Thanksgiving traditions

As Thanksgiving quickly approaches (only two days away!), my mind inevitably begins to ponder the things I'm thankful for and my family's Thanksgiving traditions.

Thanksgiving in my family is a day to spend being thankful while enjoying a low-key day together as a family. We don't have any extended family in the area, so it's usually just us. My grandmother joins us every other year (this is an off year--she'll be up here for Christmas instead), but that still doesn't constitute a crowded, busy Thanksgiving.

On Thanksgiving, my mom and I (and now my sister) will be busy in the kitchen, preparing a large Thanksgiving meal. Although in recent years, my mom has started preparing as much as she can the day before, so there isn't quite as much to do on Thanksgiving.

I've made the pumpkin pie for the past several years, but this year, my sister will make it. I'll make something else. I think I'm going to make a peanut butter pie from a recipe I tried a couple of weeks ago. It's simple enough. Mix everything together, pour it into a chocolate graham cracker crust, and refrigerate. With everything else going on around Thanksgiving, simple is great! I'll also probably help make some homemade rolls (Yummy! My mom has the best recipes for homemade bread!), set the table nicely, serve up the food, etc.

Then comes the meal. We always have way more food than we can eat (hey, something to be thankful for--provision), but it's delicious! Staples for the Thanksgiving meal in my family include: turkey (duh! Either oven-baked or deep-fried. I'm kind of partial to the fried kind myself. It's so tender and flavorful! Especially when my dad uses a Cajun rub on it!), cranberry salad, deviled eggs, cranberry sauce, homemade rolls, corn, and pumpkin pie. We also vary it up some years with dressing, cranberry sauce, green beans, and other dessert options (in addition to the pumpkin pie--we always have a pumpkin pie).

This year I think we're going mostly traditional, and I believe my dad is going to fry a Cajun turkey! Yay! That's my favorite. I'll eat a little oven-fried turkey when that's what we decide to serve, but it's not my favorite. However, I love my dad's fried turkey--and I will totally enjoy the turkey at those meals. ;)

When we sit down to eat, we usually go around the table and each person shares a few things they're thankful for, then we pray and bless the meal, taking extra time to express our thanksgiving to God.

Then, it's time to dig in!

Afterwards, when we're all stuffed and just want to lay around, we'll play some games, maybe watch a movie, and just spend some low-key time together as a family. And my mom and I will browse through the ads in the paper and map out our Black Friday shopping strategies. This is actually something we've just started doing recently. I *never* went shopping on Black Friday till just a few years ago. You couldn't pay me to get out in those crowds! But now, I've found that if you know exactly what you're looking for, know what order you need to get to stores in, etc. it's actually not that bad and you can find some really good deals if you know where to look. Granted, I'm never after the big ticket items. That can get a bit crazy. I'll usually go to stores like Kohl's, Old Navy, Lifeway, etc. that are definitely busy, but aren't as overrun as Best Buy or the mall. My mom and I don't usually shop together (we may end up at some of the same places, but in order to get what we want before the stores sell out, we go alone. I did take Andrew with me one year...he was trying to get out of having to clean the garage...).

As much of a Christmas fanatic as I am (which if you've read some of my recent blog entries you should have figured out by now), I will put the brakes on and focus entirely on Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November. I'm a big fan of Thanksgiving, too. ;) And on that day, it isn't about Christmas. Now the day after Thanksgiving, it's back to Christmas full force...even more so than pre-Thanksgiving. But on Thanksgiving, my focus is on Thanksgiving.

And that's really what Thanksgiving is all about to me (I'm not referring to Black Friday shopping here)--spending time with my family, taking the time to really think about all that I have to be thankful for and expressing that to the Lord. Yes, we should be thankful all the time and continually thank the Lord for all He does for us. But there's still something very special about setting aside one day out of the year to really go all out in being thankful. I'm glad that our country--no matter how commercialized the day has become--decided years ago to set aside a day to be thankful and make it a national holiday.

So that's a glimpse of Thanksgiving in my family. How do you and your spend your Thanksgiving? What are your Thanksgiving traditions? What does Thanksgiving mean to you?