With Thanksgiving just around the corner, many LHS students are excited to celebrate their Thanksgiving traditions.
The Thanksgiving holiday, as most know, comes from the First Thanksgiving when the Pilgrims and the Native Americans had their three-day feast to celebrate their success in the New World. But the feast did not include turkey, as widely believed. Instead, lobster, roasted duck or goose, clams, mussels, beans, chestnuts, walnuts, squash, carrots, peas, and other foods were served, as stated by The Huffington Post. Activities on that day included hunting, singing, dancing, and games, like blind man’s bluff, a version of ring toss, and hide and seek. But Thanksgiving traditions have changed since then.
Today, watching football, breaking the wishbone, and watching the Macy’s parade are common Thanksgiving traditions. But according to mainstreet.com, there is a family in Illinois that has been hosting a paintball tournament on Thanksgiving for at least 15 years. Another family makes calzones with all the leftovers from Thanksgiving.
Here in Libertyville, freshman Megan Fahey celebrates Thanksgiving with an interesting tradition of her own.
“We always name the turkey and we have all my family come over to our house and we cook and watch football,” she said. “It was a recently started thing, but we named it Tom (one year). ” Last year’s turkey was named Patrick.
Other than that, Fahey and her family spend the holiday, like many families, watching football and eating the food the family helped her mom prepare. Fahey particularly likes to help her mom with the apple pie.
Contradictorily, junior Tristan Stephenson said, “(My family) makes parts of the dinner, and I have helped… Not all the time though.”
Stephenson spends Thanksgiving with his friends and family. He said his favorite tradition is going to his old neighbor’s house and “looking at all the old toys we gave them and having flashbacks… about the toys and what we did with them as kids.”
Stephenson recalls one Thanksgiving when his sister interviewed each family member and “and she (gave) us advice on how to be better brothers, sister, then have us all assignments for next year. It was quite funny.”
Apart from the good memories, there are downsides to Thanksgiving.
For Fahey, it’s “probably having all the leftovers for weeks because it’s all the stuff that nobody wanted.”
Stephenson said, “My least favorite would be having to pick up all the mess after.”
