I’m feeling a bit nostalgic lately, and I thought it might be nice to share our respective experiences with this holiday growing up. The regional differences would be interesting. Also, tales of disaster and dysfunction welcome too, for those that want to share. 
My post will be long, may have to divide it up lol. Tomorrow!
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Growing up, Thanksgiving was always “over the river and through the woods, to Grandma’s house we go!” So a drive from northern NJ to central PA was a given.
The meal was rarely changed: turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, green beans, maybe some canned corn. Pies were always apple and pumpkin.
But the long weekend would include farm-fresh double yolk eggs for breakfast (if we were lucky); our brother attempting to lock my sister and me in the outhouse out back often used by Grandma’s long-time renter, Donald, who was at one time the “mayor” of their tiny town; walking down to Pauline’s for penny candy and poking around the small general store she ran; and several trips out to Uncle Dan’s farm for target shooting. (He wasn’t our uncle; I believe he was our 4th cousin). The targets were sometimes brought to school for Show and Tell when we were very young. One year, my sister’s teacher called Mom to say Sis had lied about shooting, and Mom had to explain that no, Sis HAD had actually shot a 22 rifle with a sight for those bullseyes in the target. 
My sister and I went back to PA after our Mom passed and drove out to the farm, almost 50 years after we had last been there. A Mennonite family (who had helped Dan farm in his later years) had purchased it after Dan died and had done a LOT of work on it to make it habitable for a family. They had a picture of the farm from back when Dan lived there. It was a ramshackle place, with several broken down barns and pig corn pens. But it was exactly as we both remembered it.
So it wasn’t the meal itself. It was the other memories that stick with me.
But that’s what Thanksgiving is: memories (whether good or bad).
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What a great idea for a thread! Having grown up in Germany, I’ll have zilch to contribute, but looking forward to all the stories 
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Same here… My mother cooked very traditional “Thanksgiving” dinners…
Turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, corn, peas, homemade rolls, gravy, cranberry sauce, etc. were served. Homemade pumpkin pie with vanilla ice cream was the dessert. I wish I had some great stories to tell, but nothing really stands out.
I do remember cooking Thanksgiving dinner for Sunshine (every year) since we started dating. Everything has come out great – thanks to lessons I learned from my mom. I do use (Glen and Friends Cooking - youtube) recipe for the rolls now, its better than my mothers. Sorry Mom – 
Edited to add: I do cook my (small) turkey or turkey breast in a large crock pot. I like this method for keeping everything moist. It won’t work for larger turkeys, but its usually just the two of us. Mom never cooked the turkey this way and this is just my method.
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Pretty boring on this end. Denver, 1980s. My mother used to cook. Very typical middle American 1980s versions of everything: Butterball turkey, some sort of packaged stuffing mix, mashed potatoes, gravy that I assume now was probably powdered mix. (Edit: How could I forget, the can of jellied cranberry sauce! Sliced, on a serving plate. Which I still have a strange fondness for, which horrifies my wife.) I would spend the day watching TV – I was totally uninterested in food at the time – and then some family would show up. We’d eat. They’d leave. Then off to the mall the next day.
Fast forward many years and I became interested in cooking and took over at some point. Then it got a bit more interesting from my perspective. I went through a phase where I overhauled and spent three days producing from-scratch versions of everything. (Including e.g. baking bread, just to cube it and turn it into stuffing … what was I thinking?) I’m not sure these versions were actually that much better than my mother’s packaged stuff; the rest of the family didn’t seem to notice. Another time I decided to mix up the traditional flavors and make chipotle mashed potatoes. No one except my girlfriend at the time (now wife) and I could handle the spice level. That one still gets talked about. And still another time, when I was into homebrewing, I made a strong maple ale specifically for Thanksgiving. Everyone showed up a couple of hours before dinner and I started serving beers. It was sweet and smooth but also close to 10% alcohol. Dinner, once served, was oddly silent; everyone was too tipsy for a real conversation and no one felt like eating. 15 minutes later half of the group was passed out on the sofa and I started putting away all of the uneaten food…
So coming full circle, it seems that lacking any especially standout memories from childhood, I simply created my own as an adult!
