I know every family has them. Fess up!

I was just sitting here thinking about my plans for the evening and who I am going to go see after I have Chinese food with my parents. It occured to me that this is kind of an odd tradition, but a tradition I love nonetheless. Every Thanksgiving Eve we eat Chinese regardless of what our plans for the actual holiday are. We've done it for years.

I think the rest of our traditions are pretty normal: always getting out the door late on our way to my aunt's house, gabbing in the kitchen before dinner, listening to my father and aunt yell at the football on TV, listening to everyone tell the same stories about their childhood over and over, eating pumpkin pie for breakfast the next morning.

Ah, the holidays!

When my sister and I were little, we used to set up a thanksgiving feast for our stuffed animals... all that plastic fake toy food had to be used at least once a year.

I don't celebrate with them anymore, but my mom's family always sings grace while holding hands. It was always funny to witness a first-timer taking part in this. The host also handcrafted little personalized favors for everyone there... every single year.

SF

Members of my family eat sauerkraut very enthusiastically every Thanksgiving. I think this is very odd, akin to eating rotten babies. Sauerkraut should only be eaten in private, away from my nose.

One year my family came to visit me for thanksgiving (another odd tradition) and I instituted a sauerkraut ban since I was making dinner. My evil sister, who was hundreds of miles away in Chicago, called my sweet 80 year old granny and told her she should make sauerkraut as a special 'surprise' and that she shouldn't tell anyone. So, being a granny, she made it and held it in her lap for the entire 7 hour ride from Baltimore to Providence. Grrr. I had to heat it up and everything because I didn't want to let my granny know she had been cruelly used by my sister.

This year we're going out for Indian so hopefully I can get the sauerkraut monkey off my back.

Trishie - when you started writing this I wondered "Is she from Baltimore"? Because that is a local tradition - my mom makes it every year, and though it's not not my favorite I'm glad it's there. Rock on Granny!

funny!
i'm from bmore and i never knew it was a tradition here...
i love me some kraut and sausage!
my mom is making it this year and you can be sure i'll be tearing it up!!

I was thinking the same thing kazoo!- My family's not native Baltimorons(Mom is from Illinois and Dad is from Iowa) so we don't do the saurkraut thing, but I think S's family may do it, as they are all from Hampden.

My favorite Thanksgiving tradition: sneaking into the fridge late at night to make turkey sandwiches. A little mayo, a little salt, white bread- so yummy!

* edited to add* there was a great article in the Sun this week about what kinds of beer would go well with turkey and saurkraut.

Thankfully my parents aren't aware of the saurkraut-Thanksgiving link. Since they are German, they always have saurkraut and pig knuckles on New Year's eve. I really wish I liked it, but it tastes so bile like to me.

My father always selects Mozart's Requiem as dinner time music for Thanksgiving. When asked why, he said it was great music, and we should all be thankful that it existed. And that we're not dead yet, I guess? Parents are weird.

when we were kids my parents best friend used to trade off hosting turkey day festivities since everyone's family lived really far away. whoever hosted had to dress up like pilgrims and whoever came over had to dress up like indians. i kind amiss that - it was a bunch of fun as a kid, and we did live right near plymouth, mass.

now we drive from atl to south carolina to see my grandparents, and every time we go my mom and i make a "pilgrimage" to our favorite cross stitch store.

wow becca that sounds like a lot of fun!

i wish we had neato family traditions like that...

Chinese food on Thanksgiving?!?

Everyone knows that Chinese food is eaten on HALLOWEEN. My parents would take us to watch the town's Halloween party and then walk over to the Chinese restaurant for trick or treat fortune cookies and dinner.

In regards to T-day, since it's usually a few days around my birthday... we have a birthday cake for me.

~WS

Haha! I have Jewish friends who would contend that Chinese food is eaten on Christmas!

In my years in New Orleans, Chinese food was always eaten for dinner on Fat Tuesday--by the end of the day you've been spent about 6 days straight partying and putting up with tourists, you're sunburned and just plain exhausted. So, you hop in the car and go to the West Bank to the all you can eat buffet.

During the last 10 or so years of my Gramdma's life she would take all of us out for Thanksgiving dinner at Luby's Cafeteria. It's kinda weird, and something that a lot of people have looked down upon, but that's what Granny wanted to do rather than cook.

However, Dad likes the leftovers and so my mom always made a turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes anyway so that we could eat them all weekend.

I have some friends who have an annual Turkey TV Dinner Thanksgiving.

Hee hee - Mozart's Requiem for Thanksgiving dinner... I can imagine it.

