An Untraditional Holiday

>> Friday, November 23, 2007


I'm noticing more and more how untraditional my life has become. Moreso over the last five years with the rocketing advance of technology. Some of the changes have been undeniably good, others, not so much. But, that's another post.

This Thanksgiving, my husband took the kids to my parent's house for the long weekend. Because the last two holiday's with my family have been increasingly stressful (personality clashes among in-laws) and because my husband's been gone quite a bit (as is typical between fire season and union duties), I needed a break. I didn't want them to go without me, but neither did I want to accompany them. When I suggested staying home for the holiday, my oldest gave me those pained eyes and said, "But I want a "real" Thanksgiving. Grandma always has all that good food, and I just want to pig out."

A "real" thanksgiving. Which meant she wouldn't get one from me because I rarely (very, very rarely) cook. But also because I think she knows that I have so much to do around the house, that it would be a working holiday, not a fun holiday.

I know I should feel guilty for not providing my family with a more traditional Thanksgiving like I had as a kid. Should probably be at least slightly offended. Maybe I am. A little. But evidently not enough to change my ways. Not yet. I'll consider it again next year.

This Thanksgiving, I split my days between revising my Golden Heart entries and cleaning out my master closet. Between getting 90% of my Christmas shopping done and playing financial wizard to afford said Christmas shopping. Between printing and packaging my Golden Heart entries and loads of laundry. Dinner consisted of a bowl of Frosted Flakes.

Not altogether great, but it could have been worse. My kids and my husband had a good time with my family, and I got caught up on the things that would have stressed me out upon return if I'd gone with them. Not being nagged about "I want..." or "Can we..." or "Please..." didn't hurt at all.

And at the end of the day, traditional Thanksgiving or not, my humbling gratitude for all I have didn't change.

What type of untraditional holiday's have you had? What was your holiday like this year?

1 comments:

Elisabeth Naughton 9:01 AM  

Very untraditional this year. My MIL went into the hospital two days before T'giving. We ended up driving over to see her the night before the holiday, however, my youngest two can only last in a hospital room so long before they're bouncing off the walls. On T'giving day my DH took the oldest to spend some time with his mother at the hospital and the boys and I hung out at a friend's vacation cabin alone. We watched TV, played games and ate spaghetti for dinner.

The MIL is doing better and was released on Friday. It was a stressful holiday, worrying about her, but we're thankful she's okay. Later I told the DH that even though it wasn't a traditional holiday, we lucked out because we didn't end up consuming those 5000 extra calories at T'giving dinner like everyone else. See? There's always a silver lining to everything. ;)

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