Holiday Survival Guide Installment #1 - Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving happens to be one of my most favorite holidays on the calendar. The feast aside, this holiday lands smack in the middle of my most favorite season. If you are fortunate enough to live in a climate rich with lush greenery, you may notice a change in the scenery. Leaves fall in beautiful shades of brown and vibrant orange. The atmosphere becomes crisp and cool, and the wind sends a small, but pleasant, chill in the air. Fall festivities abound. The best football games happen during the Thanksgiving weekend, and school lets out briefly. It is a fantastic time of year, and Thanksgiving day is the jewel in her crown.

I grew up having a formal Thanksgiving meal. It was the one day during the entire year we ate on real china and sat in the formal dining room. It was at this table that my mom taught me valuable lessons about proper table etiquette by stabbing me in the forearm with a real silver fork because my elbows were on the table. I learned that goblets were for water, not for Kool Aid. I learned that you do not set a jar of mayonnaise on Mom's glamorously set table to make a turkey sandwich out of her beautifully browned bird and a homemade roll while waiting for the blessing to be said. I learned the value, or lack thereof, in literally "passing a roll" down to the end of the table upon request.

I look back fondly on Thanksgiving, but my best memories have been made since I became a mother myself. Nearly every Thanksgiving since I married my husband 13 years ago, we have made the trek from wherever we had been living at the time, to a rural area in south Mississippi to enjoy a fantastically home cooked meal with my husband's grandparents, where our children run and play with their cousins and the livestock while the adults sit and talk about football, weather, and the price of gasoline while stirring the gravy and sampling the sweet potato casserole. This year was no different.

Funny thing about Thanksgiving - the holidays in general, really - is family. Some you love, some you loathe. It's a mixed blessing. We've all had to sit through uncomfortable Thanksgiving meals. That's just part of the experience, I've come to believe. But the turkey and dressing makes it worth it. I'm not sure that I would choose to sit at a table with some of my family under any other circumstance. I believe that's why God made turkey with tryptophan. You're too full and too tired to fight after a meal like that.

While the food and the table in that warm house in the deep south look very different from the one I sat - and was stabbed - at in my youth, there are some things that seem to be universal about Thanksgiving in America, and I do not refer to the turkey (although it is worth mentioning that my mother, my mother-in-law, and my grandmother-in-law are all in peak performance mode when it comes to Thanksgiving meals). After having traveled hundreds of miles, crossing multiple state lines, and grown weary of other travelers having done the same, there is something instantly re-energizing about the sight of loved ones holding hands around the table to pray. We are all one family unit - our struggles, our disagreements, and our issues aside for that brief moment we bow our heads and thank God Almighty for blessing us with another year of family, memories, and delicious food. We break bread fully knowing that it may be our last under these circumstances, but we give thanks for the chance to do so. We forgive one another, if only for a moment, for being imperfect and give thanks for being present.

Isn't that what it's really all about? Isn't it really about remembering what you have to be thankful for? Family, friends, memories... those are the real treats.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.
Psalm 107:1

Holiday survival tip #1 - be thankful that you have family around to annoy you, push your buttons, aggrivate you, and be a thorn in your side. Next year, you may not be so lucky.