We have all decided that Thanksgiving is a difficult and not fun holiday. I spent 20 hours cooking and cleaning; the kids disliked all of the food. After the feast and the clean up Kate said to me, "Mom, let's not do Thanksgiving next year-- that was boring." During the dinner, Ruth said,"Is this all that we do for Thanksgiving?" Clearly we had a lot of dissatisfaction. I suppose when I first got pregnant with Ruth I made a pact with myself to not be bothered by what my kids like or don't like to eat. Kids are naturally rude and picky when it comes to food. I actually am not bothered that our kids don't like turkey and squash and pie etc. I never base meals on what kids want to eat. We would all be sick and half starved. But I was so exhausted after all the work (probably from being 7 months pregnant really), and the kids don't really care, so I have concluded that Thanksgiving is not worth it. But we will do Thanksgiving next and year and from hence forth for one simple reason. We are weird enough when it comes to holidays. Our kids don't believe in Santa Claus because Kate decided he could not be real when she was only three and declared that to everyone else and I just couldn't say, "You idiot, Santa is real." I did say, "You are right, but it is fun to pretend." That was not convincing so we have no Santa. We also do not do the Easter Bunny because I think that is lame and could never bring my self to tell the children that a talking bunny hops around hiding eggs for kids. Instead we celebrate Easter as a religious holiday and buy all the loot when it is 50% to 75% off and have an easter egg hunt a week after the rest of America. So we are too weird as it is. If I want my kids to be semi-normal Americans I think that I must keep with Thanksgiving traditions despite objections from the children.
I must add one funny note at the end. John said how much more he appreciates Halloween in comparison to Thanksgiving. Halloween is easy to set up and clean up and you get a weeks worth of candy. Thanksgiving is difficult to set up and clean up and you get a weeks worth of Turkey. Which would you choose?
4 comments:
My MY ....been there...it takes hours to prepare it and they eat it in less than 10 minutes...and you are so so tired....your feet ache so does your back...and no one wants to help with the clean up. I think being thankful that the big dinner is over is good enough for me!!!! However, teaching the children to be Thankful for life seems like a good idea, except they have not yet lived long enough to really get that either....sometimes it gets better....the best is yacking about it to your mom (Me) shes' been there many times
Thanks Mom
James totally agrees with you on the Santa Claus thing. He hated Santa as a kid and always knew he was fake. There is a picture of him as a kid not sitting on santas lap, becuase he wouldn't, but shaking his hand instead. Haha. He doesn't want to lie to our kids about a fictional character. I, on the other hand, loved Santa Claus and it always made Christmas so exciting. I guess Christmas is still really exciting even though I know there is no santa. Hmmm. We'll see what happens.
I guess the way we do Halloween and Thanksgiving have it work in the opposite way for us. Halloween is so much work shopping for the supplies and making the boys' costumes. Not that I don't like it, I wouldn't make them if I didn't like it, but it always becomes tedious and stressful by the end. On the other hand, we still have yet to have Thanksgiving by ourselves, so this year we just made the green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole and bread and went to our friends' house to enjoy it. Of course next year I think it is our turn to host, so I'll probably change my mind by then. :)
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