Some family traditions begin with a beautiful, sentimental idea. Ours began because my husband wanted Thanksgiving leftovers.
I’m not kidding.
A few years ago, Brandon asked if I would make Thanksgiving dinner for just our family so he could enjoy all of his favorite dishes the next day. You see, his family has different Thanksgiving recipes than mine. His favorites include things like dressing (which is much wetter than traditional stuffing), shredded chicken, and green bean casserole. Foods that aren’t necessarily on the menu at my family’s Thanksgiving dinner.
And because I love cooking almost as much as I love having everyone around our dinner table, I happily agreed.
I don’t remember exactly which year we started doing this. I found a photo from 2024, but I have a feeling our little Thanksgiving began even earlier. What I do know is that somewhere along the way, an extra holiday dinner became one of our favorite family traditions.
And now, every November, the five Houstons celebrate Thanksgiving twice.
How Our Thanksgiving Traditions Have Changed Over the Years
To understand why having our own little Thanksgiving means so much to me, I think I need to go back a bit.
Brandon and I have been together since 2004, and I still remember the first Thanksgiving we spent together. It was 2006, I was away at school in Tennessee, and it was easier to stay there with him than to fly home for the holiday.
I remember feeling especially homesick that first Thanksgiving away from my family. It wasn’t that I wasn’t enjoying the holiday with Brandon and his family, because I was so grateful to be welcomed into their traditions. But it was my first time experiencing Thanksgiving without the familiar sights, sounds, and people I’d grown up celebrating with. I missed being in the kitchen with my Mom and sisters on Thanksgiving Eve, making pie crust and getting everything ready for the next day.
I remember my family passing the phone around the kitchen on Thanksgiving Eve so everyone could talk to me. They did the same thing at the dinner table on Thanksgiving Day. I was grateful to hear their voices, but it was so hard to be far away.
At the same time, I reminded myself how lucky I was to have a boyfriend whose family welcomed me into their home and traditions.
That was one of my earliest lessons in how holidays change as we get older.
After we got married, Thanksgiving became the holiday we spent traveling to see Brandon’s family. His relatives lived in different states, so every year seemed to bring a different destination.
The first Thanksgiving we spent in our own home in Georgia was when I was pregnant with Annabelle and couldn’t travel. Brandon’s Mom came and cooked an entire Thanksgiving dinner in our kitchen. It was wonderful to celebrate without having to pack a suitcase.
But the following years, we went right back to traveling.
Even after moving to Connecticut, we spent our first Thanksgiving traveling to Tennessee and Georgia and our second driving to Ohio to see Brandon’s family.
I loved spending time with his family, but by our third year living in Connecticut, I started feeling sad about something.
We were finally living in my home state, close to my family, and I still wasn’t getting to spend Thanksgiving Eve cooking with my Mom and sisters.
I missed the traditions I had grown up with.
In 2019, we decided to stop traveling for Thanksgiving and stay in Connecticut.
Since then, we’ve celebrated Thanksgiving Day with my immediate and extended family, usually at my parents’ house, although we’ve gathered in other family members’ homes over the years, too.
And I finally get to be part of those Thanksgiving Eve traditions again.
Our Little Thanksgiving: Just the Five Houstons
Somewhere along the way, we added another Thanksgiving to our November calendar.
Unlike Thanksgiving Day, which is usually a big family gathering, our little Thanksgiving is strictly for the five of us.
There’s no official date. We squeeze it in whenever we can find an evening without obligations, which isn’t always easy with three busy daughters.
Sometimes we’ve already started decorating for Christmas. In fact, we usually pull out our Christmas decorations the second weekend of November, so there’s a good chance our Thanksgiving dinner is happening with a Christmas tree glowing somewhere nearby.
And I love that.
The menu is different every year because I ask everyone what they want to eat.
This year, we had green peas, Italian green beans, corn, AND mashed potatoes because apparently everyone had a different vegetable or side dish request.
We usually make a small turkey breast or tenderloin instead of an entire turkey, but we ALWAYS have a ham.
Sometimes there are crescent rolls AND biscuits because the girls have different preferences. If Brandon requests his family’s dressing, shredded chicken, or green bean casserole, those make an appearance too.
There’s only one thing that never changes: deviled eggs.
We always have deviled eggs.
Our menu might look a little different from year to year, but that’s what makes it ours.
The Best Part Isn’t Even the Food
As much as I love cooking Thanksgiving dinner, my favorite part of our little celebration is what happens around the table.
The girls sometimes help me cook (when I have the patience to allow it). They love making homemade placemats and name tags, setting the table, and occasionally insisting we use the fancy glasses.
We turn on the record player or put together a special playlist.
And then we sit.
We eat, we talk, and we spend longer around the table than we normally would on a busy school night.
There’s nowhere else we need to be.
More often than not, dinner ends with a dance party in the kitchen.
These are the moments I wish I could bottle up and keep forever.
The girls already remember our little Thanksgiving from year to year. They look forward to it. They know it’s something we do as a family, and I love that something so simple has become something they anticipate.
Brandon gets his leftovers, of course. But somewhere along the way, I think we all ended up getting something even better.
Traditions Don’t Have to Look the Same Every Year
The older I get, the more I realize that traditions don’t have to follow the exact same blueprint every year.
They don’t need to happen on a specific date. You don’t have to serve the same foods, use the same decorations, or do things simply because that’s how they’ve always been done.
Life changes. Families grow. Schedules get busier. Sometimes the things that worked one year just don’t work the next.
And that’s okay.
Our little Thanksgiving started because Brandon wanted to eat his favorite holiday foods more than once. But it has become something that represents so much more to me.
It’s a reminder that we can create our own traditions, blending pieces of the families we came from with the family we’re raising together.
When I think about that first Thanksgiving away from home in Tennessee, I remember how desperately I missed the familiar sounds and feelings of being with my family.
I wonder if someday one of my daughters will be far away from home on Thanksgiving, missing our traditions the way I missed mine.
If that happens, I hope she remembers our little Thanksgiving.
Not whether we had peas or corn, crescent rolls or biscuits, or whether the table was decorated perfectly.
I hope she remembers the anticipation of finding a night when we could all be together. The homemade placemats, the music playing, the laughter around the table, and the inevitable kitchen dance party.
I hope those memories bring her comfort when she’s far from home. I hope she can close her eyes and remember exactly what home felt like.
And maybe someday she’ll create her own version of our little Thanksgiving with her own family.
It might look nothing like ours, and that’s perfectly fine.
Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about family traditions, it’s that the most meaningful ones aren’t always the ones we carefully plan.
Sometimes they begin with something as simple as a husband asking his wife to make an extra Thanksgiving dinner.
Just so he can have leftovers.
Leave a Reply