QotD: Thanksgiving Traditions
What are your favorite Thanksgiving traditions? Anything you're not so fond of?
We eat Thanksgiving dinner at my Aunt Ruth's house every year. Another family comes in from near Kansas City, Juanita and Stanley, and their children, Daniel and Carrie. There has not been a kids' table for several years now, but when we were younger, all of the kids used to eat downstairs in the "Rathskeller."
When I was much younger, I used to think that Aunt Ruth was insanely wealthy. As I got older, I figured out that it was more about her combined love for nice things and entertaining. She used to have "the ladies" over for pinochle and serve the fancy finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off. There are curios and cabinets full of china and silver, spread out all over the house. There is a formal living room on the entry level that has a huge mirror and lots of pretty furniture and glass things; when we were growing up, we were told that the living room was off-limits until we were 21 or married, whichever came first. There are four floors in her house: upstairs (where the bedrooms are), the entry level (where the kitchen and the formal living room are), downstairs (where the "informal" sitting room and the utility room - which contains another full kitchen - are), and the rathskeller.
The rathskeller is her finished basement, and the only tornado-safe space in the whole house. There is a whole separate sitting area, some tables and chairs, and a full, built-in bar. Back in the day, it was entertainment-central. In more recent years, it was also where the toys lived, and where the kids' table was. There were Tinker Toys and crayons and all sorts of other stuff. There was a globe diorama - it looked like a jungle, with tiny little glass animals. We'd all sit and make up stories about the animals. It was quite the time.
As far as things I'm less fond of... it might not have happened for a few years - maybe they've finally forgotten - but it used to be that someone would inevitably bring up my rather unceremonious initiation into adulthood, which happened on Thanksgiving morning, oh, about eleven years ago.
...yeah.
