How To Put Your Own Multicultural Stamp On Thanksgiving
How To Put Your Own Multicultural Stamp On Thanksgiving
I’ve always wondered why I love fall so much. Everything about it gets me so excited, and the same thing started happening for my kids. The more I think about it, I realize fall is the beginning of the holiday season. The second those leaves start changing and the weather cools down, you start to enter into the holiday season. We kick it off with Halloween and go straight into Thanksgiving and Christmas.The holidays look different for all of us, but it typically means family gets together from all around the world, we eat until our heart's desire, and countless family traditions.As a multiracial family, we also blend family traditions. There are so many ways our holiday traditions are unique, and we love finding ways to bring them all into our own growing family. Which means our Christmas and Thanksgiving don’t look the same as a lot of yours. I love that! I love that we can all put our own stamp on the holidays.What do the holidays look like in your family?
Here is a typical Thanksgiving in our family.
It’s all about the food!
What does a typical Thanksgiving meal look like for you? It’s probably turkey and mashed potatoes with some green bean casserole on the side… My mouth is already watering!If we visit my in-laws for the holidays, my mother-in-law makes her famous lemon pepper turkey, my uncle makes the creamiest mashed potatoes you’ve ever had, and all the cousins get together to make delicious sides and desserts! I’m not gonna lie; all of that makes me crave a typical American Thanksgiving meal, but it typically doesn’t show up for our Thanksgiving at home.If we stay home for the holidays, our Thanksgiving feast tends to be mostly Indian food. My husband is not a huge fan of traditional American Thanksgiving food. Not to mention, we are all completely obsessed with Indian food. Over the years, a tradition has formed. Now, when we are home for the holidays, my husband will spend hours preparing and making lamb biryani. Seriously, so amazing and worth every minute, he puts into it. I will whip up a few other things to go with it. We usually have eggplant curry and raita.Don’t worry, I didn’t forget the dessert. Even though we end up with an Indian feast, the kids and I still make our favorite pies. Last year we made a chocolate pie, pumpkin pie, and an apple crisp. There may only be five of us currently, but you can’t ever have enough pie. Like, for real... It's not even possible!
(Lamb Biryani Recipe)
We go around the table and share what we're thankful for.
This is one of the family traditions that both mine and my husband's families do every year. We were more than happy to carry on the same tradition with our kids.Before we eat or after, we all go around and ask everyone what they’re thankful for that year. It’s so fun to hear the kids reminisce over there year and hear how they were blessed. It’s also just as funny when the four-year-old says he’s just thankful for the food, and that’s it!
All the games we can fit in.
Usually, during Thanksgiving day, everyone is busy in the kitchen or watching football. And our family, we have both of those things, and we fit in as many games as we possibly can. Our family is seriously obsessed with board games and card games. I don’t think we could ever get enough of them. We will play games as the entire family and sneak in a few rounds of Settlers of Catan while the kids go outside and play basketball.
(Favorite family games amazon list)
Sometimes we get really brave and adding some new traditions for the first time.
It’s typically something we heard a friend of ours does each year or even have found on Pinterest. Sometimes they work out incredibly well, and we talk about doing it again and other times… Well, let’s just say it ends up a big fail.For example, one year, we decided to go and do a 5k On Thanksgiving day. I love all of you out there who can do that and then come home and still have a blast in today. My husband and I, on the other hand, end up stupid tired and end up skipping Thanksgiving entirely. Let’s just say we’ve decided in the future to only do 5k’s before or after the holidaysWhat do the holidays look like in your family?