Thanksgiving weekend and thoughts on traditions

Every year for Thanksgiving weekend, my mother and stepfather rent a house in the North Carolina mountains where they and all the children can gather. We drive up on Friday morning after spending Thanksgiving with other family members. We cook a big Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday night, sometimes traditional, sometimes not, but mostly we just have fun hanging out with family. This year was my son Sean’s first Thanksgiving, and he had a great time hanging out with his family and getting to try new foods at the Thanksgiving dinner table. And this year our Thanksgiving dinner was one of our best yet.

My mom started this tradition some years ago because she didn’t live nearby and was missing out on the holidays. Splitting up holidays between divorced parents and in-laws can be a logistics nightmare. She started bringing us all together on Thanksgiving weekend to allow us to keep Thanksgiving itself open to spend with other family members, as well as give her some quality time with her kids that she might not otherwise get over the holiday season.

Now the Thanksgiving weekend trip to the mountains has become a tradition in its own right, one that we all value. For me, it is a relaxing, fun start to the holiday stressfest, and it is also a rare opportunity to spend a lot of time with family I don’t get to see as often. Family traditions rarely are deliberately crafted. More often, they evolve into a cherished tradition.

When I focus on trying to please everyone over the holidays, they become a source of stress and anxiety for me, and I forget to enjoy myself. There are so many family members to please, all these long-standing traditions to uphold and such complicated logistics to juggle that we can come out of the holidays more exhausted than we started. We lose sight of the point of it all: to stop for a moment and feel thankful for all that we have in our lives. It’s important to remember to adapt as our families change and grow, to realize that there is room for traditions to change, grow and adapt as well.