Turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, pumpkin pie. As winter rolls around, the tasty dishes of Thanksgiving kick off a much awaited holiday season. “[I think of] family and good food,” P.E teacher Aryn Wheeler said, and many agree with her when they think of Thanksgiving.
Most people view Thanksgiving as a holiday that is all about spending time with family and friends and reflecting on the year with gratitude. However, this holiday is often celebrated with different traditions in each household, whether it’s special dishes, destinations or even varied views on what Thanksgiving means to them.
One thing most people can agree on, though, is that Thanksgiving truly puts people in a festive holiday mood. “Something that my family does, like me and Mr. Wheeler and the kids on our way home every year from Thanksgiving, we start, we start getting into Christmas mode, and we play Christmas music on our Rhino,” Mrs. Wheeler said.
Of course, family traditions are what make Thanksgiving a unique and memorable experience in each household. “We also have a silly thing called Dirty bingo, and that is where you wrap up stuff from around the house that…you’re not supposed to buy. You play bingo, and then you unwrap it. It’s in newspaper. It’s just something silly that we do, that we just have fun with,” science teacher Karl Kovacs said.
As to the actual Thanksgiving meal, ethnicity and culture play a huge role for countless families. “Sometimes we have, like an Eritrean spin on certain foods, like we’ll have, like, spicy versions of food and things like that, but mostly we eat food from the south,” freshman Isabel Woldeab said.
The special dishes that are put on each family’s table for Thanksgiving often hold a stronger meaning behind the taste and tradition. “Corn. And that’s in remembrance of the fact that Thanksgiving is all about celebrating the harvest. It’s about when natives taught the folks who had moved here how to plant corn and survive when they couldn’t survive on their own,” Dr. Kovacs said. “And also in remembrance of the natives as well is a very important part of my celebration, my remembrance.”
As people have moved on to different phases in life, their Thanksgiving experiences have certainly changed with them. “We started bringing my dog, once we got our dog, so we gave her a meal too, which I thought was really fun. And I mean, this year, my sister is coming home from college, so that’s a big difference,” Woldeab said.
“As my children have aged, [Thanksgiving] has become more of a ‘reunion’ with them as they come home from school or where they currently live,” social studies teacher William Vicari said.
“Well, I drank the Kool Aid when I was a child and thought about pilgrims and the natives enjoying their, their first 1621 year meal, together in harmony. And as I learned more and more about the reality, finding out now that the natives look at this as a national day of mourning, I’ve got a very much new appreciation for that old story,” Dr. Kovacs said.
Thanksgiving day can also get pretty eventful as people try to celebrate with as much family as they can. “So I do two Thanksgivings. I do Thanksgiving at my sister’s house with my side of the family, and then I go to my mother-in-law and father-in-law’s house and do Thanksgiving with Mr. Wheeler’s side of the family. So we do two in one day, one lunch and one dinner,” Mrs. Wheeler said.
Furthermore, Thanksgiving week is a busy time for many as they travel out of Maryland to visit family. “I go to Long Island to see my family and we have Thanksgiving dinner together,” freshman Maddie Gredder said. “Because we don’t typically see our family a lot so we like to, to spend our time there and be thankful that we have each other.”
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