- Unless you have better ones of your own to share! (Tell us all the things!)
Odd Thanksgiving traditions or amazing new Thanksgiving traditions? You tell us!
Pajama Thanksgiving. Come as you are.
Instead of a traditional turkey dinner, I make the same food my grandmother made for the gypsy’s that helped her get to Italy from Aushwitz, it’s called Varenyky and it’s basically poor farmers food but it reminds me of how thankful I am for this country, my grandmother and my family that I have adopted.
KBCO (Denver) at noon plays “Alice’s Restaurant” in its entirety on Thanksgiving and I always tune in for it. For the years I lived in Oregon, I bought it on iTunes so it’s less stressful now to tune-in timely for “the story of the Alice’s Restaurant Massacre, with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that.”
Counting how many times my grandpa uses racial slurs, bonus points for political fights
Making Chex mix the slow way while the Macy’s parade is
on. This isn’t one of the odd Thanksgiving traditions at all and actually sounds delicious.
We used to have a tradition of gathering around a huge box of See’s chocolate after dinner and tryna to guess what was inside the pieces. Now I’m married to a woman who manages a See’s so it’s not much of a mystery anymore.
Going out into the yard and shooting guns at the pumpkins from Halloween. Usually my aunt stops by her friends pumpkin patch and fills the bed of her truck with pumpkins after Halloween for really cheap. Then we take them out into the field and set them up on sawhorses and hay bales and shoot them from everything from .22 to .556. After the pumpkins are destroyed we have to go get the front end loader and pick them up. Since my cousin does rodeo, we have occasionally shot the guns from atop the horses, akin to that cowboy shoot stuff you see on the history channel, just much less professionally.
My bf and i fill up our coffee cups and go for a nice long car ride. Take about 2 hours then go back and get to work.
Every few years my birthday falls on Thanksgiving, so when that happens I insist on putting candles in the turkey. What odd Thanksgiving traditions do you have if your birthday also falls on the holiday some years?
My brother’s father-in-law’s tradition is tequila shots before dinner. I’m so glad I’m invited to his house this year.
Before the crowd arrives, we get up and make porridge, I put in the cheesy disco mix CD from the 70’s, light a fire, and we take turns sharing with each other something special from the year about each other that we give special Thanks for.
Getting drunk off manhattens and watching football
I suppose ours is that we eat at regular dinnertime, usually around 7, rather than midday/lunchtime. And we always do two turkeys. We have an extremely big family (my dad is one of fourteen siblings) and usually get about 35-40 people at thanksgiving. Even with planning and cooking ahead of time, we simply don’t have enough time to cook and clean/prepare the house by noon. Additionally we’re spread out in the LA area and it can take 2+ hours just to drive ANYWHERE on thanksgiving, so arrival times are usually staggered.
Getting shit talked by everyone.
I make a fun breakfast casserole every thanksgiving morning, we have mimosas and coffee and watch the parade. Around 4, all of our friends in town come over for Friendsgiving. Occasionally we’ll play True American to wrap the night!
Spinach pie, my dad’s side is all Greek.
Do you think these are odd Thanksgiving traditions or new ones you can’t wait to add to your holiday? Let us know what you think of these or what your family does each year and Happy Thanksgiving!