Thanksgiving Traditions

What are your Thanksgiving traditions? What did you do as a child that you wish you could do now?

This holiday that is one of our most family centered one is coming up and the stress levels are building. How do you make it “perfect?” CAN you make it “perfect?” WHY try to make it “perfect?”

As a child, we’d get up, pile into the car and go to Grandma’s house over in Merryville, LA. It was about an 1 ½ drive, but we knew how much fun we’d have- cousins galore to play with, chickens to chase, and it was something we looked forward to.

Grandma’s house was the same house my Mom grew up in- 3 bedrooms- one was their parent’s, one was the boys’ rooms and one was the girls’ rooms (a total of 10 kids from 4 different “eras”- Grandpa Bean was married, had Uncle John Dee. His wife died, he married Grandma, and they had Momma and Uncle Jim. He died in 1919 of pneumonia, she married Grandpa Riggs. He’d been married before and had 3 kids, Uncle Tommy, Aunt Alice and Uncle Bob, and then Curry and Grandpa Riggs had Aunt Elaine, Aunt Atch, Aunt Penny, Uncle Charles & Aunt Linda, so the bedrooms looked more like dorms than our little bedrooms in our home in Woodville.:)

You can imagine, with so many kids, we had many cousins and we had a blast. We’d play, run, and I even learned to shoot from a second cousin there one year. After that, we’ll run off into the woods, set up tin cans, and shoot to our heart’s delight.

Food, as you might imagine, for that many people was pretty stupendous. We’d all bring food, and Grandma would have been cooking for days. The sideboard would groan under the weight of all the food. Desserts would cover the beds in one of the “children’s bedrooms”- sweet potato, pumpkin, apple, cherry, cakes, cookies- it was a veritable store of delights for us kids.

Being proper children of the 1950’s, we waited until the adults got their food, then it was our turn, and we loaded up. I loved Grandma’s cornbread dressing, so I’d load it up-not sure I got much of anything else from the “first serving”- maybe a little turkey, if any white meat was left from all the adults (Grandma would cook a HUGE turkey.) The adults would sit around the living room, talking about the “old days.” The kids got the porch, which we loved. We’d eat, play jacks and eavesdrop on the parents. That is how I learned that they couldn’t afford dolls, but Uncle Charlie had beautiful blonde curls as a little one, and they’d dress him up like a doll and play with him as if he was their baby doll. (Explains a lot!) I learned that Grandma always told Mom NOT to ride horses with her friends, but the ONE TIME she forgot to remind Mom about that, Mom rode. The horse bolted, run under a limb, Momma didn’t duck, got knocked off and out. Talk about instant Karma! (That is one of the things I seem to have inherited from her.) Everyone would eat, and then take a little nap, and then eat again. Then it was time to wash dishes- no dish washer in those days, and even so, it would have taken a dishwasher of momentous proportions for all those dishes. We’d routinely have 40-60 people at these holiday dinners. So, the kids were the dishwashers. I was one of the younger kids, we’d make ourselves scare when that time came! My oldest sister and cousins usually got that duty (and got mad at us for disappearing.)

From those experiences, I thought everyone had huge amounts of food- the sort that put Luby’s selection to shame” for holidays. The first time I shared a holiday with Mark’s family, I was shocked. It was an Easter. In the middle of the table was a small ham, looking like we MIGHT get a very small slice each, a bowl of English Peas and Broccoli/rice casseroles and a salad. That was IT- the counters weren’t groaning under the weight of hundreds of pounds of different types of food, just this little bit. Of course, his family was also in much better physical shape than much of mine- that could explain it! I sort of kept looking around for more selections, but there were none- to be polite, I had to eat English peas and broccoli casserole- two things that had not previously passed my lips. I managed to get them down (hunger had a lot to do with that, too,) and that was my first realization that my family might do things a bit differently.

Now days, Grandma and her wonderful old house are long gone, my parents have been gone more than 20 years, and Mark’s parents, too. We usually have a quiet Thanksgiving with just our immediate family, although we love to have company, especially international students. It is fun to explain the traditions of Thanksgiving, but this year I didn’t get involved with the new international students at UT, so no students at our table this time. Some neighbors may come, if they don’t go to see their family in another state.

I’m interested in what your traditions are? What do you serve? I usually cook the following: Turkey (roasted in a roaster like my Mom did), dressing that is as close to her (and Grandma’s) recipe as I can find, SW succotash (adapted from a recipe from Gourmet Magazine), sweet potatoes with jalapeno jelly, red Jell-O salad like Mom used to make (minus the marshmallows because neither Mark nor I like them) and pumpkin pie. I usually do the exact same recipes at Christmas, but am considering changing slightly this year-maybe my wild rice dressing rather than cornbread.
Will this be considered sacrilege, or will there be sighs of relief that we don’t have to eat cornbread dressing for several other meals after? (I can’t make a small dish of cornbread dressing.)

Please, share your menus and traditions. If you’ve got a recipe you want to share, feel free to post that, too.