In the South, like most places around world, the dinner table takes center stage during the holidays. Thanksgiving with my oversized southern family is incredible.  First of all, you must understand that my Alabama Grandma, Lula Mae, has seven children, 23 grandchildren, and something around 20 great grand-children. Such a troop only begs me to wonder what Abraham’s holidays must have looked like. My dad and his brothers try to outdo one another with their cooking skills. My dad will herb roast a turkey according to some recipe he saw on Emeril and Uncle #2 will deep fry a Turkey while Uncle #1 and Uncle #3 will came up with pulled pork or some sort of sugary, sweet ham. Even when we set a menu we still end up with dinner yeast rolls, corn bread, buttermilk biscuits, banana nut bread, and muffins. We always seem to have food for days… duplicates of everything…a whole pie, cake, cobbler, or other sweet concoction for every family to take home after the first helpings are demolished. There’s always an assortment of new twists on traditional holiday favorites. My cousin Karla, bless her heart, just couldn’t seem to perfect homemade mac & cheese two years in a row and did not escape the light-hearted teasing.  She didn’t even attempt it the third year although we were eagerly waiting to see if she nailed the recipe. Now, I am not so proud to admit it, but I also flubbed the homemade mashed potato recipe two years in a row. Let me tell you, if you burn the bottom the pot, that nasty burnt taste will permeate through the entire batch.  But these are memories that make up the holidays. Although we stress about prep and it takes a week to sort out the mess after wards, we are so fortunate to have such a storehouse of food and those to share it with.

This year I spent all Thanksgiving week in a bikini in the Canary Islands. It was beautiful, sunny, and warm! But back home in Kentucky, Uncle #2 pulled out all the stops for the family Day of Thanks. A long table trimmed in red stretched from the living room, through the dining room, and into the kitchen. There was the now-annual family flag football game while the final preparations were made in the kitchen. My dad’s birthday, which is usually an afterthought to all the holiday festivities, was celebrated with a bakery designed cake. The fests continued into the next morning with a breakfast buffet and Black Friday shopping. It just looked like a grandest of times in pictures.  My little cousins came home from their first and second years in college; some with sweethearts. My two newlywed cousins came with their husbands. The military service members in the family were able to attend. Everyone was there except me.

When I moved to Germany I made it my stand that I would not return to The States for two years. That way I’d save money on plane fare and embrace the European culture as long as I could. However, the pictures of my family shared this past Thanksgiving did make me long for home just a tad.  As I’ve gotten older I find myself longing for yesteryear when we use to go to the movies (and watch Home Alone) after dinner or when my cousins and I tried acting out the Nativity Story using my only younger male cousin at the time as the baby Jesus (he was not having it!). Over the past few years family members have gone to be with the Lord, join their new spouses’ family for the holidays, or experience heath problems; family leadership has shifted and traditions seemed to die out. I just wasn’t feeling the holiday spirit anymore.  We just kept trying to do the same things we did when Granny/Aunt Ollie/Grandma were around and they just turn out to be poor substitutes for the original.

It’s taken being over here and peering in on my family from the outside for me to notice that, just as my family experienced  new births and growth, the traditions were not dying out — they were transforming and being born.  Even thought my family experienced deaths, we are no where close to dieing out. Families evolve like the culture around us.  It’s silly for me to wish that we stays the same.  I mean, I know it sounds so trite & cliche —“Embrace new tradition while honoring the past,” but this is the first time that I’ve actually seen those ideas in action. Each year we seem to welcome new members to our family. Each year we indoctrinate the little ones who were born into the family on the pieces of us that make us unique.   Those who unite with us from other families incorporate fresh ideas and introduce new family recipes to our ever evolving traditions. The bulk of my family members are Generation Y-ers.  We’ve all grown up and are accomplishing goal after goal and realizing new dreams.  Instead of there being two separate dinner conversation being split between the adults and children we can all participate and have meaningful discussions about our amazing experiences, and stories, and opinions. And what a wonderful new tradition we’ve started of actually being active and playing football instead of watching it on TV!  It’s bonding, team-building, and making memories wrapped in a cleverly disguised package.  Of course we couldn’t have had a good game when we were a bunch of 7-year-old girls, but now, let the trash talkin’ begin!

When I return to the holiday dinner table next year, I’ll return with new Schwäbisch dishes to enhance the menu. I’ll get to see which one of my cousins becomes the mac and cheese queen (or king). I’ll have stories of my adventures abroad to tell and new traditions of my own. I’ll have the opportunity to get to know my sister and cousins as the adults they’ve grown to be and not only remember them as the children they once were and speak to my aunts and uncles as an adult.  And lastly I’ll come home with a greater appreciation of my family and, as wild and loud as we may be when we all get together, I’ll enjoy the time I have with them and the the way we are right now.