Thanksgiving may be one of the greatest holidays this country celebrates. It is a time to come together with family and friends, eat a plethora of delicious food and reflect on all we have to be thankful for. Each one of us have different traditions and experiences with Turkey Day, and the Cardinal & Cream staff wants to share some of theirs going into this holiday break. Please read, enjoy, laugh and reminisce on your own memories of this special day.
Mattanah DeWitt – Editor-in-Chief
The first holiday I spent in Tennessee was Thanksgiving. I was eight years old and, having just moved with my family from Iowa where the snow stuck and where neighbors were friendly yet private, I was getting used to the warmth of both the weather and the people here.
I had an uncle who I adored. He was like a second dad to me. I’d listen to the sharp crack of wood splitting in his backyard then to the similar crackle of that wood in the fireplace underneath a steady, roaring flame. We’d watch westerns while my aunt baked pecan pies in the kitchen. Then, we’d go out to the backyard again where he’d let me borrow his .22 rifle and his coat that hung past my knees and tell me to “shoot at that hill.”
He’d pray a short prayer before our Thanksgiving feast then long prayers afterward in his office at the church. If I ever wondered where he’d gone off to, I could always drive up that gravel hill and climb the carpeted stairs leading to the room at the top with the yellow glow of a lamp.
Now if I want to talk to him, I have to drive up the gravel road of a cemetery two miles in the other direction. He told me the Thanksgiving before he passed away that he wanted to watch another western with me again, but we never did. Thanksgiving hasn’t felt the same since.
If he were here, he would tell me that’s okay. Things don’t have to feel the same to still be good. He would tell me to look for the good in other places. I still go to his house for Thanksgiving. I still have a deep appreciation for westerns and old-fashioned fireplaces. And I can still smell the pecan pies baking.
Brent Walker – Managing Editor
I can’t remember a time in my life when I’ve ever had Thanksgiving dinner in a home. For as long as I can remember, my family has eaten a Thanksgiving meal at a restaurant called Dale’s about 25 minutes from my house. The Thanksgiving menu at Dale’s includes cured ham or turkey and dressing, a choice of sides and cold sweet potato pie, but it’s just not the same as a home-cooked meal. This year, we’re fixing a deep-fried turkey and having an actual Thanksgiving dinner at my grandparents’ house. I’m excited. Nothing beats home-cooked food.
Clark Hubbard – Arts & Entertainment Editor
For some reason, my relatives in Alabama know how to throw the most lavish Thanksgiving feast, minus one crucial element. Seriously. We’ve got green beans (haricot vert for you French kids), cranberry sauce from the can, cranberry sauce from scratch, corn on the cob, creamed corn, spinach casserole, two kinds of dinner rolls, macaroni and cheese casserole, coleslaw, potato salad, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potato casserole, turnip greens, some strange marshmallow dish, deviled eggs, cornbread and about a dozen other dishes I’m probably forgetting. We have sweet tea, water, grape soda, the whole variety of K-mart soft drinks and lemonade. Peach cobbler, chocolate pie, orange dreamsicle pops, cookies, brownies and probably eight kinds of cake.
But then, you get to the end of the line, your plate stacked a foot in the air and weighing three pounds, and you see turkey and ham, so much of it, waiting for you. But what’s this? It’s not hot? Oh you silly fool, you thought there would be warm meat? No. Here in Alabama, we have cold or lukewarm turkey and ham. Suffer.
Suzanne Rhodes – News Editor
We’re a very loyal family. No matter how many long and boring cheer competitions, football games, choir concerts or poorly-made theatre productions, every grandmother, aunt, uncle and cousin are at every single one. However, my dad had a great skill of getting out of every one of my cousins’ choir events (I mean, he was in Iraq for one of them, but that’s obviously not a good enough excuse), so they took it upon themselves to buy the whole concert (like WHOLE ENTIRE CONCERT) on DVD and made us watch it during Thanksgiving. So now, we make it a point to never miss another event.
Austin Maddox – Features Editor
Why only have one Thanksgiving dinner when you can have two? Or three? Or four? Growing up, Thanksgiving was always a day of traveling from one house to the next, eating an array of dishes all basically the same thing but different variations and fighting off food-induced comas. Each visit would take a little over an hour and was down to a science. We would arrive, mingle for a bit, grab a plate of food, mingle again, grab some banana pudding/pumpkin pie/whatever was available, say our goodbyes, reject a to-go plate and load into our car on to the next house. Now, we don’t live as close to all our extended family, so Thanksgiving is a tad more orthodox, but still just as special, and still just as delicious.
