This may ring like a sacrilege to my tradition-loving friends, but I can assure you that testing out new traditions really isn’t a bad thing. Who knows until you try it? This Easiest Christmas ‘Dinner’ our family discovered was life-changing for us and a complete celebration saver!

Back in the day, my born and bred Southern folks dutifully put together an extensive Thanksgiving/Christmas Day meal, worthy of a Sunday go meetin’ pitch-in affair—because, I assumed, no typical Sunday Dinner type meal would do for a holiday!

Childhood Memories

Every Thanksgiving and Christmas of my childhood, the main meal was pretty much identical. We’re talking the biggest Turkey mom could scavenge at the open-faced meat counter. The ultimate goal, no doubt, was a Butterball—24-pounder. You can be sure we were sent in once any of us six kids were big enough to not get lost crawling amongst the rock-hard frozen birds. Headfirst. I’m not kidding.

Baked through the night and served by noon at the latest was a Turkey stuffed with mounds of Cornbread Dressing, sage-y green Giblet Gravy, mountains of Buttery Mashed Potatoes, Jellied Cranberry Sauce, Southern Green Beans with Bacon, Buttered Cut Corn, Candied Yams with Toasted Gooey Marshmallows, Dill Pickle Potato Salad, a double batch of Fruit Cocktail Salad, Lemon Lime Jello Salad, Fresh Cranberry Delight—oh, and Dinner Rolls with Butter. I probably forgot something, but you get the gist.

And that was just the beginning.

By mid-afternoon, we were raiding the dessert table, a separate affair altogether starring Dad’s favorite—Banana Pudding, Lemon Méringue Pie, Pumpkin Pie with tubs of Cool Whip, and Coconut Cake along with any vestiges of left-over, highly prized Fruit Cocktail Salad. In later years, the family gradually added Cherry Cheesecake, Blueberry Cheesecake, and my SIL’s famous Pecan Pie.

As if all that wasn’t sufficient to carry every living soul in the house through to next Tuesday, by early evening, loaves of white bread, leftover rolls, and a quart-sized jar of Hellman’s/Best Foods Mayonnaise were dragged out onto the counter along with any first-course item that would fit on a sandwich. Getting to that annual Turkey Sandwich was literally my favorite part!

Surprising Perspectives

Imagine my surprise when, at my first married Thanksgiving, my dear MILove laid out a logically pieced-together meal with a handful of choices at approximately 4pm, allowing time for a modest, albeit perfectly created, two-choice dessert and attempted to call it a feast. Perspective makes life interesting.

I didn’t find out until about thirty years deep into surviving my own laboriously combined family traditions that my folks had spent years dutifully replicating their beloved extended family Thanksgiving POTLUCK traditions left behind in Atlanta, Georgia when I was just two! Somehow, that long-lost essential gem of family history finally pulled a few things together for me. Like, who puts a bowl of buttered hot mashed potatoes on the same table with Dill Pickle Potato Salad—and why??! Finally, I knew!

Traditions Changed

All to say, as much as I love and value a great one—traditions are funny things. They knit us together by experience. But more importantly, they declare our dearest-held values. Until they don’t.

Growing up with identical holiday meals, Thanksgiving and Christmas mingled into a singular childhood memory impossible for me to distinguish. That fact alone warned me to differentiate our most significant holiday meals from each other for my kids’ memory’s sake. Still, you can imagine, with my modeled childhood version of holiday feasting [that thankfully DID feed us for the better part of a week], the distinctly unique meals I created were embarrassingly beyond adequate. They were fabulous yet exhausting.

I spent far too many young adult Christmases self-relegated to the kitchen, creating something more we didn’t need, building intensely stressed-out memories nobody wanted to remember—not to mention the mountain of dishes.

I can’t remember when, but one Christmas, after a couple of our kids were grown, the family agreed we needed a break from the holiday hullaballoo. We decided to continue our long-established favorite Tea Ring and Christmas Brunch tradition but then rounded out the day with randomly set-out appetizers. Long before the current Charcuterie craze, we set out no-fuss plates of meats, cheeses, crackers, dips, olives, pickles, fruits, nuts… you name it—and we all loved it.

That’s quite a fete to accomplish for the group of twenty we’ve become!

After all those years of spinning personal anxiety into high stress, attempting to create the elusive essence of Hallmark perfection I had in my head, our Christmas traditions have settled into an intentional flow of calm expressions of love and good cheer. Sure, we still have significant elements that make the day unique and special for everyone, but long gone are the days of the bourgeois that stretched us beyond our budget and stamina to produce in peace.

A Continued Work In Progress

With all transparency, forty-one years and counting, Thanksgiving is still a work in progress. Although I never tried to produce the volume of food choices my parents whipped together, I’m still tempted to create tasty delights far beyond what my people really need to feel celebratory and thankful. Give the family some warm home-baked Potato Rolls slathered with butter, and they are, across the board, 100% HAPPY.

As I am encouraging each of you, I’m finding it’s well beyond time to re-reassess the what and why of things we choose to do here on Thanksgiving.

Providing a home atmosphere of warmth, safety, and love beyond measure is, no doubt, a daily goal. But beyond that, each holiday has a purpose of remembrance. Let’s ensure our personal ‘stuff’ that often shows up under the duress of exhaustion isn’t given a space to detract from the purpose of our celebrations.

God bless each of you as, Lord providing, you prepare your hearts and home for this coming Christmas.

Merry Christmas!