Thanksgiving

**AJE** · 11-10-2005, 09:12 AM

Thanksgiving is a time for family and friends to gather and share time together. It is a good time to reflect on the past and create memories for the future. Please share your favorite Thanksgiving memory or a story that captures the spirit of Thanksgiving.

Crys · 11-10-2005, 12:07 PM

My favorite Thanksgiving memory is one of those "We'll look back and laugh about this someday" memories. It certainly wasn't fun at the time (though I must admit to a certain amount of wry amusement was mixed in with the annoyance).

Remember last year how cold it was around Thanksgiving? Well, I took my family (my husband and our two friends) to visit my parents who lived in Wausau at the time. It was the day before, and we were leaving as soon as we all got out of work (so the whole trip from Milwaukee _starts_ after dark). We discussed taking a second vehicle in case of car trouble and decided to stick with just my car because of gas mileage.

So we get past Madison. We're only about an hour out... and lights start flashing in the dash. The battery in my cellphone is just about dead. We ended up pushing the car about a half mile (which is pretty far when it's so cold you don't want to touch the metal!) in the dark to the nearest gas station. We managed to get hold of my parents, but the gas station closed about forty minutes before my father got there with his van to pick us up. Did I mention it was COLD?

We ended up having to completely replace the engine and stay with my parents a few days longer than we intended. But I was really thankful because we were all together. It was like that "if you were stranded somewhere and could only have one thing with you, what would it be?" questions come to life. What would I want with me? My family. Everything else is negotiable.

Candidate for Best Thanksgiving Ever.

roger_mary · 11-10-2005, 10:41 PM

well this will be the first thanksgiving without my dad since he recently died so every moment of every thanksgiving with Him in it is special and of course that goes for my whole family...another thing I like and still do is waking up to mom getting all the food ready and smelling the turkey baking in the oven and getting to watch all the cool parades on t.v!.....
And doesn't it seem like Walmart and other stores just -skip- thanksgiving, its like they don't even realize there is such a holiday.
I went into walmart today and its all Christmas stuff and even Christmas carols are playing...thats just too soon. I feel bad for those who work there, by time its Christmas they are not going to being feeling holly jolly.
Its like every year stores get Christmas stuff in even earlier then the year before. ..They should like have more thanksgiving decorations..like outside your house have a light up pilgrim, indian thanksgiving scene like you would if it was Christmas a Nativity scene....Wouldn't that be cool?....lol I think so.

Crys · 11-11-2005, 12:03 PM

I agree! Thanksgiving should really be paid more attention to.

I understand why it's not: People spend hundreds, thousands of dollars on gifts at Christmas (well, people who celebrate Christmas do. I don't celebrate Christmas, but I still try to get something for the people around me who do), so the sooner the retail machine can get people thinking about Christmas, the more money they'll make.

Bleh.

I worked retail for a year right after college while I was looking for a good job. I had to deal with Christmas Eve (lots of men who've had a few too many beers who think "Jewelry Salesperson" equates to "Grope-able non-person" who expect you to stay open late because they were too much of a j$ck$$s to buy their wives a present before 9:30 pm on Christmas Eve) and the day after Christmas (the biggest day of returns of the year, usually by people who think they are the only one in the world who matters and shriek shrilly at you if you don't drop the three customers ahead of them to take care of them first)... and I will starve and live on the street before I will do that again. If I did celebrate Christmas, I can't imagine I would have wanted to do so that year. By the time November rolled around I'd heard "Jingle Bells" and "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" so many times I was having nightmares about it.

When I was a kid, I loved to make Thanksgiving decorations. We would go outside and pick up pine cones to make into turkeys for the table and I was always fascinated by multi-colored dried corn (I don't know why, I just was). It was the one day when everyone got together. We'd have a giant, early dinner with my grandmother's stuffing from scratch and afterward we'd start pulling out the Christmas decorations. We've got a lot of antique decorations that were my grandparents' in the Depression and so the tradition of going through everything on Thanksgiving was really about telling family stories, "Oh, I remember your grandpa made this ornament when..." and being together. I've got most of those now and even though I don't celebrate Christmas itself, I still like to put up a tree on Thanksgiving so I can go through the ornaments and be thankful for my family.

It says a lot about us as a society that the holiday where you spend the most money is considered the most important, not the holiday focussed on appreciating what you already have.

This thread reminds me: I need to get the Thanksgiving theme up on this site! I meant to do it yesterday and I plum forgot!

**Kris10** · 11-11-2005, 10:51 PM

Every event in my family is celebrated by excessive, repetitive eating. We would always meet at the house my grandparents shared with several great aunts and a great uncle. The aunts would run around in babushkas, cooking up piles and piles of food. We'd eat dinner around 2:00 pm and put it away until 6:00 pm or so, when everything was reheated and brought out again for "second supper." A back-up ham was usually in reserve in case there wasn't enough turkey. "Wasn't enough" would be, oh, only 3/4 of the bird remaining.

Now that the aunts and grandparents are gone, my parents' and my generation still make a feeble attempt at Thanksgiving. We've gone from a roasted turkey to a Cajun fried turkey, and away from gluttonous Polish specialities to sugar-free desserts. Second supper is nothing more than a mouthful of potatoes or slice of bread because we just don't have the capacity our ancestors did!

I suppose it's a sign of aging... you try to create "the good old days" but you just can't!

Crys · 11-14-2005, 12:28 PM

It'll be kind of strange because this year it doesn't look like we're going to be able to get the family together. My parents live up north and my father is responsible for security at several airports, so his busiest days are the days when everyone else usually has time off. We're not going to be able to get up there (so we had turkey when I was there last month on vacation! Yum!), and my brother, who lives on the other side of Milwaukee from me (about an hour and a half away) is going to his wife's family's place... which leaves me and my husband and that's it (the rest of my family is in Ohio; no way I can get there for just a weekend).We might go to his family's home if my request for that Friday off is approved (so PM Keith and tell him to give me the day after Thanksgiving off! I'm kidding! I'm kidding! :lol: ), but it sounds like they might be going somewhere else too. A very strange, very quiet Thanksgiving.

Cajun fried turkey? What's that?

As to lack of capacity -- there are some things about "the good old days" that are best left behind, including overeating...

**CarolsCritterCare** · 11-25-2008, 06:49 AM

**dgridley** · 11-25-2008, 03:11 PM

Great thread and thanks for bumping it up, Carol!

My family was not close while growing up so I don't have any great Holiday stories to share

I do think tho that Thanksgiving is perhaps one holiday more people should pay more attention to as we as a people and individuals in this country really do have so much to be thankful for. Thanksgiving is an excellent time to give pause and to reflect on all our blessings. It's not about the food, but when there are so may starving world wide, the fact we even have food, any food, should be blessing enough. It's also a great time to reflect on the great people we're surrounded with.. sometimes, people you don't even notice everyday but they help get you thru life (like the postman/woman or the cop who patrols your neighborhood). Time to be thankful for your health.. even if it's bad, if you're breathing, it's a plus in my book.

Any other thoughts?

Kelly68 · 11-25-2008, 04:40 PM

I agree. Thanksgiving should be a time to give thanks to all. I will give thanks this year that my whole family (husband and kids) are all healthy and safe. Next year there will be one less at the table due to my son will be in the Navy. So I need to hold onto this one....cause this will be the last one for a while still together on the same day.

**CarolsCritterCare** · 11-25-2008, 05:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dgridley

Great thread and thanks for bumping it up, Carol!

I find all sorts of cool things in the archives....when I can't sleep and no one is here chatting...I have to create it myself. Bringing up old threads are fun. I brought up a few in the weeeeee hours of this morning....