Thanksgiving Traditions
by EmilyCC
Living on the other side of the country for the first 5 years of our marriage, we never had the money to fly back home for Thanksgiving and Christmas (um, about half those years, we didn’t have the money to fly back for either holiday). So, we developed a few traditions for our little family. For food, we’ll always make my husband, Nate’s Marshmallow Salad and my friend’s sweet potato casserole. And, I like to listen to Alice’s Resturant by Arlo Guthrie.
My dad introduced me to “Alice’s Resturant” one Thanksgiving when I was in high school. It’s a great little war protest song. Well, it’s not little–the shortest version is 10 minutes, the longest is 27 minutes.
It’s a perfect tradition for our crazy liberal family and reminds me how grateful I am to live in this country, where we are allowed to criticize, protest, and write freely.
I’ll have to get my preschooler and toddler in on this last tradition because Nate doesn’t share my love of this song. And, it’s not Thanksgiving for me until I’ve sung along with it.
So, someday, my boys and I will sing in unison, “You can get anything you want at Alice’s Resturant.”
What are your favorite Thanksgiving traditions? (Want to see what other Mormons have posted for Thanksgiving? Here are some of my favorites here, here, and here)
This is Emily, right?
How cool that you guys have a tradition of singing a war protest song. My family doesn’t do anything interesting or out of the ordinary. Just a big turkey dinner, like everyone else. But you’ve inspired me to try to come up with something meaningful.
Whoops! Yeah, it’s me 🙂
What a fun tradition! There isn’t anything that we do every Thanksgiving. Well, often one of my sisters visits and my boys jump all over her and bug her. Also we typically have the most germs at our house, so the joke is that anyone who visits us is guaranteed to get sick. It would be funnier if it weren’t so often true.
I should really do more thinking about this topic because my wife and I recently moved farther away from our families than we’ve been before, and it’s going to be more difficult to go back and visit. Thanks for bringing it up.