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Thanksgiving – Real Holidays by Real Families

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This is part of a sponsored collaboration with Latina Mom Bloggers and JCPenney.
However, all opinions expressed are my own.

What I love about Thanksgiving is that it’s the one holiday that everyone in our country celebrates! It’s all about being grateful for what we have and for those loved ones around us.

How do we celebrate it? Like everyone else, I’m guessing, with a big dinner, surrounded by friends and family. While I’d love to fly home to Texas to see my mom, it doesn’t often work out that way, since it is the busiest and most expensive time to travel, so we spend the day with my husband’s side of the family and whichever friends happen to stop by.

My sister-in-law and I alternate hosting the dinner, since we live just a few minutes from each other. Now, here’s the thing – my husband is Bolivian, and I’m Mexican-American. I’ve spent my WHOLE life celebrating Thanksgiving, with the memories of my American grandma’s amazing dinners still vivid in my mind. His family has been in the US since the late 90s, so they didn’t grow up celebrating this holiday, like I did. This means that if I want to eat a ‘traditional’ Thanksgiving, I have to make it.

So I prepare all the traditional sides… sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, stuffing… the works! While I tend to stick to those main dishes, I like to experiment and try new recipes every year so it’s always a little different. I’m not crazy about making turkey, so we usually buy that already prepared, along with a big roast from a local Bolivian restaurant. My sister-in-law makes white rice, potatoes… the usual Latin fare.

I try to cook everything the day before since my husband and I get up early and go run the Turkey Trot downtown first thing in the morning, burning calories before we even consume them! It’s a great way to not feel guilty come dinner time.

Turkey Trot collage

We can’t forget football, of course. While the women are slaving away in the kitchen (or so our husbands think!), all the men are surrounding the TV in the living room, with a beer in hand. I don’t think they even care who’s playing! You’ll likely find the kids playing Wii or Xbox, or just running around! It’s a wonderful day.

Last, but certainly not least, my husband and I celebrate our anniversary Thanksgiving weekend. We were married the day before Thanksgiving 13 years ago, and every few years, our anniversary falls on this day, or very close to it. It’s a beautiful thing!

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  8. One of my best Thanksgiving memories, that became a tradition for many years, is that my dad used to start a food fight as we cleaned up after dinner (we are able to eat outside most years) it stopped when he passed but we have so many great memories from our unique after dinner clean up. We also go to a neighborhood that does a huge light display thanksgiving night, they collect donations for hospice so we always walk through and bring them a donation that night.

  9. Bust out the forever turkey salt and pepper shakers! Been on the Thanksgiving day table for as long as I can remember.

  11. We go up to Michigan to have Thanksgiving at my Aunt and uncles house. My uncle cooks the whole entire meal! even the pumpkin pie! 🙂

  17. When I moved away from home and couldn’t get back for Thanksgiving Day, I hosted a dinner for “orphans” — my friend that couldn’t get back to their families or were truly orphans.

  18. I don’t know that there is anything unique. We have a pretty traditional Thanksgiving. Although, after dinner and dessert, the women all gather together and we scour the Black Friday ads to decide where/and what will be shopping for the next day.

  19. My kids used to do it, now my grandchildren do it. We make handprint turkeys out of construction paper and give them colorful feathers, write each family members name on them for place cards at the table. The kids really like to show them off.

  29. Like mostost families we are scattered across the country, so the extent of celebrating with many of our relatives is not much more than mailing them a present or card and maybe a phone call on Christmas day. For the members of the family that live in the area we all celebrate individually with our households and then get together at one of our homes later in the day for a traditional family meal.

  31. We all gather at my mother in laws’ house w,e go around the tables telling what we are grateful for

  32. We go to my grandmother’s house for dinner and after dinner we decorate the inside and outside of her house for Christmas

  33. Hmm…I guess we are pretty boring! LOL…we just do the basic….get the whole family together at my parents house..have a turkey dinner and pie. We love to come home and set up our Christmas tree and turn on our Christmas lights outside!

  35. We have a tradition of watching horror films on Thanksgiving night — not sure why we started, but by the time we’re stuffed and sleepy from all the turkey, a few scary movies do the trick to wake us back up!

  36. Unfortunately, we are so spread out that we don’t spend Thanksgiving together. However, I have Thanksgiving with the same friends that are near and dear to my heart.

  37. A lot of times we don’t serve “traditional” foods during Thanksgiving. We might serve Italian, Chinese, or Mexican. We like to change it up!

