It feels like Thanksgiving gets lost in the shadow of Christmas, more and more each year. Our Walmart had Christmas decorations up 2 weeks before Halloween. Our city put up the street lights and garlands last week.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas time and Chris would keep our tree up all year – but there are so many things to love about Thanksgiving!

You get to see your family, you get to pretend to like talking to those long distance cousins (right?), you can eat ridiculously large portions of carbs and no one cares… so much to love! Hahaha, but in all seriousness I have plenty of fond memories at Thanksgiving.

One of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions actually involves a little bit of Christmas. We always held Thanksgiving dinner at my grandparent’s house. She had a lovely dining room, used her pretty cream colored tablecloth and her nice china & glasses. The table would be full of food, enough that it looked like we were about to hibernate. Ham, potatoes, mac ‘n’ cheese (a kid’s favorite), rolls on rolls, vegetables and at least 4 pies. Papa would always sit at the far end of the table and my grandma at the other end.

Now, I wish I had appreciated those lavish meals more. I wish I could remember better how their house smelled when the ham was cooked and ready, mixed with cinnamon and sweet potatoes.

After dinner was finished, we were able to eat dessert and then we were able to do my favorite part – put up the Christmas tree! The anticipation for putting up the tree was half the fun. We had a ginormous tree that my grandmother had received for free from her old workplace’s cafeteria and it took up what seemed like 1/4 of the living room (we called it the den). We would get all the branches in and fluffed, the lights on, and then we would go through about 4 storage tubs of ornaments – each with their own memory.

That soft glow with tinsel and all those sparkly baubles will always stay in my memory Papa also always said we can’t have a tree without presents under it, so that was our first look at what was to come.

So now, that is my rule and my continuation of the tradition. We can not put our tree up until after Thanksgiving, and we have to have a present to put under it (another reason to shop early)!

Last year we broke this tradition because Chris & I made a deal that if he saw 10 other houses with their trees up then we would put ours up. I kid you not, it was two days after this deal that he won. Then we had to have Thanksgiving with the tree up and it was just not the same. It’s worth the wait!

What kind of traditions do you have for Thanksgiving? Let me know in the comments!

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