I have nowhere to go for Thanksgiving this year.

My mother will work, my brother will go with his wife to her family’s house, and my grandmother has Parkinson’s disease and is wheelchair-bound.  So it’s just me and my three children, and I refuse to make a turkey, dressing, and all the trimmings for my kids to eat one roll with butter and then ask for a Lunchable (true story).

Now, I could wallow in my sadness and be depressed.  I could gravy-train my way onto someone else’s Thanksgiving festivities.  I could accept the invitation from one of my closest friends to come celebrate with her and her family.  All of these choices got me thinking…why do we pigeonhole ourselves to follow a proscribed tradition, when none of the parts of that tradition fit our lifestyle and who we truly are?  On Thanksgiving, isn’t the whole point of the holiday to celebrate what we are thankful for?

When I was growing up, I was not allowed to touch the Christmas tree.  My mother spent an entire day decorating that sucker, making sure the ornaments were lined up correctly.  She used ornaments that were family heirlooms from the 1940’s and mixed them up with just the right amount of garland and beads and tinsel.  It all conglomerated together into one beautifully balanced untouchable tree, right out of “Better Homes and Gardens” magazine.  In our house, the Christmas tree was for looking, not for touching.   I vowed then and there that if I ever had children of my own, I wasn’t going to impose those rules on them.  (To be fair, I also swore I’d never, ever make my children go to a school where they had to wear “hot” uniforms like my mother did to me…guess we can’t win them all!)  My tree isn’t like my mother’s.  At all.  The ornaments are a combination of Dollar Tree, Walmart, and homemade macaroni necklaces and paper chains covered in glitter and stickers.  My children touch the tree…a lot.  Sometimes the ornaments are clumped together at the perfect height for a six-year old to hang them.  When my children were babies, the “pretty” ornaments were up too high to reach, whereas the bottom of the tree was decorated with teething rings and bath toys that didn’t break or shatter.

This Thanksgiving, while all of you are crowded into a hot house and attempting to fill a paper plate with stuffing, green bean casserole, and gravy while balancing a too-small paper cup full of red punch, all the time keeping your fingers crossed that the plate doesn’t buckle and you wear the gravy on your sweater, I will be choosing a different tradition. Out will come the totes full of ornaments and beads; down from the garage loft the tree will descend and get fake pine needles all over the floor.  My children will root and dig through the bins, most likely spilling the ornament hooks on the rug in a tangled pile (also a true story), or shattering the glass bulbs when attempting to hang them (again true).  They will argue over who gets to place the star on the tree this year.  I will keep my fingers crossed that the lights survived a year in the attic and the ENTIRE tree will light up and not just the top half.

We will dress up in Christmas pajamas instead of party clothes. We will go to a movie theater instead of the home of a relative we see only once a year.  We will eat overpriced popcorn and Raisinets instead of turkey and pumpkin pie.

My Christmas tree might not resemble the ones I grew up with, and my Thanksgiving might not be a replica of yours…but I am still thankful.  For my children, my dear friends, my career, the roof over my head…for my not-size-two body that still runs on the treadmill and takes care of a houseful of people, for being almost-40 and self-aware enough not to care what others think of my “holiday traditions.”

This Thanksgiving, whatever you do and however you choose to celebrate, remember to count your blessings.  And have some turkey and pie for me!