Seth Horton – Sports Editor
As a short redheaded man, my favorite pastime is being angry about anything, so it makes sense that my favorite Thanksgiving tradition is arguing at the dinner table with my brother and my dad. We’re a family of hardheaded, argumentative people, and we’ll argue over things we all agree on. It’s almost impressive actually. Usually, holidays are meant for families to actively love each other but we prefer to make life a little more difficult for each other and I love it.
Liz Caldwell – Assistant Editor
My family doesn’t have a set tradition that we do every year on Thanksgiving Day, besides the typical binge eating, Regret Nap (trademark pending) and playing games until midnight. The one thing that is a tradition, however, one that is feared and revered by everyone in my family, is the event that goes down the night before Thanksgiving–The Making of the Pies. My dad is a doctor by trade, but a baker by heart. So, every year, he dons his apron and oven mitt in a fashion not unlike a surgeon preparing for a heart transplant, lays out the ingredients, flours the table (crusts won’t stick this year!) and starts in. My great uncle, Uncle Joe (also doctor by trade, sous-chef by heart), is the only person allowed in the kitchen to help him. From the bits and pieces I have witnessed myself through fleeting glances as I would dart past the kitchen and from the legends passed down from my brothers, it is meticulous work. Uncle Joe stands at attention until my dad requests for utensils in his surgical voice: “Whisk. Rolling pin. Teaspoon.” Then he will say, “towel,” and Uncle Joe will gently dab the sweat off of my father’s forehead so the moisture in the air doesn’t affect his meringue (Alright, I exaggerate a little, but only very little). Uncle Joe’s job in all of this is very important and cannot be disregarded. Not only does he act as sous-chef, he acts as oven opener, and communicator between us (the rest of the world) and my dad. But the best part of the whole process is the end. My dad invites us into his sanctuary to watch him take the leftover dough for the crust and cut out tiny leaf shapes of each of them. Then he brushes them with butter and sugar and bakes them into little treats to hold us over until the next day, when we can finally taste each of the sixteen pies (nay, works of art) he has created.
Addie Carter – Writer
The Thanksgiving tradition in my family includes sugar and flour, not uncommon substances in the household. All the lights in the kitchen get turned on, some for the first time since last Thanksgiving. One of my three sisters looks up a recipe because I don’t think we’ve ever used the same one twice. Once a recipe that looks somewhat appetizing is found, we gather the ingredients and the mixing begins. The dough is put in the fridge for a bit, I think to harden so it works better, but I’m not educated in the art of food preparation so don’t ask me. Then comes the flour that will inevitably be all over clothes, the floor and other places where flour should probably never be. Placemats over 30 years old are set haphazardly upon the bar and the dough is distributed. After it’s been flattened, we lay our hands on the bed of decadence and a knife is maneuvered around our spread-out fingers. Once the blade carefully traces each finger, the excess dough is tossed to the side and the sugar-flour-egg-hands are pedicured with sprinkles, icing, and whatever else was scavenged from the cupboards. When our masterpieces are complete, we place them delicately into the oven at 350 degrees. When they’re ready, it’s time to eat, because who cares if they’re too hot? And because we always make too many, the turkey cookies sit in a plastic container and sometimes get frozen until they’re finally thrown away the next year when we do it again.
Lauren Presley – Writer
Every year my family goes to Nashville to celebrate Thanksgiving with my mom’s side of the family. My family, my grandma and my mom’s two brothers along with their families all come from different parts of the state. Thanksgiving is almost always a time for people to cook a meal that is anticipated all year long, but because we all stay in a hotel, that doesn’t happen. My family goes to Cracker Barrel. This way, we get the same kind of food you would eat at a typical Thanksgiving, but no one has to worry about the actual cooking or cleanup. There is always a surprising amount of people that are also there for Thanksgiving dinner so it’s almost like we’re all one big family!
Marissa Postell – Writer
It was my first Thanksgiving break in college. I was sitting at the kids’ table. Eighteen years later, and I was still sitting at the kids’ table for Thanksgiving dinner. Our family never had any crazy Thanksgiving traditions. For all 18 years of my life, the family would gather at my grandparents’ house. Like most families, we spent the morning cooking and watching TV, had a big Thanksgiving meal and then you were on your own if you wanted to do anything but nap for the next several hours before it was time to eat leftovers. Every year we would sit down to eat together, and there was always a kids’ table. On this particular Thanksgiving, there were six of us at the kids’ table. The youngest was 14 years old, but most of us were at least legal adults. We didn’t mind sitting at this table together, but we found it ironic that we still called it the kids’ table. I guess we felt like still sitting at the kids’ table gave us special privileges to truly play like kids. We decided to embrace our identity as “kids,” so we ran outside and began playing tag. We played different variations of tag. We got grass stains. We laughed a lot. If you still sit at the kids’ table, you might as well play like a kid.
Illustration by Tamara Friesen
