Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving when I was little was very much a family affair.

We always got together with my mom’s side of the family, which included my Aunt Helen’s family and my Uncle Charles (and later on, his family) and my Grandma Gideon. It also included my Aunt Helen’s husband’s family (that would be my Uncle Glen’s family). We sort of “adopted” them, and always thought of them as aunts and uncles and cousins. I think I was a teenager before I realized that they weren’t really blood relatives.

So Thanksgiving was a huge deal. There was six in our family, six in my Aunt Helen’s family, Uncle Charles, Grandma, “Aunt” Theda’s family, “Uncle” Junior, “Nana and Grandpa” Sutton and some others I can’t remember. I think that made about 25 – 30 of us most years.

Our family had wonderful cooks, so there was always a huge array of tasty dishes. Each branch of the family had its own traditional foods, so by the time we all brought our own traditional foods we ended up, literally, with a smorgasborg:

Turkey
Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
Stuffing
Cranberry Sauce
Candied Yams
Assorted Jello Salads
Macaroni Salad
Assorted Vegetables
Creamed Pearl Onions
Olives
Stuffed Celery
Pickles
Pumpkin Pie
Mincemeat Pie
Apple Pie
Cheesecake

I’m sure there was more, but that is all I can remember.

There were so many of us that I can’t ever remember sitting around a table. It was one of those “buffet” kind of things and we just filled plates and sat wherever there was a space. Even the kids, as far as I can remember. We stayed all day and it seemed like the eating went on all day.

I remember once getting sick on Thanksgiving. I don’t know if I ate too much or if I had the flu or what, but I remember “tossing my cookies” at my Aunt’s house. It was a very long time—years, actually, before I ate pumpkin pie again! :)

I loved being with my cousins. We would play the most inventive pretend games. We lived in very close proximity to each other, so we were more like siblings than we were cousins.

One thing that has become a family joke was my Grandma praying the blessing on Thanksgiving. My Grandma was only 47 when I was born, so she was a fairly young woman. Each year on Thanksgiving when she was asked to pray, she would cry and say that “this was probably going to be the last Thanksgiving of her life” and then she would pray. After several years of this you could see the “rolling eyes” and people trying to not laugh. Hello! She lived to be 92 year old!

Along about the time I was 8 or so, our church started a Thanksgiving Day service. So we would go to this service (I think it started about 9 or 10) and the Junior Choir would sing and we would give thanks as a church body and be done by 11 or so. Then off to our festivities. I think it was a wonderful tradition, and I wish we still did that.