Fancy Thanksgivings

I've found that having fancy as heck Thanksgivings do nothing for gratefulness or happiness. Before this Thanksgiving, I always only had one big Thanksgiving day where everything was fancy and such. Not this year. This year, I had two Thanksgiving dinners. There was such a huge difference in my experiences that I felt that I had to elaborate on it.

The first Thanksgiving dinner was the traditional, large, turkey-centered, elbows-off-the-table-and-napkin-on-lap kind of dinner. The type that Asians modify to their own needs, like we did. The one that we had to travel over two hours to get to. The kind of dinner that takes hours and hours to prepare and has like a dozen fancy schmancy dishes. And you know what? It was, quite honestly, pretty boring. It was boring and stuffy and just like every other adult centered, fancy, multitudes of people party. The only good thing about that dinner was the fact that one--just one--of my friends was there. You know what we did? We hid a remote control and tried to find it. And then we watched asinine acting by one of my other friends. The end result of that was that I lost an entire day of studying and writing for something that most definitely did not make me feel grateful or even all that happy.

Now, compare that to the dinner I had yesterday with my seven year old sister. It was simple and almost crude. Tea, simple cookies, some Chinese green leaf vegetables (no, there was nothing else with it). That was it. I played some music from my computer and we ate outside. My sister and I made the entire dinner, and it was, quite honestly, awesome. We had fun making it, there was no hassle over manners or mess, we had music playing, and it was fun. I actually enjoyed it a lot. And since it was so incredibly simple, we felt like we could have fun and be ourselves. Afterwards, we watched a movie together.I loved just being with my sister...it made me happier than any fancy Thanksgivings could.

It made me thankful for simple nights with my family. It made me thankful for my family. And above all, it reminded me what Thanksgiving really is about.