Thanksgiving Traditions

This is like the third time I am posting first... shows how hectic my life really is... lol! (No, I am just taking advantage that my son is still asleep).

My favorite holiday is Christmas. I am crazy about it, have been buying decorations for months now. I am a Christmas nut!

In my country we do not celebrate Thanksgiving... but 2 of my aunts are married to Americans and I am in the process of marrying another... so it has become a tradition in my family to celebrate Thanksgiving. I also want my son to be familiar with these holidays and his Italian-Panamanian-German-American heritage.

People always find something to criticize and when you tell them you are going to have a Thanksgiving dinner, they say "Oh, but that is an American thing, you are NOT an American". And I say "What is so terrible about being thankful to God for all the great things He does for you, like breathing for starters?".

Anyway, we always have turkey and pumpkin pie. The rest changes with the years. One year we had 5 different kinds of pie! Yum! The other tradition is that we stand in circle, say a prayer and ask for blessings to all those who came and those who can no longer be with us. Then, each one says what we are thankful for out loud and make a toast.

I love Thanksgiving because it has somehow avoided much of the commercialism of other holidays, but Christmas will probably always be my favorite.  I do dinner at my house for both, and we really embrace our traditions.  My DD makes pumpkin pie.  It's her signature dish.  These days I have to have vegetarian tofurkey as well as regular turkey and fixings so that she can eat it, but we all enjoy a frozen cranberry dish that looks as pretty as it tastes.  I also love pumpkin pecan pie when I have time to fix it, pumpkin cheesecake, and pumpkin roll cake.  (Needless to say, we alternate which of those we have on any given occasion.)  We also make a gelled dish (with vegetarian gelatin) that is a variation of my DH's mother's recipe.

I also love a plastic canvas turkey set with a pilgrim boy and girl that my DFIL made several years ago as well as a pumpkin serving dish and several other decorations, probably not as extensive as yours.  This year, because my DF is in a nursing home, the holidays will be a bit more difficult to pull together, but we'll have them just the same because they comfort us.

P.S. -- Are those your dog and cat in the picture?  If so, how on earth did you get that pose?  We have a picture of our motley crew in Christmas garb here.

Thats a really hard decision I am gonna have to go with Christmas though. It was really tough to decided between it and Thanksgiving. I have always loved them both so much. Honestly I think Thanksgiving use to be until I got married. Then the joys of watching Daria's face on Christmas morning is priceless. She is my world.

We have to set a different schedule every year because we have Daria on all Holidays one year and don't have her on the Holidays the next year. We always have her on the Eve of the holiday though if we aren't going to have her on the holiday.

I always start my Christmas shopping really early normally September but this year I started it in Aug and I have been about done for months I just can't find the right gift for my nephew anyway. We decorate our tree the day of Thanksgiving after the meal is over. Later on that night we go ahead and take Daria to look at the Christmas lights in Gatlinburg. They are beautiful and they turn them on this time every year. We of course always attend the Church's Christmas play. Our church doesn't actually do the Christmas Service on Christmas unless it falls on Wed or Sun. I dunno why they just don't. There are several more things we do around Christmas but I will wait until next month to tell you all. I am so ready to start decorating I wish Thanksgiving would hurry up and get here, so I can decorate. lol

 Christmas is my favorite holiday. Around here we open the gifts on  Christmas Eve, in the evening. The tree has been decorated during the day at Christmas Eve and the tree is from our own forest. And of course we watch on tv the declaration of Christmas peace -it's a very old tradition. And we eat some tradtional Finnish Christmas foods, of course.

Well my favorite holiday is Halloween and since we are past that I'll talk about Thanksgiving. Every year we have a big get together at my sisters, she has the most room so we all gather there. We have the usual turkey and fixings and my mother always makes a roast with onions, potatoes and carrots since I don't like turkey. I've tried to tell her I can eat veggies, but she insists on making the roast. We have all kinds of pies and I usually eat way to much and bring some home with me too. I love pumpkin pie so I usually bring home a whole pie for later. We have a couple of unusual Thanksgiving items we eat and those are deviled eggs and potato salad. I know you usually think of summer for these items, but my mother insists we have to have them for my brother. Are we spoiled or what ?

Linda Henderson

As you might have been able to tell from the expression on his face, Meijer was none too thrilled with the Grinch hat on, but I thought he looked adorable!  And I loved our dog in the Mrs. Santa outfit, too!  Our cats are so funny when we dress them up.  For a while afterwards, they just freeze or flop over, as if they're paralyzed.  Eventually, they get beyond that, though.

Minna, whenever I hear someone say she opens presents on Christmas Eve, I immediately hear Kevin Costner's voice giving the "I Believe" speech from "Bull Durham" (a great movie, BTW) where he emphatically says that, among other things, he believes in opening presents on Christmas morning NOT Christmas Eve.  You can find it on YouTube if you've never seen the movie.  It's a great movie moment.

I like thanksgiving best. Its just cooking and family and not a bunch of hectic running around trying to find gifts that are going to get returned the next day. Its just the people I love the most sitting around a table enjoying good food.

Christmas is my favorite holiday.  I enjoy getting together with family for a traditional Christmas dinner - homemade raviolis, turkey, fresh bread.  Then we all take a break to clean up the dinner mess & then proceed to dessert.  Our traditional dessert is an icebox cake - chocolate pudding, vanilla pudding, crushed walnuts, fruit cocktail mix layered in a graham cracker crust.

OF COURSE you can come to my New Year's Eve Party!

Can I come to your Thanksgiving? Sounds like more fun than what we do: cook, eat, clean, read the paper & map out our Black Friday strategy. Oh, and watch football & snooze...

In the past we visited both parents and lots of siblings.  When 2 parents were gone, we would fly to my sister's place for 2.5 weeks, usually taking my mom.  Now no money so stay home.

Latest routine:  At home in the morning.  Open all presents slowly.  Take and make lots of sibling/friends phone calls.  Lunch at noon.  Turkey put in oven at 1 pm.  Walk out door at 1:01 pm.  Visit 2-3 BIL and families plus MIL.  Home by 4:45.  Prepare/cook rest of supper.  Eat by 5:30.  Moan and groan about eating too much.  Watch TV/play on computer.  Go to bed.

That's it!