I wrote my blog today about one of my newer Thanksgiving traditions. I like to put the shape of texas on desserts... (I am from Oregon, but now I live in Texas).

www.xanga.com/yardenxanthe

You are all wrong, Chinese food is to be eaten on Christmas eve.

I don't think we have any exceptional Thanksgiving traditions. Only the unofficial one of me trying to distract my mother from making me special/vile veggie gravy from canned veggie broth. You cannot imagine the grossness, but it is so sweet of her to make it for me that I have to eat it when she somehow sneaks away from my vigilance and makes it. Lately I've timed it to where she remembers just as we are sitting down to table and tell her, "Don't worry mom, I'm fine." She also makes me special veggie stuffing outside the bird, which is also a sweet thing to do. However, it tastes good, unlike the gravy. Canned veggie broth tastes like tin can. Like somebody boiled 1000 cans in a huge vat and then canned the result and let it sit on the shelf for years to develop the can taste.

nicegirl- I'm cracking up. (and veggie gravy does taste like can)

Can you make a mushroom gravy instead? The only concession my family made to Thanksgiving dinner when I was vegetarian is that the casseroles had cream of celery or cream of mushroom instead of cream of chicken soup in them. (would it really be Thanksgiving without Campbell's cream of somethin' soup?)

Marvy-
Somebody else mentioned mushroom gravy. How do you make it? I kind of miss gravy.

How about, it's tradition to eat chinese food whenever the heck you want to!
lol.
I looovve chinese food. It's one of my favorites. I wish we had something like that as a tradition.
Ours is just the normal thanksgiving dinner.

nicegirl's veggie gravy woes reminded me...

Another tradition we have is all of my relatives gawking at whichever meatless turkey substitute I've elected to bring with me that year. The words "eew" and "weird" often come up. ; o)

P.S. No one makes homemade gravy (tin can flavored or otherwise) for me. I just use the stuff that comes in a little packet. Perhaps I should be thankful for that this year?

When I was 15, I moved in with my Granny and she told me she was done with cooking. So, I made the bird a few times (with all the trimmings). Then, when I was 18, we started going to a CHINESE buffet on Thanksgiving for lunch, and to my Great-Granny's at night for turkey. I hate my Great-Granny's cooking- it tastes like hospital food. Then, when I moved in with my bf, his family has LASAGNE for T-Day. Weird, but good. This year, I'm making a bird, and pork chops (yeah, pork chops, go figure).

The only consistant tradition: Cranberry sauce out of the can. mmmmm Even the Chinese place had it on the buffet!

Well, we don't have any longstanding traditions, but last two year we played this excellent gambling game called LRC, and I won $36. We're definitely playing again this year.

This year, we're all dressing up in an outfit we wouldn't normally wear. It's the theme.

I am soo glad nobody ever made me eat pig's knuckles for good luck for New Years'! :P I can't even look at them. It's usually pork/sauerkraut, or ham and green beans.

I don't know if there were any traditions per se at our Thanksgivings. My gramma made good giblet gravy.

Which I enjoyed, until I was old enough to realize what "giblets" are. :P

***Edit: Did I mention I <3 The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade!?! My bro got to even march in it one year! (Our HS band was invited to march, once.) It's very, very hard for a band to get into that parade. You have to be one kick-ass marching band.

No way I'll go to see it live, though. It's C-O-L-D on that day, usually. And there's nowhere to pee, probably.

when I was younger we'd always go to my mom's friend's house for thanksgiving. It was so much fun. My sister always made cranberry relish which is awful, essentialy food processed cranberries and oj and sugar with orange slices. We'd have turkey around 3 and then hang out and watch movies or tv and then later in the evening my mom would help my 'aunt' make jook out of the turkey bones, jook is like a rice porridge, so at around 9 or 10 we'd be eating porridge way after dessert, kind of like a 'midnight snack'. I'd always fall asleep in the car on the way home and thought they lived really far away. It turns out they live 10 or 15 mins away. lol, I miss those turkey days...so yes, there's some chinese food on thanksgiving...and christmas and just about any holiday :)
jt

Family photos for the holiday card. I set the self-timer on the camera and we take a few nice, posed shots, and then run around the front yard taking goofy photos of each other. The nice family portrait gets made into a holiday card and the candid shots are put together in two big frames (the kind with a mat cut for multiple photos), one for the wall in my parents house and one for my dad's office. We aren't always together at Thanksgiving, though - last year, the holiday card photos were taken in June because we knew I wouldn't be home for T-day.

We also make a huge, huge pot of turkey jook over the weekend. Dad's golf buddies are over at the house every Monday for a casual dinner, and having jook the Monday after T-day is turning into a tradition for them.