We're heading into the ThanksgivingChristmasNewYears whirl. Winter seems to have shown up this week unexpectedly with temperatures in the teens but no real snow yet.
When I was growing up, Thanksgiving was the start of a huge social season. My parents used to host a big holiday party in mid-December and we started cooking and preparing the Friday after Thanksgiving. There was a huge list of recipes to prepare (mock wild boar, meatballs/spaghetti sauce, marinated mushrooms, braunschweiger balls with paprika, etc), silver to polish, linens to iron, alcohol to buy. I don't really remember the parties but I do remember the cooking and cleaning.
We had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner (usually for just the immediate family) and I remember learning to cook the whole thing when I was 13 or 14. I thought this was really an honor but my mom was really the smart one. She delegated the whole meal to me and I gladly took it on. I think I cooked Thanksgiving dinner every year until I went to college.
I remember doing a huge dinner in 1988 when my sister, Jeannine, got married Thanksgiving weekend. I'm not sure how I crammed a 30-pound bird into the oven at the townhouse but I did. I think we had around 25 people (many out-of-towners who came for the wedding).
Somewhere along the way, Thanksgiving shifted to the Friday after. We usually celebrated with my ex-husband Dave's oldest sister and her family. Our niece spent Thursday with her mom and Friday with the step-family so we moved the date to keep her part of our family tradition. Even after she moved to college, Friday was still the day for the feast. It gave us an extra day to shop, cook, clean and relax and allowed us to include folks who had other commitments on Thanksgiving.
In 2006, Dave and I spent Thanksgiving in transition. I went to a friend's house on Thursday, to his sister's on Friday, and Monday we signed papers to sell our house and I moved into my condo in St. Paul. It was an emotional and physical chaos of activities and I'm still not sure how I got through all of it. I had a lot of help from friends (especially our move coordinator Sally).
I hosted a post-Thanksgiving Friday dinner for severely years with whatever friends are around and in need of turkey. This year, Marie and I are hosting a soup/salad/sandwich dinner and I'm looking forward to it.
My Thanksgivings have changed but in many ways they are still the same as the early years with my family. Turkey, friends, laughing, eating, drinking. Oh and lots of cleaning before and after. Now though, I don't polish silver or iron table linens. At least that part has gotten easier.
Hope your Thanksgiving includes traditions old and new and, if you're in the area and want some turkey on Friday, give us a call!