Today’s guest blogger is Angels on Earth staff editor Meg Belviso.
There’s really only one direction for how to celebrate Thanksgiving: Get together with people you love. The turkey might be the official mascot of the day, but plenty of families will be serving something else tomorrow. Football might be the standard Thanksgiving Day entertainment, but it’s not required viewing to do Thanksgiving right.
When my brother got married, his wife had her own ideas about how to spend Thanksgiving. That’s meant new traditions for me too. Our table now always includes delicious North Carolina dishes. (I’ve also learned that apparently gravy is for breakfast.)
The real surprise isn’t the Southern touches Fran brings to our house, but the New York traditions she’s introduced. I might have lived blocks away from the famous Thanksgiving Day parade, but I rarely ventured out to see it in person. There was just too many people and who wants to get up before dawn to find a good spot?
Fran, of course! So there I was last year with the crowd at 72nd Street in the cold, waving as Santa Claus went by. When the parade ended we had a Thanksgiving breakfast at the Galaxy Diner. I had a great time. So great I even considered getting up at dawn again the following morning to join Fran for her annual Black Friday shopping. Considered it… and slept through the alarm. Not every tradition is for everyone.
But that’s the beauty of holiday traditions. It’s not the rules that give holiday rituals meaning, it’s the memories we make sharing them with those we love.
