Classic Thanksgiving Traditions for any Present-Day Family

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I’ll admit it was a bit early, but this year I began thinking about Thanksgiving in August.  Not a lot mind you, because we were in the throes of planning Laura’s wedding, but I knew which of our six kids were coming with their families, so I found myself thinking about sleeping spaces and how we’d juggle it all.

For most of our children it’s an every other year arrival. We do have to share with their spouses’ families. Our very average-sized four-bedroom house is hardly big enough when even half of our kids are home at once, but that is half the fun. This year it will be both sons, their wives and four kids each, our daughter and her husband and their seven sons, and newlyweds Laura and Josh. Just having 15 grandkids ages 17 to 2 is a small army to feed!

Spring 2015 photo shoot for Everthine Home

But I wouldn’t trade it for anything because gathering together is the best part about Thanksgiving. And what has made our family gatherings so rich are the traditions we share year after year. Our favorite is Thanksgiving brunch. When the kids were young I wanted an easy way for our family to connect around the true significance of the Pilgrim story and the turkey dinner with 30 to 40 extended family members late that afternoon was not ideal.

Starting when Laura was 2, everyone got all dressed up—my idea of course because wearing our Sunday best elevated the moment beyond the ordinary— and we gathered around our dining room table for brunch.  I made easy to cook breakfast casseroles the day before (I’m including our recipe at the bottom of this post!) and while they were baking  Dennis and I took turns reading a story from the book The Light and the Glory: Did God Have a Plan for America? These stories of God’s miraculous provision and the Pilgrim’s expressed gratitude taught us and our children the importance of not just our Thanksgiving holiday but the crucial expression of thanksgiving to God for all He has done.

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In 2002, I took those stories and other research I did and turned the experiences of these brave men and women and children into a much shorter, easier to read format:  Thanksgiving: A Time To Remember. Now we pass the book around to the grandchildren, most can read quite well now, and they read the stories to all the adults from beginning to the end of the book.

Thanksgiving Remember book

We don’t just read the book; we also practice an activity copied from an experience William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth Colony, wrote about in his journal. You have probably heard the story:  As winter began after that very first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims’ food supply dwindled, and starvation was near. Though no documentation exists to verify this part of the story, tradition tells us that Governor Bradford and the other leaders instituted a daily ration of five kernels of corn for each person. The wonder of the story is that though there were deaths that winter from disease, no one died of starvation. God sustained them.

On each plate we always place five kernels of corn to represent the rations the Pilgrims endured. After we read the story with our family, we then pass a basket around the table, taking turns putting the kernels into the basket and sharing one thing we were thankful for over the past year. Then each person wrote down his list of five things on a card that I collect.

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These cards have become family treasures. All of them are pasted in a scrapbook, over twenty years’ worth of thanks to God for His goodness.

Because I’m passionate about families building memories around holidays, I want to invite you to add the beauty of tradition to your home and holidays. I’d love for you to explore our website to find products that make it easy for you to create Christ-focused traditions that build lasting memories.

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And I invite you to consider reading the inspiring story, Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember, with us this year. Find it here.

The Pilgrims demonstrate gratitude filled lives that will give your children or grandchildren role models as they grow up. And who doesn’t want a more thankful family?

Our best memories are with loved ones. Make some new ones this year!

Try our family’s French toast recipe for new memories. These were so easy to put together the day before and pop in the oven on Thanksgiving morning! If you’d like to add this recipe to your cookbook, right click the image to save it to your computer and then print it to stick in your recipe book. Let me know how it turns out!

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For more ways to foster gratitude in your family, check out our current blog series Teaching Our Children to be Grateful in 4 Easy Lessons. We’ve published Lesson 1 and Lesson 2 so far. Follow along with us by subscribing here to get Lesson 3 in your inbox this week when we publish it! 

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3 thoughts on “Classic Thanksgiving Traditions for any Present-Day Family”

  1. Barbara, thanks to you and your similar advice way back in the early 1990’s – we started our version of our annual Thanksgiving list. We went around the table with our then littles, for 5 times each and made a written record of what we each we’re thankful for. At that point the youngest of our 5 kids were toddlers and could not yet even write but they could express what they were thankful for. Now that our kids are grown we have a book with all our “thanksgiving lists” that we treasure and is a over 20 year record of God’s faithfulness to each of us! Truly one of our most treasured family traditions!

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