Favorite Thanksgiving Memory or Tradition

[Pumpkin_Man]

Halloween if over, and though it's my favorite holiday, I thought I would take a break from it and talk about the next upcomming holiday. Thanksgiving. What is your all time favorite Thanksgiving memory or Tradition? I'll start this thread by talking about mine.

My all time favorite Thanksgiving memory was the year my older brothers took me out hunting for the very first time. I was about 12, and it was the morning of Thanksgiving. We had a long ways to go, so we hunted rabbits and pheasant. We had no luck, unfortunately. We then went over to my Uncle Jim's house for Thanksgiving.

My all time favorite Thanksgiving tradition is a little harder to think about, being th at there are quite a few of them that I really love. Of course, the dinner of Turkey with all the trimmings goes without saying, but we have a few family traditions that have been anintigral part of the Thanksgiving celebration for as long as I can remember. The two I am thinking of off the top of my head are 1. Krispie cookies. Rice Krispie cookies, or Rice Krispie Marshmellwo Treats, started in the late 50s or early 60s, and my mom made them one year for Thanksgiving. The tradition stuck, so every year we have Krispie Cookies as part of our Thanksgiving feast. The 2nd tradition is that Thanksgiving was allwasy the official "kick-off" of the Christmas season, and given the fact that the first Sunday of Advent is usualy on the Sunday right after Thanksgiving, it's only fitting. My uncle Jim allways had Christmas music playing in the background, and it was a really pleasant preview to the gatherings we would have on Christmas day and Christmas eve.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

I try to make sure that all the things I serve at Thanksgiving come from the New World. Turkey, potatoes, cornbread stuffing, green beans, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie. If it didn't come from the Americas, I don't serve it at Thanksgiving.

I also try to save one pumpkin back every year and carve it while my turkey is baking. I have a stencil of a turkey, and that becomes the centerpiece of my Thanksgiving table.

[iHaunt]

Interesting story, Mike! Hope you will have a great Thanksgiving again this time.

Murf, we will have same TG dinner the same as yours... but, don't forget collard greens and dinner rolls.

[Murfreesboro]

I don't do collard greens at Thanksgiving. I always do greens of some sort (collards or turnips or kale) on New Year's. Black-eyed peas & greens are the traditional New Year's Day meal in the South (as I'm sure a Virginia boy knows!).

[Li H'Sen Chang]

I try to make sure that all the things I serve at Thanksgiving come from the New World. Turkey, potatoes, cornbread stuffing, green beans, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie. If it didn't come from the Americas, I don't serve it at Thanksgiving.

I also try to save one pumpkin back every year and carve it while my turkey is baking. I have a stencil of a turkey, and that becomes the centerpiece of my Thanksgiving table.

I like that idea of a Thanksgiving pumpkin will you post picture of it so I can print it to carve one too?

[Pumpkin_Man]

That's a great tradition, Murf. Turkeys are indigidious to the Americas, too. We do pretty much the same thing, all though it's hard to tell what food produts were packed or canned here in the U S and what ones were canned or packed in China or Brazil. We have a very old family recipe for turkey stuffing, though, and all the ingrediants are all grown here in the U S. I think Rice Krispies are also pretty much produced in America, but I don't know about the canned Cranberry Sauce. I know that the brown sugar that my sister in-law uses to make the candied yams (both a Thanksgiving and Easter tradition in my family) is most lilely imported from one of the major sugar growing nations. But the yams themselvs are usualy bought from the produce section, not canned.

Of course, being Irish Catholic, a lot of our 'old world' celebration traditions are still a large part of any family gathering. Believe it or not, Thanksgiving dinner is the only meal that my entire family actualy says Grace before we eat. Even the Atheist prays it. It's a prayer that is widely used by catholics, but especialy Irish Catholics which goes as follows:

We make the sign of the cross and say: "In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Sprit."

"Bless us Oh Lord, and these thy gifts which we are about to receive, from thy bounty through Christ our Lord."

Then we would colse with the sign of the cross with the following adendum which became family tradition at al meals (while everyone was still a believer which my older brother, now an agnostic, learned while attending a High School Saminay.

"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Sprit: Wether we eat or drink or what else we do, all onto the honor and glory of God. Amen. "

And then after that it was time to eat. We use to do that every time we sat down to dinner as a family. Now we only do it on Thanksgiving. I say Grace every time I sit down to dinner, and when ever I throw a party, but usualy only 1 or 2 people participate.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

Chang, I'll have to have my husband help me with the picture-posting. I have never learned how to do that. The stencil I use was published a number of years ago by Pumpkin Masters. I know they have reprinted it at least once, but I make photocopies every year so I never lose the original. It is basically a round design which shows the complete turkey in profile. Lots of detail on the tail and wing. But if you were to imagine a circle, the feet and the beak and the tail feathers would all be on the circumference of it.

