I love everything about the holiday season: the weather, the food, the company and all the traditions. Coming from a large family (I’m the youngest of five kids) the holiday season is pretty important. It is a time for us all to get together, no matter how spread out we are.
We have a lot of Thanksgiving traditions in my family. Our whole family gathers together for a big Thanksgiving dinner and on each of our plates lies three kernels of dry corn that are to represent three things we are thankful for. We start with my dad at the head of the table and he passes a basket around to collect the corn. As it makes its way around the table, we each drop the kernels in the basket and share three things we are thankful for.
Before we can do this, however, my mom always shares the story about why we hold this tradition. It goes back to Pilgrim days when they had little food and had to ration it out severely. It is to remind us to be grateful for the gifts we have been blessed with.
After we share what we are thankful for, we sing a really short Thanksgiving song. I’m not even sure where we found this. We’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember. We sing it twice because we always start it out too low the first time and end up growling out the last line. The second time is to try and fix our mistakes. It doesn’t really work. The tune sort of got lost over the years and none of us quite know the starting pitch.
As goofy as some of these traditions sound, it’s something my family can all share, which I think is the point of a tradition.
My favorite part about the holidays, though, is being able to escape the stress of school and work and just spend time with my family.
I remember on one Thanksgiving, my two brothers and one of my sisters and I each set ourselves up at a different computer and played through the entire game of Diablo II together. That may sound like a waste of time to some people, but it allowed my siblings and I to enjoy a game together – something we wouldn’t normally get to do during the semester.
Make some of your own traditions this Thanksgiving or carry on the ones you already have. Just be sure to spend it with your family or loved ones. No one should be alone on Thanksgiving. If you know someone who is alone, then reach out to them and share the joy of the holiday with them. Maybe that will be become a new tradition. You never know.