  38. We adult kids chat ahead of time and pick out a word that drives mom bonkers, then try to fit it into our regular conversation until she yells at us. It’s goofy, but a tradition!

  46. We celebrate by each one of us coming up with a crazy dessert and taste testing all of them. We then determine the winner by the most amounts of “yumms” and “omg that’s good” lol, silly game we play

  48. The kids get whatever they want to eat and this year my son asked for tartar sauce instead of cranberry sauce.

  50. We draw names and give a speech about why we are thankful for that person. We also go to the movies!

    ninigossett at gmail dot com

  52. We’re fairly traditional. I don’t think we do anything unique, just the usual turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, cranberries, etc.

  53. We are pretty traditional every year. The only thing I do is try to add one new dish to the menu each time and see if we like it.

  54. You never know what we will do. We have family in different states, so we may go there, or they may come here, or neither.

  55. We don’t do anything unique, we just watch the parade and eat traditional Thanksgiving food.

  56. We do just about what everyone else does. I work really hard cooking, we overeat, we watch tv.

  58. I can’t think of anything unique about our Thanksgiving. We have the same food, everyone comes to our house, we eat too much, etc.

  63. We don’t really go anything unique unless you want to count we set up new furniture for the livingroom this year!Finally getting our home together 🙂

  65. We do start getting our Christmas decorations, and we donate part of our time to others on Thanksgiving.

  70. We each write things we are thankful for during the year on contruction paper leaves and put them in a bowl. We read them all after dinner on Thanksgiving.

  76. Our Thanksgivings are always very special, unique and usual because we are so scattered around the country, have strange schedules and are dealing with some illnesses too – SO our Thanksgivings are almost never actually celebrated ON Thanksgiving…

    We’ve been known to celebrate it say, the weekend before or the weekend after – or even as late as sometime in January. We just have to go with the flow. Oh and also, because of our various extended families – we sometimes have multiple Thanksgivings…

    One constant is that on any and all of these occasions a Roasted Turkey with all of the fixin’s (and then some) are usually a centerpiece of the celebration.

  79. We’re not very unique, lol. We fried a turkey this year; I guess not everyone does that. I also make my famous Russian Tea every year.

  81. Every Thanksgiving, we travel about 30 minutes to an hour to a light display drive-through. It’s fun for all of us and gets us into the holiday spirit.

  83. We used to have Christmas with my parents at Thanksgiving because they would leave to go south for the winter. But now that they don’t go anymore we just have a plain thanksgiving.

  88. We are pretty traditional every year, we have a big Thanksgiving dinner at my house with about 30 people.

  89. We do a twist on what we’re thankful for by saying what we love about the person sitting next to us.

  90. My son fixes each childs favorite dish. After we eat, we play cards. I call it our Charlie Brown Dinner. A lot of fun.

  94. Nothing unique I can think of.. Lots of food, laughter and watching the game while the kids play!

  97. My son-in-law is Cajun and every Thanksgiving he cooks, and he cooks something he hunted and shot or caught. One year there was coon(I didn’t try that)and last year was feral pig.

  98. Leave a comment telling me a unique way your family celebrates Thanksgiving.

    everybody scrambles into the kitchen when the food is done and we’re lucky we dont lose some fingers

  102. There is nothing unique about our Thanksgiving. We are a dysfunctional family like all the rest. My husband and I end up doing all the cooking. One brother is a Vegetarian and another drinks and smokes too much. They stay too long and never help clean up. Dad takes pictures of us with our mouths full of food. Our 24 year old daughter usually greets everyone then disappears to be with her friends. By the end of the day my ankles are swollen from washing dishes and loading the dishwasher. Once the food is refrigerated, we collaphse on the sofa to try to read the paper and watch some Football.

  104. We participate in a Thanksgiving walk/run at the YMCA every Thanksgiving morning.
    Thank you.

  106. Our grandparents come over all day long and my mom makes all the different food then at about 4 we sit down to eat dinner then sit together and watch movies after

  108. I don’t know that we do anything truly unique but some years we have a huge brunch with my extended family vs. a Thanksgiving Dinner. We get together early to mid-morning and then go home and do our own family thing in the afternoon/evening.

    Also not unique, but it has always been a tradition that we go see a movie as a family on Thanksgiving. This year we didn’t get to due to me having a back injury.

  114. It’s not totally unique – but our thanksgiving is all about low-key – we play lots of games and actually don’t eat too much so that we all feel like going on a walk or shopping the next day – it’s just a time to be together and it’s not so much about the food.

