Thanksgiving knits families together
How I almost opted-out of a beautiful family tradition
A few days ago, I very nearly decided to set aside the burden of a Thanksgiving dinner. The days of cooking, the hours of cleanup, the planning, shopping, executing: I was tempted to toss it all. We’d just eat Chinese food! Or pick up some pre-made delights from a local grocery store! What ease! What bliss! Why had we never done this before?!
Then my wise children gently rallied around and offered to take some of the burden from me. My sweet 8-year-old son wrote a list of who would make each dish (and assigned to himself the making of the pie). Their excitement was contagious, and I realized just how much we would have missed out on had I decided to set aside our traditions.
In the subsequent flurry of phone calls and texts to my siblings and my mother, asking for this recipe and that recipe, and a how-to call for making stuffing and cranberry salad, I realized: I would have missed this. I would have missed the camaraderie with my older brother as we laughed about waiting so many decades to make the cranberry salad we’ve been eating since before our memories begin. I would have missed the opportunity to make a bittersweet chocolate cream pie with my little son for the first time. I would have missed the chance to teach my oldest son how to make his favorite Thanksgiving dish, the stuffing my mother has been making for 35 years. I would have missed commiserating with my brother over how tired I was mid-day Wednesday after hours of cooking. I would have missed all of it.
Yes, orchestrating a feast is a lot of work. But the tradition of cooking and eating the same special foods every year as the decades go by is knitting our souls together. It’s connecting my children with their aunt; it’s connecting me with my siblings, my children with each other, and all of us together in a very powerful way. I can’t call anyone else in the world about how to make certain family dishes, because no one in the world makes them like my family does. We are unique to each other in all the world.1
Thanksgiving, like all holidays, is both a blessing and a burden. The two are inseparable. I hope that next year I remember that yes, the burden is absolutely worth it.
Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de. The Little Prince
Thank you for writing this! There is something special about the continuity. Hope you had a lovely time.
Glad you stuck to tradition. We had friends from Japan (now in MD) and friends from our neighborhood in MD, and our daughter’s family & in laws join us. So much work but so uplifting. Thanks for writing your story.