in an evolving, special way. So, many things stay the same and sometimes we add, well, an inflatable or two.

 

Growing up, our Thanksgiving holidays whenever possible took place at our grandparents’ house with dozens of relatives and a several dozen traditional dishes: the turkey, of course, yams, ambrosia (did anyone eat that?) mashed potatoes, green bean casserole (Ryan’s favorite), stuffing (Papa’s specialty) and more. With so many now bicoastal and international relatives, it’s not always possible to gather everyone together, so I instead keep many traditions of the past alive today in a new way.

 

My new recipe for a meaningful Thanksgiving with my family is actually simple: be together, log off on the computers and Blackberry, cook only the family favorites (no ambrosia) and get everyone involved in the cooking or table-setting whether it’s mixing a bowl of stuffing or peeling potatoes or coloring paper placemats, play a fun game (we prefer to gamble, kids too, with LCR), watch a movie (we like While You Were Sleeping) and reach out to friends who may not have plans for Thanksgiving to join us in our home. To be honest, the new “tradition” for the past six years has been that anyone at our house for Thanksgiving is almost always guaranteed a power outage after dinner or witnessing me “blow up” another microwave during “warming up.” [Yes, for the past 6 years, every Thanksgiving, I burn out a microwave. It’s the running joke. Thank goodness Wal-mart is open that day.]

 

Throughout the years, our Thanksgiving “crowd” has changed, too, but one thing has remained the same. It’s a day we always look forward to, and the family loves my undivided attention almost as much as my turkey dinner.