Mike, I'm not quite as much of a purist about my Thanksgiving table as perhaps you imagine! I don't fret about where the particular items I use came from each year. I just make sure that everything I serve is basically something people in Europe didn't know about & wouldn't have had before they discovered the New World. I'm sure I use some incidental ingredients they did have in Europe prior to Columbus's voyage. For example, I use mushroom soup and onions in my green bean casserole. They had mushrooms & onions in Europe forever, but they didn't have the green beans.

I think it is lovely that you say grace for every meal. We did that when the kids were young, but nowadays we so often are eating separately, that custom just sort of went by the wayside.

[Pumpkin_Man]

That's more or less what happened to us, too. That, and some of my family members aren't religious any more.

As for your turkey pumpkin, if you have a digital camera, you can simply shoot a picture of it, and then upload it to a post in this threat or start a new threat.

Mike

[VanHelsingStandIn]

I know this is an older thread, but it reminded me how every Thanksgiving we had the family touch football game in the front yard. Sad thing is I'm the only member of my family left from those days, and being on the other side of 50 I don't have any big desire to run up and down the yard anymore. Do enough of that at work anyway. But we had some real fun back then.

[Pumpkin_Man]

We still do the complete Turkey dinner, and the Krispie cookies, but we never played 'back-yard' football. My brothers sure do spend the whole day watching football on tv, though. It's as much part of the Thanksgiving tradition to them as the turkey and pumpkin pie. Even if it's not our team (the Chicagl Bears) they try to take in any game that happens to be on. This year I am hosting Thanksgiving, so it's a darn good thing I replaced the lamp in my DLP projector.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

No big traditions for us, other than the ones about food and the turkey jack-o-lantern I mentioned a year or so back. Ideally I would like to get my Christmas decorations up that weekend, but that doesn't always happen by any means. Often our family will go to a movie during the four-day holiday. This year we are talking about going to see Lincoln.

Frankly, when I was a child, Thanksgiving was the boring holiday between Halloween & Christmas. I appreciate it more now.

[Pumpkin_Man]

My younger sister use to feel the same way when she was a child. Thanksgiving was just about everyone getting together just to eat, but it was never like that for me. What I love about it most when I was little was the 4 day weekend. I also loved the Krispie Cookies and the turkey. Also, during most years, the Sunday after Thanksgiving was usualy the 1st Sunday of Advent and it was time to break out the Advent Wreath and candles in anticipation of Christmas. This year the 1st Sunday of Advent isn't until a week later, but I remember how excited I woudl get when my father would start putting the advent wreath together and we had our first family meal, usualy left over Thanksgiving turkey, by the light of that first one Advent candle.

I will probably be seeing "Lincoln" during the Thanksgiving weekend, too. I'll have some of my lights up on the day after, but the tree usualy doesn't go up until one ot two weeks into December. I get a real tree and selecting that tree is part of the whole Christmas tradition.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

We do the Advent Wreath, too, a beautiful tradition. I am very aware that Advent starts a little later this year, because I am in charge this time of our mid-week Advent soup suppers at church. I have a fair amount of responsibility associated with that this time around.

Of course, it's not really that Advent is later, but that Thanksgiving is earlier. This November started on a Thursday, so there are five Thursdays in the month. I guess Thanksgiving is about as early this year as it can ever be.

[Pumpkin_Man]

Traditionaly Thanksgiving is allways on the 4th Thursday of the month, and it's rare that the 1st of November falls on a Thursday. Advent is allways the 4 Sundays before Christmas Day, which means that there are some years that the 4th Sunday of Advent actualy is Christmas Eve, but that isn't the case this year. This year, we have 3 full weeks of Advent, and the 4th Sunday of Advent is on the 23rd, the day before Christmas Eve.

The Advent Wreath is probably my favorite tradition associated with the Christmas Season. I usualy cook up a nice meal for myself on the 1st Sunday, and was saying in the Halloween Recipe's thrread that I was thinking about cooking a small rump roast out on the barbecue, but that will depend on the weather. I may do a rack of pork in the oven instead. In either case, my fire place is going to get a work out that day, and I also plan to screen "It's a Wonderful Life."

My Tree Trimming Party is going to be on Saturday the 15th this year, and for that, I allways make spagheti, which was another family tradition on Tree Trimming Day when I was a kid.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

That sounds like a beautiful tradition, Mike!

I don't like it when Advent ends on Christmas Eve. I want more Christmas season than that.