November 2023

Tempted to Skip Thanksgiving? Here Are A Few Traditions To Make You Reconsider

The Macy's Thanksgiving parade. photo courtesy of Warwick New York

By Nathan Marvin

Thanksgiving Traditions

After Halloween comes a time of holiday rush. Some people rush to buy Christmas early, and some prepare for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a holiday that 99% of Americans celebrate. Most people just celebrate by eating turkey and saying what they’re thankful for, but some people add their own traditions.

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is a Thanksgiving tradition that started in New York in 1924. his event consists of ads for the upcoming holidays, dancing, and entertainment, and the most popular part of the parade, the parade floats. Every year they walk a plethora of parade floats down 77th Street and Central Park West. They are usually mascots for food items, video games, and movies, and there are even holiday-themed floats. 

Food

Food is an important part of Thanksgiving. People have different takes on how the structure of a Thanksgiving meal. For example, some people put marshmallows in their sweet potatoes and some don’t, and some people smoke their turkey and others simply cook the turkey in the oven.  

Of course there's the all-mighty dessert of thanksgiving: the pumpkin pie. You either love it or hate it, but this pie is a Thanksgiving tradition among many.

Movies and Shorts 

Unlike Halloween Christmas, Thanksgiving doesn't have a real popularity for movies or shorts but there are a select few. I would say that of all the holidays celebrated by Americans, Halloween has the most movies in my opinion (including horror and slasher movies), second is Christmas, and then it's Thanksgiving with a select few movies and shorts to choose from. Some of the Thanksgiving movies you can watch are Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Free Birds, Garfield's Thanksgiving, and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Finally, dead last in terms of holiday movies are the Fourth of July and Easter, because I swear I have only seen like one movie for each of these holidays.  

My Thanksgiving Traditions

My Thanksgiving Day is pretty straightforward, but there are a few extra things my family does to make it interesting. First off, we watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Then, for lunch we eat buttered toast, jelly beans, pretzels, and popcorn as a reference to A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Then we wait for dinner while doing something fun. We often research Indigenous Americans to see what cool information we find; we even built a LEGO creation based on the research we’d done once. Lastly, we have dinner. We eat turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, corn bread, pumpkin bread, and pumpkin pie. 🐾