Have any favorite traditions or memories of Thanksgiving?

I always loved getting together for Thanksgiving with my parents and siblings. Now that we are are all adults, most of us have our own families and we generally don’t get together. My folks live three hours away so one of us kids (there are seven of us) will generally spend Thanksgiving with them. This year is my turn. With that said, I usually spend time with my parents just about every November as the gun deer season begins the weekend before Thanksgiving. I’d come up that weekend and usually come back and spend Thanksgiving with my own family (my wife and I and four children).

Deer hunting has a strong tradition in our family. For me, the best part of hunting is just spending time in the woods listening to the different sounds and seeing all the animals in their natural habitats. Fittingly, it is a time I sometimes think of Narnia and the cold winter before the arrival of Aslan and the new springtime.

This year will have special meaning for me. I had a serious health scare about this time a year ago. As a result, I wasn’t able to come up hunting and was hospitalized for quite some time. I am thankful I recovered. This year, just being alive and still be able to spend time with my now aging parents (my Dad’s 83 and my Mom 79) as well as my wife and teenaged daughters (and hopefully my eldest can get off of work and join us) is truly a blessing.

I'm thankful that even though it's cold and I was still really tired, I was up early enough to see the sunrise. It was unusual but still beautiful.

And that mom answered a facebook post for our community about an upright freezer being given away, and it turns out it was from someone who attends one of the monthly women's ministry events we go to, so they fixed it up for us(it wasn't working properly) first. It's huge, 20cu ft, can only fit on the porch, but we're going to Costco(and Trader Joe's) on Thursday to fill it up. And next month we're gonna buy one of those huge ice creams from the grocery store(the round cardboard ones like the drugstore ice cream counter served you out of) as well. Of course even if it didn't work, it's cold enough now that being outside we really could just put the stuff in it and it wouldn't thaw out. It's only above freezing for at most like 3 hours during the day now.

And I'm grateful that a neighbor has been keeping us supplied with firewood as well...our forced air furnace is busted, so the woodstove is our only source of heat....Friday it was 40 in the house when I woke up.

Thanksgiving is THE holiday of the year for our family. I so enjoy getting together with extended family without the stress of gifts involved--just food!! I have sisters in Iowa and Illinois and between the three of us, we take turns hosting Thanksgiving. Now that some of the younger generation are married with houses, we may have to add more destinations to the rotation. We arrive on Wednesday evening and usually stay until Saturday, so we have plenty of time to visit and EAT!

There are always a multitude of homemade pies at our Thanksgiving gatherings: pumpkin, apple, triple berry, cherry, and pecan are among the offerings.

Playing Telephone Pictionary is also a tradition, resulting in many aching sides from laughing so hard.

My family mainly celebrates Thanksgiving by celebrating Christmas! Oh sure, we eat the turkey dinner and all that... and then the same night we go to a Christmas lights display and watch one of the film adaptations of The Christmas Carol. The next day we decorate the house for Christmas (with FOUR trees just for good measure... or maybe because we can't hang all the ornaments that we'll never throw away on just one tree!) and this is the official beginning of Christmas for us. So yeah. Happy Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays as well. In years gone by we usually gathered for turkey and the fixings at my parents house, and then at a sibling's house once my parents had to move to a senior living arrangement.

Several years ago my mother moved into a skilled nursing facility halfway across the country (for various reasons), and I've traveled there for the holidays since then (a brother and his family live there too). Sometimes we just eat at the nursing home, while other times we've taken Mom over to my brother's house for the full spread (they love to cook for the holidays).

Stylteralmaldo, that's super cool. My family's never really been into hunting, but this year my older brother has gone hunting with friends a couple of times. He hasn't shot an animal yet, so I am very curious to see if he will stick with it and enjoy it once he does.

Wow, Cleander, four Christmas trees is a lot and totally awesome.

Well, my family is actually having turkey this year which we haven't done for several years. The turkey is already cooked, deboned, and waiting in the freezer.
A first for us is that my brother isn't planning to be home, always had all the kids home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, probably make for a quieter day at our house.

I'm thankful that my grandparents' visit went well, for the memories we made, and the fun we had together. I'm thankful for sunshine, Christmas music, sticky notes, sharpies, colored pens, public libraries, and dark chocolate.

