Is thanksgiving a "big" holiday in your family? Do you have traditions that you observe?

-- Catherine (catherine@cmjcom.com), October 01, 1999

Answers

Us Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving almost a month earlier than Americans, I think. It's always been one of my FAVORITE holidays - not just for the turkey and cranberries and sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie - which is all wonderful - but because it is not mired down with all the commercialism of Christmas and serves the same general purpose - family gets together, people forget their hassles for a day, the conversation is usually lovely and the feel-goods flow freely.

Plus, I love getting out the good china, polishing the silver and buffing the crystal - it's nice to have "special" meals once in a while.

Catherine

-- Catherine (catherine@cmjcom.com), October 01, 1999.

thanksgiving? hey! waitamintute, that's when you give thanks for getting away from us brits, right? or is that july 4th? or both. no, thanksgiving is something that's not in the english calendar. but now i have a tame american in the house, it's something i have to remember.

i have to remember that thanksgiving is a big family holiday for you guys, and try to offer up something that will take away a little of the sadness about being so far way from family for snarl. he gets a little sad around that time of year.

last year, the first year he was living here, i remembered at the last minute, and rushed around like a crazy thing trying to find all the ingredients to cook a big fancy dinenr (no mean feat in a shoeboxed sized kitchen). but i feel a little like an alien, trying to get the rituals right. (i took too long hunting down cranberries, and failed to find a single pumpkin to turn into pie. and yams are plain evil and wrong, so i skipped those) and so, we ate at midnight, and got ridiculously drunk (drinking wine from snarl's home town) as we waited for the tiny toaster oven to heat up enough to bake the pastry.

we're inventing traditions as we go along.

--heyoka

-- heyoka (strangefish@hotmail.com), October 01, 1999.

You mean I have a choice?!? *smile*

It's a biggie - right up there with Christmas and birthdays. My elder daughter comes from New York, my elder son and his wife go nuts trying to decide where to go when and try to be three places at once (her parents, his parents, and their own home), my younger daughter usually opts out and stays home with her husband and a pizza (smart girl) - it gets intense. I'm currently contemplating buying a dining room table that seats 10 specifically for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners - a table that I'll use twice a year. That said, when I lived overseas, I was wild for a traditional Thanksgiving - it seemed like affirming my*self* somehow. Now, it's part of the background noise - a necessary evil. Traditions? My elder daughter makes the turkey (she's a wonderful cook) - I make a sweet potato souffle that people seem to like, and I usually cast around on the Internet in a vain search for a recipe for pumpkin cheesecake.

-- Catherine (hinesc@mindspring.com), October 01, 1999.

Thanksgiving started out as a big holiday in my family, but as that family disintegrated and became the new American type of family, and I've added some new people I want to spend holidays with, it has become one giant guilt trip. Although for my family, I suppose that is as much a tradition as cranberry dressing is.

-- Theryn (theryn@eagle.cc.ukans.edu), October 01, 1999.

im vegan and every year i fast on thanksgiving.

during the day i pray for the lives of the millions of turkeys that have been slaughtered so that we can say thanks for our blessings.

i am not able to participate in such irony.

-- emma (goddess@worldnet.fr), October 01, 1999.

We usually just have dinner by ourselves. Either we get Kroger's (a local store) to prepare a big meal or if Barb is feeling up to it, she cooks one. We used to eat out, but Jamie gets impatient at the lines at most restaurants. We have only one set of relatives in town, and they would no more invite us over than have bull elephants tromping through their living room.--Al

-- Al Schroeder (al.schroeder@nashville.com), October 01, 1999.

On Thanksgiving we have a big turkey dinner. The last couple of years my wife has her widowed mother over for the Thanksgiving feast. My mother was killed in a car wreck when I was 16 and I am a bastard. As I child I can not remember celebrating Thanksgiving. It is a spiritual blessing eating a Thanksgiving meal with loved ones. Jonny

-- Jonny Ray Keen (jonny@freenet.macatawa.org), October 02, 1999.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I like getting out the "fine china", and the tablecloths and all of that fol-de-rol also. I love to cook, and my daughter, especially, loves the stuffing I make. I like the idea of giving thanks for the good things life has given me. It's very positive to focus on the "good" for a change.

However, in the last three or four years, I have had an art fair which I must do on Thankgiving weekend, because I must fill the coffers, and things aren't what they used to be in the art biz these days. It feels awful to be away for that day and the weekend, but it is nice to see all of my artist friends whom I have gotten to know over the 20 years I have been doing shows. Fortunately, there is a wonderful Thankksgiving feast at the Omni Netherlands Hotel there. Truly good food. So it helps to be with friends and give thanks for those relationships also.

As for the family, I compromise and have a "psuedo-Thanksgiving a week or so early. Never quite the same, but for now it will have to do. And their father lives in the area here also, so they can go there for Thanksgiving. They are adults, so they can cope, even though they make me feel guilty. Though it is not the same, all is not lost, I suppose.

I am hoping for the time when it will no longer be necessary to go out of town and I can resume my old Thanksgiving.

When exactly is Canadian Thankgiving? Maybe I can pawn that off on them. LOL!

-- Jo (jmerchant@interaccess.com), October 02, 1999.