Thanksgiving is my favorite. I love the food. I love the family time. I love how cozy it feels. I love love love putting on Christmas music and decorating the house in holiday stuff from top to bottom the next day.

It’s funny how holidays transition and change as we grow and get older. As a kid, Thanksgiving was a weekend of laughing with my cousins. Laughter plays a central role in all childhood Thanksgiving memories. We would unearth old board games and play them all weekend. Sometimes it would snow, and we’d play outside. 

In college, it was a break from school, which meant a lot of sleep. I started to be able to be nostalgic about past holidays, but I still didn’t feel grown up. I got to come home and stop pretending I wasn’t still a kid for a nice long weekend. 

As a young adult, it was a heck of a drive to get home from where we lived, but it was always worth it. The nostalgia was a little heavier then, but the whole system was in a transition period. Thanksgiving during those years felt like a break and a chance to slow down or step outside the churn of change. 

Now, I’m a parent, and we’re hosting Thanksgiving this year. It’s weird to be taking on roles formerly held by my parents, but it’s also a natural progression. I don’t remember when they started hosting Thanksgiving, but it was roughly my current age. It’s especially weird to imagine that my kids see me as I, as a child, saw my parents: as providers and safe places and the makers and keepers of memories. It feels like a big responsibility when I view it that way. It also makes me see my parents differently, definitely with a higher level of respect, because similar thoughts and emotions must’ve been coming up for them too, but they only ever seemed totally confident and competent. Thanksgiving was always a delicious meal in a house full of love, and the Holidays were always magical, and I now have an understanding of how much effort it takes to make that happen. 

Looking back on Thanksgivings of the past, through different seasons of life, I love how it could be meaningful no matter what. It was always a time to get together with family, enjoy one another’s company, and eat delicious food that my mom made. It might’ve been a little different each year because all of the people involved were a little different each year, but the fact that it was about our love for each other meant there was space for our growth and change. I hope we can replicate this same phenomenon for our own kids.

So Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family, and thank you for reading my little posts. Sharing these words with you is a huge bright spot for me, and I’m so thankful you’d take the time.