Thanksgiving 2020 Plans

[apl68]

I've never heard anything about Thanksgiving not being a big deal in Arkansas.  It's very much a come home for the holidays time.  Not so much this year, of course.

Our family always had a classic gathering at Grandmother's house.  It took a lot of ingenuity to fit everybody inside!  While the women cooked the meal, the men and boys would cut her a year's worth of firewood and/or rake her yard. 

I still miss my grandmother's rolls.  I've never had anything elsewhere that quite matched them.  An aunt who inherited her recipe and the "roll bowl" that she mixed them up in couldn't manage to duplicate them.

[kaysixteen]

I have heard some Southerners view it as essentially a Yankee thing, largely due to its New England origins and the role of Lincoln in promulgating it nationally during the USCW.   But I do specifically recall my freshman year at Dear Alma Mater, in Western Ma., 125 miles away from my central Ma. home.   Classes were let out at noon on the day before Thanksgiving.  I only had two classes in the morning, and one of them, my freshman Greek class, was going to give a quiz that day.   I went to the professor's office hours to ask if I could make it up, in order to leave on the Tuesday bus (so I would be back home in time to attend the big high school pep rally weds for the Thanksgiving football game).   The prof, a woman c. 35yo then, from NJ, and educated in the Midwest, let me do so (such was essentially SOP at Dear Alma Mater then, probably still is now), but then mused on how it was that she had never, before taking this job in Mass., seen people regularly put nearly so much emphasis on Thanksgiving, including trying to get home to observe it.   She assured me that in her opinion this was a Massachusetts thing.

[Vkw10]

Growing up in the South, Thanksgiving was a big deal. We usually had a dozen guests, because my parents felt strongly about sharing our feast. I didn't understand people who complained about leftovers, because our turkey and ham were gone before bedtime. My brother's family still considers Thanksgiving a big deal, but after the third move, I gave up on our traditional family Thanksgiving observance.

[apl68]

Growing up in the South, Thanksgiving was a big deal. We usually had a dozen guests, because my parents felt strongly about sharing our feast. I didn't understand people who complained about leftovers, because our turkey and ham were gone before bedtime. My brother's family still considers Thanksgiving a big deal, but after the third move, I gave up on our traditional family Thanksgiving observance.

I was sent home with some turkey and ham--and glad to have it!

[AmLitHist]

I still miss my grandmother's rolls.  I've never had anything elsewhere that quite matched them.  An aunt who inherited her recipe and the "roll bowl" that she mixed them up in couldn't manage to duplicate them.

Maybe they're missing potato water.  My mom's aunts moved to town from the farm when one's husband died (mid 1960s), and they made a tidy income to supplement his coal miner's pension and black lung pay by taking orders from town folk for baked goods.  Their bread, rolls, and raised donuts were old-time German recipes, and nobody could ever duplicate them.  The missing ingredient was that the water used to proof the yeast was re-warmed water saved from cooking potatoes.  Nothing else tastes like yeast breads made that way.