We don’t do Thanksgiving in the traditional sense. Now before you develop the impression that I’m anti -Thanksgiving let me assure that I am not at all. I’m just anti upholding traditions according to other’s definitions if I don’t feel like it or it causes me harm.
For years I tried to keep up with societal and familial expectations regarding the holiday. An added element of complication is our son’s birthday is right after Thanksgiving, so I was running myself into the ground trying to DO IT ALL.
Now, I try to live a life of exemplified gratitude (there are definitely fail at that days), but a few years ago I reflected on why the heck I was doing such things of stress to myself just to keep up traditions. I mean, I like Thanksgiving dinner, but in that reflective season I actually thought about what I’d like to do with my family on a day of thanks. I then conferred with them and shared my feelings regarding the soul-sucking angst that the tradition was causing me, and Fun Family Feast was born.
Instead of me trying to construct two massive feasts and parties in a couple days time, we now construct or purchase our favorite dishes the day before, heat them up on Thanksgiving day proper, adorn our counter with said dishes, and spend the whole day, in our pjs, eating each other’s favorite foods, as well as our own, while enjoying each other’s company. It’s just glorious.
Another marvelous aspect of all this tradition bucking is that it’s catching on. Friends and family are partaking in the FFF. Yesterday, we had a kitchen island full of life’s bounty. There was chicken pad Thai, lasagna, pizza, chicken enchiladas, hot wings, caramel apple pie, brownies surprise, dulce de leche trifle, and more spread about my house. We all grazed and lazed about watching YouTube and spent hours playing charades, it truly was a glorious event.
And isn’t that how traditions start anyway? An event of remembrance. Our family has kept the spirit of Thanksgiving and shed the part of it that was causing harm to me so that I got to enjoy the holiday too. You want to talk about gratitude, I’m full to the brim with the stuff, that and caramel apple pie:).
And as not most of the time, all of the images in this post, save the judgemental cat one, were taken on the author’s iPad because she was too comfortably entrenched in the couch’s clutches along with her corgi to go type this on the computer.