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We would go to our neighbour’s house or they would come to ours on Thanksgiving Sunday here in Canada. The gathering was at least 20 people. I would be at the kids’ table with 4 other kids.
Our typical dinner was turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, Cauliflower Cheese, pumpkin pie, and a chocolate dessert. The dad in the other family hated turkey, and hated pumpkin pie.
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Thanksgiving and Christmas were always very hectic and a bit stressful around our house growing up. I’m glad we don’t bother with it anymore 
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The standout memory from my own family is when I suggested that it would be nice to go around the table and say what we were thankful for. My mother said that was stupid, and that was the end of that. 
The other Thanksgivings I really remember were at my in-laws in northern California. My MIL was a terrible cook, although her TG lime jello mold and cinnamon rolls were excellent. We had dinner in the early afternoon, and she would put the turkey in around 7 AM so it was always overcooked and dry. One year she made giblet gravy and left the pan on the stove for several hours unheated. Fortunately my SIL noticed and tossed it before anyone tasted it.
I would always annoy everyone by asking for a napkin. They thought that was snobby.
After they died, I took over making TG dinner. At first I enjoyed it, but it became way too much work. We started leaving town over the holiday, but it felt strange having dinner in a restaurant. For the last few years, our daughter and her family go to his family’s annual reunion, and we are on our own. Last year we drove out to Bodega Bay which was beautiful. Lunch was beef jerky and chex mix from the gas station because none of the restaurants were open. Dinner was a pared down version of TG - turkey breast, mashed potatoes, gravy, peas and pumpkin pie. Heaven! We’re going to do the same thing this year.
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Ouch.
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Food wise, the usual growing up, turkey, stuffing, mashies, etc. Sometimes with family friends or relatives, sometimes just the nuclear family. Under the age of 12 it was kind of a blur. I do recall having Thanksgiving with family friends and lots of kids…10 or 12 with two families, once I think 20+ kids, plus 6 parents. Sometimes there was tension and drama but nothing I recall specifically.
Besides the year everyone got sick-sick around 8 (probably under cooked turkey) I remembered more as I got older. Once got stoned with my brother and ran around like crazy, got paranoid. I think I was 16. Also, around that age, the after Thanksgiving dinner festivities with other kids started. Dinner was served early, and around 6 everything was done . But being teens, eating a massive amount of food didn’t affect us like the parents who dozed off from over-consumption and tryptophan…and dealing with family. So someone started a call and everyone figured out the same thing…dinner was done, nothing to do…so get out of the house. ..and party. I wouldn’t call that a revelation but it was a marker of independence or something.
On that note, in college, figured out one of the best days to party was the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving because everyone left town. For those who were local or didn’t go home, a small group headed into San Francisco and it seemed like we had the place to ourselves. It was great. Funny, in the 90s or 00s it became a thing called “Blackout Wednesday”
Of course there were other memories like spending Thanksgiving alone in grad school (and other stuff you want to forget). A minor bummer at the time but that’s grad school and there was a lesson. Made me appreciate Thanksgiving and realize it’s not really about the food, or you in particular. But the often forced nature of “it’s a holiday so be happy “ does get to be too much. I think the attitude now is roll your own, don’t make it more than it is…a chance to be with people, however you wish.
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That was definitely my favorite night to go to the club in my early 20s too! Felt like a secret society. Christmas night was also a good one. Coincidentally I just heard the term Blackout Wednesday for the first time a few days ago from my daughter, a college sophomore. I figured it was newer slang. The other “blackout” thing her generation is into is the BORG. I always thought blacking out was a definite party fail. 
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Funny, it did seem like a secret at the time, or we found something. And the thing was, since it was so dead, all the places welcomed us whereas it was usually distain or GTFO attitude. I suppose formalizing it (with a name) seems natural but no name and stumbling upon it was great. Agree, blacking out is/was a fail.