SnowAngel

This seems like a good place to ask this: I'm thinking of doing a Countdown to Christmas thread but I'm not sure if someone else usually does this already or not, or if a countdown is included in another thread about Christmas. Is anybody else going to do that, do you know? (I guess I've had Countdown Fever ever since my rather anticlimactic Silver Chair News Countdown this past summer. )

I, for one, would love a countdown to Christmas thread! Be sure to have a short survey of questions in the first post so that we can discuss!

Thanksgiving tends to make me think about hymns. I’ve attended a church that plays contemporary worship for most of my life, but it is nice to pull out these old familiar songs and listen to them one season per year. Now that I’m the worship director at church, I get to sneak in one hymn a week each Sunday in November. I think it’ll be a nice little tradition.

My country doesn't do Thanksgiving, but this year I gave thanks for the life and work of C.S.Lewis, who died 55 years ago on this day.

Cleander, ask johobbit or stargazer about starting a Christmas countdown thread they are the Spare Oom mods.

Movie Aristotle, that's a great idea about hymns for November.

I was going to post yesterday, but Scarlet was setting up a new router and so the WiFi was down most of the afternoon.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day. T-Day menu: Turkey Stuffing Casserole (so much easier than serving turkey and stuffing, and even more delicious), Mashed Potatoes, Gravy, and Kefir Apple Salad for lunch, dessert was Sour Cream Blueberry Pie and Pumpkin Chiffon Pie with fresh Whipped Cream and BRCC Coffee.

We played Canasta (with 8 people), Scrabble, and the young ones played Farm Simulator on the computer for while to gave the adults a break from the chaos. Eight player Canasta bordered on chaos, but was lots of fun...yes, my team won both games.

SnowAngel

I think your Christmas Countdown thread sounds like a great idea, Cleander! Definitely contact one of the section mods about it.

I'm curious about your turkey stuffing casserole recipe, SnowAngel! Anything that makes Thanksgiving cooking easier and more delicious always piques my interest.

My Thanksgiving was a fairly quiet one, but the food was very good and I think I have determined that (imo) sweet potato pie is superior to pumpkin pie. (And that I love both regardless. ) Sometime I want to try to make a butternut squash pie, or a rutabaga pie, with the same spices and see how they turn out.

Always grateful for family and friends this time of year, and that includes NarniaWeb! Hope you all had a lovely holiday!

I really celebrated Thanksgiving for the first time in my life, mainly because my fellow coworker is American . We live out in rural Zambia, deep in the bush, so turkey was out of the question. But we did make some nice chicken, mashed potates, and mac and cheese. But it was nice for him to tell me different foods that are traditionally prepared for Thanksgiving, like pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce.

The kids here at the orphanage really want a big Thanksgiving celebration. I didn't have the strength for it on real Thanksgiving, mainly due to the fact that at the moment we're really understaffed and I've been a little overworked. My parents are coming to visit me next week so I promised the kids we'd have a belated Thanksgiving. I'm hoping with the extra hands I'll be able to make it special for them. I'm really not sure what I am going to cook though...we do have 33 children + staff. So we're looking at about 40 people

That sounds wonderful, wild rose! Glad you enjoyed the day, and hope your celebration next week goes well.

Cleander, you're welcome to open a Christmas thread. Looking forward to it!

I'm curious about your turkey stuffing casserole recipe, SnowAngel! Anything that makes Thanksgiving cooking easier and more delicious always piques my interest.

Well, it's currently one of those inspired-by recipes (original recipe used canned soup and boxed stuffing), I will try to get a real recipe put together and post in the food thread soonish. Basically it's a Better Homes and Gardens stuffing recipe divided, putting half in the bottom of a 9x13 pan. Layer 2 is 2 cups of turkey (or chicken), layer 3 is a cream sauce, layer 4 shredded sharp cheese, and final topped with the remaining stuffing. Baked until the top is crunchy. The casserole can be prepared the day before, refrigerated overnight, and put into the oven straight from the fridge,which is what my mom did.

I think it's more delicious because of the addition of sharp cheese.

SnowAngel