This year, when I heard some stores would be open on Thanksgiving, I told the kids this was the beginning of the end of Thanksgiving.
Unlike Halloween or Valentines Day or Christmas, no one makes big money off Thanksgiving. Churches and great-grandmas won’t produce multi-million dollar commercials reminding Americans to stop and acknowledge the blessings in their lives or sit down and feast together.
One day, Thanksgiving will go the way of Epiphany. Or Pentecost. Or, for Lutherans, Reformation Day. We’ll celebrate it at church, but we won’t really celebrate it. No one will take off work for some turkey. Or to travel to Grandma’s house, who may or may not be there, depending on how good the Christmas sales are and how long her list is that year.
This might all prove to be true. But what I learned is this: it was a really stupid idea to tell the kids that one of their favorite holidays is fading.
First, they asked six million questions about why Americans would stop celebrating a holiday. Questions that are hard to answer.
Second, when I heard myself answering the questions, I sounded like a bitter, old hippie, with my “America only cares about making money” rhetoric.
Third, the kids decided we would be the ones to REALLY CELEBRATE THANKSGIVING. We would NOT be the family that skipped the turkey, or the lists of what we’re thankful for, or the family time. This would be the year we would celebrate the most traditional Thanksgiving ever.
If our kids knew about Norman Rockwell, or saw his famous painting of Thanksgiving and the many generations gathered around a beautifully-set table and a glistening turkey in the center, they would have said, “THAT! We want that for Thanksgiving! We will not let it die!”
This year, though, we had planned on an alternative Thanksgiving.
Instead of gathering at Grandma’s house, we were meeting Mike’s family at a resort in New Mexico. No one was planning on turkey. Our hotel rooms had night tables, but no one would be pushing those together so we could go all look in each other’s eyes and list our blessings.
During our trip, in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, the kids were worried WE were the ones forgetting about Thanksgiving.
I showed the girls a picture a friend posted on Facebook. Our neighborhood grocery store was packed with shoppers trying to buy turkeys and find the pumpkin pie spice.
“Look how crowded Kroger is,” I pointed out.
This made Elisabeth worry. “Don’t WE need to go the grocery store?” she asked.
We did not. That day, we were meeting my parents and brother, who had also travelled out to New Mexico, for a day of tourism. No pre-Thanksgiving grocery shopping for us. Heck. We didn’t even know where we were eating on Thursday.
On Wednesday, when most Thanksgiving hosts were starting their turkey brines and chopping veggies, the women in our family were at the spa.
On Thursday morning, as we wished each other, “Happy Thanksgiving!” Catie asked if this would feel like Thanksgiving at all.
I suggested this Thanksgiving might be different than other ones. This year was about seeing our cousins and grandparents we miss so much. This year was about making vacation memories together.
“We could call it the UnThanksgiving,” I said. “Since it is Thanksgiving, but we’re doing things differently.”
Sam announced, “WE are the people forgetting about Thanksgiving!”
“We are,” Catie agreed.
We headed into Santa Fe to celebrate the holiday. We were trying to squeeze months of family time in while entertaining six kids, while also seeing this beautiful city. With all of these other priorities, finding turkey and dressing and a beautifully-set table were low priorities.
We ate our Thanksgiving lunch at a place called The Burrito Company, whose best feature was its fast counter service.
Lots of little shops were open, so we did what most families probably did on Thanksgiving. We shopped and window-shopped, and, yes, generally acted like the capitalists we are.
When mass ended at the cathedral in the middle of town, our kids watched the parishioners pour out of the huge, white church.
“We’re missing church?” Nate asked.
“Why didn’t we go to church?” The kids were incredulous. “Why aren’t we celebrating Thanksgiving?”
I tried to explain that we just hadn’t known about a church service, but that didn’t mean we weren’t thankful for our blessings.
Elisabeth was determined to remedy our unThanksgiving. “We will make a list of what we are thankful for,” she said in the car. “With 100 things on the list!”
So, instead of playing I Spy or 20 Questions, we listed every single little blessing we could imagine. We started with the biggies, like family and toys and our minivan. But then we moved on to “Thank You, Lord, for Daddy’s job. And thank You our dogs aren’t sick. And Thank You my teacher doesn’t ever get mad.”
By the time we were back at the resort, everyone in the family had contributed to our list of way more than 100 blessings.
Making that list was our real Thanksgiving celebration. Stepping back from our busy vacation to see the small and large ways God was working in our lives gave us all a fresh perspective.
Later that evening, our family sat around a huge table in the lounge with our cousins, Grandma and Papa, and Aunt Melanie and Uncle Matt. We ate a family-style meal of brisket, turkey, and side dishes. The kids were happy, but tired. They were peaceful. Satisfied with the day.
A lot of our day might have looked like an UnThanksgiving, like we were using the day off to focus on the demanding Christmas season.
But that’s not how it felt that night, as we looked back on our holiday. It felt like we had celebrated the important parts of the day more than ever this year. No complicated turkey recipes or tricky pie recipes distracted us from spending time together. Walking around downtown Santa Fe, there were no TVs to remind us over and over about the huge sales we were missing.
Most importantly, all those hours walking and riding in the car together gave us the family time to make our giant thankful list.
If this is an UnThanksgiving, we’ll do it again next year.
Oh no you won’t – it’s back to the Hergie/Ward Yogi tradition with the Thanksgiving day that never ends and cooking a chicken over a fire and running to Walmart on Thanksgiving day to find whipped cream. Now that’s Thanksgiving 🙂
Was it WalMart? Didn’t we insist on taking whipped cream from the poor woman who ran the cash register at the gas station? =)
I’ve worked in retail for 14 years, and my mother is a nurse, and so was my grandmother. We have had some untraditional Thanksgivings over the years, but it has always felt like a proper celebration. A holiday Thanksgiving sounds lovely to me!
Amy…I think you’re right. Untraditional Thanksgivings can help highlight the important parts of the day. Traveling was a nice change of pace. And to be clear, going through security with four small kids is always a veryyyyy slowwwww pace.