  117. Our Thanksgivings are pretty boring, Just the immediate family and nothing really special.

  119. I can’t think of anything really unique about our Thanksgiving, except for the fact that we fit about 15 people into a small double wide trailer.

  124. The family members bring their pets to join in celebrating. I bring my two cats for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

  127. My family likes to have Thanksgiving dinner somewhere new every year. It’s just us, we live across the country from our family…so its fun finding a new restaurant each year to try out.

  130. We always buy a huge turkey and have hot turkey sandwiches many months after, thereby extending the holiday!

  132. honestly its my two year daughter and myself, so I’m hoping to find new ideas to make the holidays fun for just the two of us.

  135. I am not sure how unique it is but we have Ham instead of turkey and my Mom and I get together to do the meal the night before!

  141. My family takes a photo in the same spot every year for Thanksgiving (not that unique, but it’s always been our tradition)

  143. we really don’t do anything different. We do start decorating for Christmas the day after but that’s about it.

  145. Thanksgiving is just another day at our house, but my mom makes a big deal of it so we invite family and friends and whoever else wants to come to dinner. After dinner , my mom sleeps on the couch, my dad hovers over the desserts, my husband falls asleep in his chair And my 13 yr old can’t wait to decorate for Christmas so she goes in the attic and starts to take everything out. I clean up.

  147. we try not to be extravagant and instead to invite astranger in our home who would otherwise be alone.

  148. This year, I had large, coloring book placemats printed at an office supply store for everyone (including the adults) to color before and after the meal. 🙂

  152. We are pretty traditional.I cook a huge feast and invite family and friends that have no plans.We eat and then decorate our tree.

  155. we eat a lot of food, then we sit around talking about the good old days until someone nods off.

  158. For some reason my family has two Thanksgiving parties, one on Thanksgiving and one on Black Friday.

  161. I load my babies up and we go to a food and clothing charity to sort out individual bags to be delivered one by one to the homeless.

  164. I don’t know that there is anything unique about the way we celebrate. We enjoy each others company and talk about Christmas plans.

  167. we eat tamales and have turkey with meat stuffing (think bacon, chorizo etc…) prepared by our friends from Brazil, it is super yummy!

  171. We are pretty traditional, we make a ton of food, watch football and then play games into the night.

  173. We recently started having our big family get together in the summer so more people can attend, I guess that is pretty Unique!

  174. We have 2 thanksgivings: Thursday and Friday for people who have other places to be on the other day.
    Thanks for the contest.

  175. Every year we watch all the kids do a Thanksgiving play they make up. We did this since I was little.

  178. We stay home and watch football,talk and enjoy each others company. BTW, Happy Anniversary.

  180. On our 1st Thanksgiving we hung out with our friends from Brazil. We had a samba band playing. It was an excuse to have a party.

  184. We have a huge extended family potluck with hubs family then come home and make our own dinner and start Christmas by watching Miracle on 34th Street and putting up decorations. 🙂

  185. Well this year was particularly unique becasue it was Thanksgivukkah so we had latkes (potato pancakes).

  186. I am not sure i would call it unique but we get together as a family and say a prayer before eating and then say what we are all thankful for

  189. We don’t really do anything special now that my grandmother passed few years ago. But We just go to my moms(myself and my two boys) & Then usually her boyfriend, and my uncle and aunt are there.
    I honestly spend most of my time with my dogs that live with my mom. They need love too.

  190. My family all meets at someone’s house (it rotates) and we have a huge dinner and then the guys go play poker and watch football while the women go through black friday ads and watch movies.

  192. We don’t do anything special other than have our guests to bring their food or drink contributions and we, as hosting the Thanksgiving dinner, to provide either the turkey or ham.

  193. We go to my husband’s family for Thanksgiving and after dinner all the ladies gather around a table and go through the black friday ads and we map out our game plan. Then we all go out black friday shopping together.

  195. I don’t think we do anything unique but we either stay in a resort or go to my Aunt in South Carolina

  197. we have our Thanksgiving meal at dinner time. it’s nice not to have to get up early to have everything ready in time for lunch!

  198. There is nothing unique about our Thanksgiving….unless Grandpa has too much wine. 😉

  199. We don’t do anything unique. We just have a traditional dinner and sit around talking afterwards

  200. On Thanksgiving we all do our own thing, my daughter eats at her fiance’s families, my son at his girlfriends and my mom at her boyfriends house. We have done this for some time now.

  204. After dinner the men watch football and us girls sit around the table with all the ads and plan our strategy for Black Friday shopping.

  207. It’s not really unique, but we all play monopoly after having the big turkey dinner. Thanks for having this contest.

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