Happy Thanksgiving to you! I hope you had plenty of all your favorite foods, just enough time with family to still be willing to spend time with them again in the next month, and another successful year of happy traditions. As our guest, Beth, mentioned, some of these may stem from your childhood and some may have been created as an adult. Ultimately, I hope you had a chance to be thankful!
My traditions are a mix of the old and the new. One of my most anticipated Thanksgiving traditions is watching the Macy’s Parade on TV. I remember doing this every year for forever. Despite a few younger years when I was convinced I didn’t like it, I quickly realized that I DO like it and I really want everyone around me to like it too. Sorry family.
The Macy’s parade started in 1924 with the giant balloons that make it so famous being added in 1927. Back then, after the parade ended, they would actually set the balloons free to float around the stratosphere until someone either removed it from the airspace or it eventually fell back to earth. If you were one of the lucky individuals to find this monstrous balloon, you could return it to Macy’s and get yourself a $50 gift card, how exciting! As you may be able to guess, people really wanted this gift card and took the balloon nabbing very seriously! So seriously, in fact, that there were fights on the land, sea and air as people tracked these things down and ensured victory would be theirs. And so ended that tradition. But the tradition of fun balloons had already started and continues on. Tom Turkey, Kristen’s favorite, has been around forever and I believe, continues to show up today. Underdog is my husband’s favorite. I loved Snoopy, Woody Woodpecker, Kermit the Frog and Scooby-Doo!
https://ny.curbed.com/2017/11/22/16689240/macys-thanksgiving-day-parade-float-vintage-photos
Even more than the balloons, I love the live entertainment. I remember the year the Defiance High School Marching Band of Class attended, it was magic! The Rockettes are always nothing short of amazing and even though I never danced a day in my life (despite begging for dance lessons for years - I’m convinced I have unrealized talent lying dormant) I knew they were the most beautiful women I had ever seen (other than the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, more on that later). Finally are the floats. I wanted to ride on one of those floats SO BADLY! Despite my mom telling me everyone on them were all freezing cold and it was just as well that I wasn’t there, I was pretty sure she was just saying that to make me feel better. The best would be to ride on a float with a famous person singing. Could life get any sweeter? Kid me pretty much had absolutely no idea who any of the singers were but that didn’t stop me from being starstruck or float-struck, as it were.
The smell of the turkey roasting and the sounds of Ed McMahon hosting the parade on tv could not be more symbolic of Thanksgiving to me.
As an adult, after stuffing myself silly, my brother-in-law and I clean up from the meal. My focus is on getting it done so I can get to the TV and watch some football. His focus is on getting done so he can cut into the delectable pies he baked. Regardless of the driving factor, we clean up fast and get moving on to the next fun part of the day. I realize that football was available as an after meal entertainment when I was a kid, but it wasn’t a part of my Thanksgiving memories. I have no recollection if we all fled our family to get home as quickly as possible, went outside and enjoyed some nice fall air or even sat around and suffered through some “grown-up” talk - the nemesis of children everywhere. All I know for sure is that football didn’t feature.
Now that I’m an adult and have more control over my fate, football is a new tradition for me. Since 1934 the Detroit Lions have been a part of this tradition. Then, in 1966 (with a brief hiatus in the mid-70’s) the Cowboys joined this lineup and finally in 2006 a third game was added. It was the Cowboys that made teenage me the happiest. After years of my childhood spent doing cheers no adult woman would actually ever do - “Open the barn doors, kick out the hay, we are the girls from the USA”, I decided I appreciated America’s Team for more than just the most beautiful cheerleaders in the league. Truly, as a kid, I don’t think I even realized that other teams had cheerleaders. But what really caused my shift in 1991 to deciding I was the biggest Cowboys fan ever? That would be one Troy Aikman. I had never seen a more beautiful specimen of humanity than when my teenage gaze fell upon him. And even better? He was good! It made being a fan just that much easier. My running joke was that I would be leaving college to professionally stalk Troy Aikman. I never did, Troy, no need to fear.
In more recent years, I don’t really care who’s playing, I just look forward to relaxing, digesting and enjoying some football. Whatever your traditions may be, I hope you too got the chance to relax and enjoy them!