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Our earliest Thanksgiving tradition was traveling to one relative’s house or another, every year until my brother and I were 13 or 14. My mom was one of four sisters who lived within 100 miles of each other, each of whom had 2-4 kids, and my dad’s parents were also only about 100 miles away from us. Hence, our family would drive to SF or Oakland or Richmond or Palo Alto for Thanksgiving. Imagine 50-60 people crammed into a 6-room flat, all trying to find a place to sit to eat! At my aunts’ places, the ‘adults’ (that is, Mom’s generation) were at the dining room table, while the kids and grandkids (most of my cousins were older than us and some had families of their own) crowded onto the sofas and easy chairs (three to a La-Z-Boy!), or just plopping down on the floor in front of the fireplace. Those not lucky enough to be at the table or in front of a coffee table balanced a plate on our knees as best we could.
As cramped as those dinners were, we all had a good time, and I grew up very close to most of my cousins (25-ish on that side). Even now, half a century or more later, we love to get together and eat.
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Same, but mom had 10 siblings within about 10 miles, and in Brooklyn . A mix of Southern/ soul and Caribbean food, with my siblings and I recalling incendiary fried cod fish cakes as the most cherished dish. And this went on until my mom died, then everyone scattered to other states.
One year in college I decided I wasn’t going home, but the evening before found me on the Amtrak home.
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Boring here. Mother made it all until she got too tired or too drunk to continue. Small galley style kitchen. Roast turkey, in bird stuffing/dressing, gravy, Waldorf salad with raisins, buttered peas or steamed green beans, canned cranberry sauce, poppy seed rolls, butter and quince jelly. Pumpkin pie and fresh whipped cream. Celery stuffed with cream chesse and junbo black olive for a relesh tray. Sometimes a few gherkins. I’ve made different memories for my family. Brie en croute, brown and wild rice hot dish, lox on a little cracker, crudites and I make a cranberry-raspberry jell in addition to the regular spread. Butternut squash and maple sugar pie. I’m letting the family do it this year. Their menu, too.
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Nuclear family only for us growing up. Today my SIL has joined the fold, but the menu is exactly the same as when I was a child, with two small exceptions: she likes marble rye as the bread for stuffing (we always had cheap white bread), and she grew up eating green bean casserole, so that’s her nostalgic contribution (I refuse it, politely, every year.) I don’t ever remember having Thanksgiving with an extended family of any kind; we didn’t roll like that, even though my father had siblings with similarly-aged children very nearby with whom we did socialize back in the day. I remember some holiday-time visits to their homes, but never a holiday meal.
Menu must be:
Roast turkey, very plain bread stuffing in the bird (celery, onion, bread, poultry seasoning, an egg)
Pan of stuffing outside the bird
Mom’s giblet gravy (the highlight, for me)
Mashed potatoes
Two veg
SIL’s green bean casserole
Canned cranberry sauce
Sometimes, roasted sweet potatoes
No rolls and no apps.
I remember some years where the turkey we had was a gift given to workers at my father’s company (he was a machinist.)
I guess we always had pumpkin pie growing up, probably with the coveted container of Cool Whip. Now, I usually make something else, very often a quick pumpkin mousse that is much lighter than pie.
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Menu must not include rolls or apps?
We never had them growing up, and we don’t have them now.
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My ex was the middle of seven.So by the time we had significant others, kids and pets, it was a recipe for absolute chaos.
My first year meeting the family also happened to be one brother in law and the hosting sister in law’s first Thanksgiving with the family as well.
Sister in law had it in her head that it was going to be a Martha Stewart and Ina Garten type of Thanksgiving with absolute perfection everywhere, but a house full of forty people that would create otherwise.
She tried to put all of the sweet potato peelings down the garbage disposal at once.Which jammed it solid and meant that her tiny kitchen now had two of the brothers in law laying on their backs under the sink trying to fix the disposal while the rest of us tried to cook dinner around them.
She spilled cranberry sauce on an antique lace tablecloth on her father’s handmade oak table and proceeded to hyperventilate. My future MIL and I literally led her upstairs, gave her a Valium and came back downstairs and finished dinner.
I have LOTS of epic stories with that family. They were mostly dysfunctional on a good day, so I could write a book about the holidays with them.
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Do tell us more - very entertaining! Must have been the 70’s when Valium was the drug du jour.
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