The day after Thanksgiving my kids, grandkids and I gather at my house as we do every year. I set a lavish, autumn-themed tablescape and following a dinner with big bowls of mashed potatoes, leftover turkey, my meatballs and more, each of us decorates a gingerbread house: a tradition.
After carefully collaborating on the merits of each entry, we make up funny categories; each house receives a trophy and a prize. This year's categories included: Most Likely to be Seen on HGTV, Most Likely to be Searched on Zillow, Most Mid-Century Modern, The Mindful Retreat, Santa's Secret Hideout, and The Sugar Plum Fairy House.
Everyone is quite competitive but we laugh a lot. The houses are cute; I keep them on display in the glass windowpane cupboard in my dining room for a long time. Last year, my icing bag exploded, rendering my house a winner in the category, "I Tried."
In the background, my desktop computer loops the annual family video entitled "Seasons of Joy." Updated each year, it is filled with memory-making antics and outtakes from holiday dinners over the years.
After Charades and other games, an animated 5-foot Santa emerges from his guest closet-hiatus, swaying his hips enthusiastically, singing traditional holiday songs at a high decibel. I found him on sale at a CVS, circa 2009. I remember the bounce in his belly and my young grandkids' glee-filled giggles when he first arrived and bellowed "Ho! Ho! Ho!" Once a big fav, my college-age grandkids now find him a bit annoying and would like me to give him away, but as with other things, I'm not ready to let go.
My mom's colorful turkey platter, too cracked to safely hold a turkey any longer, presides over the festivities from the mantle despite the chips and fault line across the back, along with four waxy turkey candles, 60 years old - 25 cents at Walgreens. A turkey candle sat at each plate for Thanksgiving back then. Each year, as I carefully pull out my mom's decorative vintage platter and crystal glassware from the hutch, unwelcome childhood memories of my growing up on Long Island unexpectedly appear.
Except for the TV always on day and night, our house was very quiet; we rarely had guests, even at the holidays. I longed to have traditions and a family that looked like other families on TV. But like air bubbles in the Christmas lights, my holiday memories, effervescent tidings of comfort and joy, quickly evaporated.
One Thanksgiving, when I was almost 12, I asked if we could start a family tradition. My dad put down his Scotch, grabbed the freshly opened thick glass bottle of Coca-Cola in the center of the table and tipped it over his eye; "Here’s a tradition, how about this?” It wasn’t funny. But the next year, he did it again and we all laughed. Traditions.
We didn’t have a dining room; my sister and I had dinner seated at our TV snack tables two feet from the TV. I prayed that I wouldn't go blind from sitting so close to the TV. We rarely sat together at the kitchen table except for holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Then the four of us devoured our dinners quickly before heading back to the TV, our only distraction the antics of our parakeets, Chipper and Snowflake, who pecked at our plates providing comic relief with incessant chirping during our otherwise muted meals.
Gathering together as a family usually meant something bad. Many holidays were spent at hospitals, VA clinics and nursing homes, but being surrounded by jolly decorations, familiar faces and surprisingly cheerful spirits afforded plenty of warm recollections of residents and staff.
Good memories surface, too. There was always a big turkey at Thanksgiving, piles of presents under the tree, trips to the city to see the Rockettes and Rockefeller Center, taffeta dresses with satin bows and crinoline underskirts for my almost-Christmas birthday: buoyant bits and pieces encapsulated like in those little glass tubes on the bubble lights, irrepressible strands swirling around together, rising to the top, then dissipating, seeking storage space in my memory closet.
On this day after Thanksgiving, once again there will be much clatter and chatter; it’s my favorite day of the year! Grab bags gifts for everyone, houses to decorate, prizes for all, and a recently compiled photo binder filled with our houses over the years, including the first one I made for the kids in 1983. This year's giveaways included miniature lighted gingerbread houses and eyeglasses adorned with 3-way blinking Christmas lights - likely visible from space!
I love sitting around the table, decorating the houses, doing a craft, sharing space and stories with my family. Santa singing too loudly, the kids lighting the candles at the table as they do each year. The recently edited family video features cameos of others who once sat at this table over the years, including girlfriends and boyfriends once added in, then edited out. Everything changes. Except our traditions.
I love that we gather; it's important to me. Here, the day after Thanksgiving is The Best Day-of-the-Year! I hope that my kids and grandkids will remember these days fondly forever and more: the handmade ornaments we made and the houses we decorated, the blinking noses and Santa belting out “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” my exploding pastry bag and the singing turkey hat, the year everyone lost at Charades, laughing at Show and Tell......the stories and the space we all shared.
If not, there's YouTube. I’ve already uploaded the latest sequel to “Seasons of Joy.”
(gently revised from The Gingerbread Houses, originally published November 2022)
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