November 15, 2022
Shifting Time, Adapting Traditions
Yesterday a notification from my calendar app popped up on my phone. It read, “Pearson Family Thanksgiving at Mom & Daddy’s.” It was an old recurring appointment I’d just never deleted. I guess I hoped we’d restart it someday. The recurring day was always the 15th of November and time was set as 4pm to 7pm just because my app in 2010 with my first smartphone didn’t allow “all day” appointments to give me day-before notifications.
Why would our family Thanksgiving be on the 15th instead of the fourth Thursday of each November?
Good question: here’s the historical answer…
It started after the first year Louis and I got married. We had just tried to do Thanksgiving at his family’s (Grandma Jeanette’s house) and then Thanksgiving at my family’s – and were exhausted and Louis complained he was too full from one place to eat half of what he wanted to taste at my parent’s house. Same happened at Christmas! At least the food part wasn’t a big issue at Christmas. His family always did presents and stuff at the crack of dawn (not really, but early) and my family usually had a big breakfast, tried all the kids’ patience, setup everything, made sure all the service workers had gotten a good nights’ sleep so it was later and lasted longer. Christmas was easy. Morning with his family, afternoon with mine.
Plus, as the second year holidays approached, we realized that three of us (Louis, Katy, and Becca) worked service industry and didn’t have the actual Thanksgiving Day off. Hmm… That made the decision even easier! I approached my Daddy with an idea: what if, we celebrated Thanksgiving on Mom’s birthday each year instead of actual Thanksgiving Day – of course, they could still do the actual Thanksgiving, but the Travel Thanksgiving Day celebration when we all got together would be Mom’s birthday. Daddy said, “two feast days for Thanksgiving? Great idea.” (or something very similar to that, I don’t remember the exact words)
We started celebrating Thanksgiving with my family on November 15th, my Mother’s birthday! It was perfect, service industry workers could easily ask and get a random day a week and a half before the start of the holiday rush (pre-Nights-of-Lights for us Saint Augustinians), and we’d always make or buy a cake for Mom! It was perfect! (Then we could go to our own thing or for us, go to Louis’ family celebration on Thanksgiving Day, if we were off – Louis usually tried to make an appearance; even it is was briefly.)
Lots of stuff has happened to my birth family and we’ve tried to keep that tradition alive, but it isn’t happening this year. Instead, we are hosting Thanksgiving for anyone able from 11/23 to 11/27. A few of our family will be in town and able to visit. Maybe some friends might pop in over those off-days (we are off work and the girls on break from college, Louis is on call, but he’s always on call) – family and friends make for fun days full of memories!
I smiled at the notification because it today would mark four full years since we’d gone over to Mom and Daddy’s for “Pearson Thanksgiving on Mom’s Birthday” and all my older girls remember “two Thanksgiving parties” every year! Lucas attended some, but doesn’t remember them. Thea hadn’t ever been.
So many things shifted in our family that now, getting days off before Thanksgiving, when most of us are on vacation is like “really?” and two of our children are grown (okay, Becky’s not legally an adult yet, but I consider her one) so I want our home to be the gathering place. I want to be like Grandma Jeanette, the “glue” that holds the family together. I want everyone to feel welcome and this year we’ve officially started opening our home to anyone during holidays (it feels like we have more space even though we don’t). Not that we didn’t say it before “oh, you can just come by” no, this year we sent out timelines to family and have offered verbal invitations to friends of our kids and their families. I want to be the fun memory-making place – and it won’t matter that we won’t be in this house next year for any of the fall holidays, our new place will be the new gathering place. I want to build memories so my younglings keep coming back – even if one day they show up and say, “Dad, Mom, can we do Thanksgiving at your house on your anniversary instead of actual Thanksgiving Day?” – and yes, we’ll shift with the time to accommodate what our youngsters and their growing families need… but that’s WAY in the future, right?
(Who am I kidding? It seems like yesterday I proposed the question to my Daddy…)
Thank you for Reading!
Type at you next time!
~Nancy Tart