Now I have seen a ton of people decorating for Christmas since November 1st, when did this start?  That is not what I am asking about...

I was wondering about different people's and cultures traditions when celebrating Thanksgiving?  I know that even in my not very culturally diverse back round there are a myriad of way's and different foods for this celebration.

Please share yours, and if you could, please also include your backround as I am always curious about how other people and other culturtures celebrate the same day in such uniquely different ways.

I will start....  

Thanksgiving is pretty traditional where the family comes together and has a nice sit down meal in the middle of the day, Turkey w/cranberry sauce, Stuffing, Mashed Potato's and gravy, as well as green beans, Hawaiian Sweet Rolls, Olives and pickles finishing out with Pumpkin Pie.  Usually make sure to have a jug of Egg Nog as well, not homemade though since it takes to long.  After dinner we sit and talk for hours catching  up and filling everyone in on our happenings.  Then we all take home bits and portions of dinner based on what we will eat(as a left over) rather then what we brought, pretty much everyone gets a baggie of turkey to take home.  Pretty sure we all crash out early from all the tryptophan.  Then we avoid shopping Friday like the plague....    

My back round is a typical melting pot American, the most of any nationality I contain is of Nordic decent(typical of the blue eyes) with more the 1/4th.  Otherwise I would be very surprised if I didn't have a dollup of some and a sprinkle of most.  

So there you go.  

the one that I have. Put the tree  up the day before Thanksgiving the kiddos love it.

Pretty much the same here, at least long, long ago when I was a kid growing up in small-town Pennsylvania, though I don't recall ever coming across Hawaiian Sweet Rolls and adults were mostly teetotalers so no eggnog. Sometimes we had goose instead of turkey. Allegedly, there in the midst of Pennsylvania Deutsche country, if you couldn't afford real goose you might instead serve Dutch goose, otherwise known as what it actually is, stuffed pig stomach. We never had that on holidays, but I would have been happy if we had because I loved and still love the stuff, on the rare occasions that I get to eat it now.

Now I'm part of a multikulti family so our holiday dinners tend to be like the one in A Christmas Story, eating "Chinese turkey" (Peking Duck) from the local Chinese barbecue restaurant.

My Dad immigrated from Scandinavia, married my American Mom and we always had the traditional turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, etc.  My Dad embraced the American style holiday; of course he'd embrace ANY occasion that was centered around food.  One ethnic touch the folks added to the dinner was apple cake, made the way his Mom used to in the old country.  I'll never forget sitting around, stuffed to the gills and finishing the meal with Cherry Kijafa wine and shots of Akavit while my uncle smoked his stinky cigar.  

Now we get together with our kids, have turkey dinner with all the fixings and send the family home with ziplocs full of left-overs.  No cigars, though.

-- Modified on 11/15/2017 8:01:11 AM

Pretty traditional around our house too ...turkey, dressing, dinner rolls, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes with gravy, candied sweet potatoes, veggies (green beans, corn), and pumpkin pie with whipped cream for dessert.  Typically, us guys would be watching football while the bird was in the oven cooking.

Needless to say, we would be eating leftover for the next several days. LOL  Although growing up in an Asian American family, the food was more interesting for New Years.

Hi All.

We do the same traditional foods everyone has been mentioning - turkey, ham (a small one), my sisters homemade cranberry sauce cause my dad can't stand the can lines from store bought, cream corn casserole, stuffing with Italian sausage, green beans, candied sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, monkey bread. Dessert I'm making a pecan pie, my sister is making a pumpkin pie and I think I might make cherry pie as well or maybe sweet potato pie.

I'm still deciding on whether to make homemade whip cream or just by the redi-whip can.

When you all say "green beans" I assume you really mean green bean casserole with Campbell's mushroom soup and onion rings. I mean, isn't there a law that says you have to serve that dish at Thanksgiving??

My family's traditions are pretty typical I think, but my mother is a very creative cook and liked to change it up every year.  Actually, maybe not so typical, since my parents are vegetarians.  (I'm not, but I was as kid) So my mother always played around with different vegetarian main dishes, trying to approximate the impact of a whole, roasted turkey.  One time she used a giant hubbard squash- a big, lumpy gray thing, about 18 inches long!  The stuffing was great, but the squash itself was kind of nasty.  I don't think anyone ate much of it.  I suspect a "Hubbard squash" might be a variety of decorative gourd.

These days, we usually do Thanksgiving at my sister's house.  Her husband is a Minnesota Lutheran (we're Eastern European Jews with roots in Boston and Chicago) and we have adopted some of his family's traditions.  This year we're eating at 2pm (we never ate before 5pm in our family) and we have adopted the green bean/mushroom casserole.  I have been the one to make it the last few years, but I refuse to use mushroom soup.  I make a fancier version with a homemade mushroom cream sauce, but my brother in law and his parents love it.  My sister has learned to make a turkey and she always knocks it out of the park.  

I have a new set of in-laws via my youngest sister, and they are Venezuelan... So I'm really looking forward to seeing what our holiday traditions look like in ten years.  (Yes, I know Thanksgiving is only a US holiday)  

To me, this is what Thanksgiving is about.  Where ever you stand politically, I think we should all take the time to appreciate that, all things considered, we are fortunate to be living here in America.

Not casserole. French green beans with shaved almonds.

Football , Food and Family 😜

I missed out on the traditional Americana thanksgiving fare, as my family was incredibly Francophilic.

Pissaladieres ... roasted squash ... turkey with oyster sauce ... haricot verts with shaved almonds ... tarts for dessert .... gallons of wine. lol

I was always jealous of my friends and their canned cranberries, marshmallow embellished yams and green bean casseroles!

...we're hella American lol. I'm 3rd generation on my father's side and well on mom's side Puerto Ricans are Americans.
I've always joked to folks in my civvie life about being "half Southern" because my mom was born in SC. And when turkey day comes around she makes traditional Thanksgiving foods and 'soul food' dishes.  I look forward to eating leftover starting the day after Turkey day for several days. I'm making a stop through 3 different homes to make plates .

As as adult who moved away i've never decorated for X-Mas lol.  
My mom on the other hand never takes fake tree down.  She's already taken out her boxes of decorations but she hasn't begun to fully decorate yet.

I've moved away from home now, but I loved that Thanksgiving was a melting pot of different dishes at my place. We would provide a traditional Chinese vegetarian dish, roast pork with crackling skin, and fresh prawns alongside turkey, honey glazed ham, and mashed potatoes. For dessert, due to our collective incompetence as bakers, we would get a costco pumpkin pie. However, I did make persimmon bread pudding once and it was delicious!