How Is Your Family Celebrating Thanksgiving in 2020?
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How is your family celebrating Thanksgiving this year? This is going to vary widely from group to group — I’d love to hear your plans! If you’re cooking different things this year, what recipes are you trying out? What ways have you found to connect with family that haven’t traveled? If you’re going to miss something particular about your usual Thanksgiving tradition, what will it be?
For our $.02, we are going to be missing a visit with one set of grandparents, as well as my cousins, and just sticking to the local family members who are already in our pod. (There’s been some talk of trying to connect everyone via a virtual Escape Room or something, but we haven’t looked into it too much — clearly I should get on it!)
Our own dishes will probably be less than usual because there will be fewer households in general. The thing I miss is maybe the thing I’ll also try myself this year: My aunt Maria always made a delicious, moist cranberry-orange bread. She sadly passed a few years ago and her daughters never got the recipe… so maybe I’ll try to find a recipe to recreate hers.
How about you guys? What will you be making this year — and what will you be skipping? How different will Thanksgiving 2020 be than your regular Thanksgiving?
At home with our kids. I was really sad at first that we wouldn’t be hosting our usual extended family gathering, but now I just feel relief. In our area, it is not safe to gather, period. Because of work and childcare, quarantining ahead of time is not an option. It stinks, but I feel OK with it. I’m still planning to cook a Thanksgiving spread.
Dinner with just us! Previous Thanksgivings have been awkward dinners with both sets of parents, who don’t mix well, and getting annoyed while my mom spends the whole day fussing about how much she has to do, without actually doing anything. I’m really excited to try to see if we can pull off the whole meal on our own, as well as do our own special spins on the dishes that were previously super traditional because all the parents are picky eaters.
Usually we host a large group on Thanksgiving. This year it will be three (DH, DC, and myself). We have ordered turkey from a local BBQ place for something different and we will make some of our favorite sides.
We were planning to have dinner with my parents, whom we’ve been seeing regularly this year. But cases in my area are going way up and we have two kids in daycare, so I cancelled. Disappointed— and frustrated that I had to be the one to dance, as it’s much more likely we would infect them than the other way around— but #2020. We are currently debating takeout (husbands choice) vs cooking but will likely land on takeout. I have a tendency to romanticize how fun things like “cooking a holiday meal with three kids underfoot” really are.
The three of us are going to visit my mother-in-law (1.5 hour drive) for 2 nights. That’s it.
We usually go to my parents and have ~25 people (my parents, my sibs and their families, some aunts/uncles/cousins/friends) but obviously mixing 8-10 households from 6 states isn’t happening this year, so it will just be us and the kids at home. I like cooking and enjoy Thanksgiving dishes, so plan to make a smaller version of a meal that just includes our favorites.
My kids are wistfully asking if we can promise to go to Gramma’s for Thanksgiving next year and it’s hard to tell them “I really, really hope so, but I can’t promise it…”
Another vote for prepared food from Whole Foods. It will just be the four in our immediate family, and I don’t want to set myself up for the stress of cooking for such a small group. I am making a pie or two, which I affirmatively enjoy doing, and picking up the rest ready-made. We are also seizing the opportunity to NOT have turkey, which the kids and I dislike and hubby could do without. We are having salmon instead. :)
BTW, this is my go-to cranberry bread recipe. It is ah-mazing. https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/13566/cranberry-nut-bread-i/
I’m celebrating with only my household (spouse + kids) and it’s going to be awesome. We’re ditching turkey (a ton of work and we’re all meh on it) and having an ENTIRE WEEK OF THANKSGIVING. We’re making different Thanksgiving favorites throughout the week, so we can really enjoy each one. We’re at four pies on the to-bake list, but the list seems to keep growing.
We’re having Thanksgiving Dinner with friends who live in our neighborhood. Both sides of both families are out of state and we thought this would be a good way to still make the holiday feel special for us and our kids – and justify making turkey, all the fixings, and multiple pies for dessert! – when none of us is comfortable traveling or hosting visitors. My sister is local and will probably come over for pie and wine by the firepit during the weekend.
My family normally does a cookie exchange at Thanksgiving, so I’m also planning to bake and mail some cookies to everyone we would typically celebrate with.
My husband’s sister and her BF are flying to visit us. We’ve all been staying home, so combining our households is a risk we’re comfortable taking. They have lots of PPE, including N95s, for the flight, are flying Delta which blocks middle seats, and they’re flying at very weird times so hopefully the flights will be pretty empty. These will be the first non-household members we’ve seen all pandemic, so I feel like we have the risk capital to spend on this trip, but I’m sure others will disagree.
We usually host a big Thanksgiving dinner for extended family, but we are opting out this year. We decided not to bother cooking and ordered a little prepared dinner from Whole Foods. Kiddo and I are planning to bake rolls and dessert together. I love the big family gatherings, but they are so much stress and work. I’m really looking forward to the change of pace.
We are planning to put up our Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving, a week or two earlier than usual.
At home just with our household. In a way it is a relief that family is so far away so we don’t have to dive into a complex risk analysis for what to do. We’re getting prepared food that we will reheat, except I will make salad, a pie, and bread. We will probably do a family walk and a family movie, and maybe try to watch some of the virtual parade. I’m prioritizing keeping things easy and not stressful for the adults.
The family part of our holiday will only look a little different – the big difference is not hosting our usual 30 person Friendsgiving last weekend, which I will miss a lot. We will have my (local) inlaws over for Thanksgiving, as is typical, and then instead of my family (2 hour drive) coming to visit that weekend, we will go visit them the following weekend, essentially creating an 8 day quarantine between visits of groups of “low infection risk” people who are taking quarantining pretty seriously because they themselves are very high risk – an approach we have been taking since this started. One sister flew in to stay with my parents this week through New Years and she is quarantining in a separate bedroom/bath for a few days and then staying at an empty neighbor’s house for another week to finish quarantining (and will likely get a test too). The other sister is quarantining with an aunt for 10 days and they will drive out (14 hours) together this weekend after getting negative tests to stay through New Year’s as well.