Thanksgiving: The American gastronomical gala of gluttony.  A day dedicated to food and celebrated with, what else? Food.  Who can hate a holiday that’s spent lustfully awaiting the arrival of the plump turkey slowly roasting in the oven? Piles of mashed potatoes, mountains of green beans, plateaus of cranberry sauce and mounds of stuffing fill the dining room altar where all temptations will soon be satisfied.

Although Thanksgiving has already passed, Chapin High School students share their traditions.  Tenth grader, Robbie Stephenson says that his family shuns the stereotypical turkey dinner.  “My family hates turkey, my dad and I refuse to eat it so we have ham every Thanksgiving.”

Fellow sophomore Mallory Knowles shares her family’s tradition: “My family goes to the mountains over break with other families.  We eat a lot! On Thanksgiving, we eat everything: turkey, chicken, stuffing, hot dogs, and pies.”

Knowles says she likes to spend Thanksgiving with family and friends because she’s thankful for both. 

Thanksgiving is truly a holiday meant for eating.  Americans, who are famously known for their love for food and the obesity that sometimes comes with it, have turned the original holiday which did include a feast but was meant for more contemplation and thanks, into a day for food, like all other American holidays.

Venturing away from the normal holiday meal, people today have created their own menu to fill their personal likes and dislikes. Some families seem to make it more so than others. 

Tenth-grader, Katie McDaniel says that her family celebrates Thanksgiving with her mother’s Lebanese heritage.

“On Thanksgiving we eat traditional Lebanese food like tabbouleh and baklava.”  Tabbouleh is a Lebanese salad with bulgar, parsley, mint, tomato and spring onion. Baklava is a desert served in Lebanon that is made with layers of dough with nuts and sweetened with syrup or honey. 

The week before Thanksgiving can often be identified when you realized that you’ve been buying clothes one size up, you’ve recently either taken part of or witnessed a fight over a frozen turkey in the grocery store, you haven’t eaten as much over the past couple of weeks in order to prepare for the upcoming holiday, or you little sibling has come home bearing gifts of paper pilgrim hats and papers titled “I am Thankful For…”

The food most affiliated with Thanksgiving is obviously, the turkey.

Senior Tami Kalinowski says her traditional Thanksgiving is spent “eating turkey and getting together with family.” 

Other students spend Thanksgiving out of town.

Freshman Eric Bidinger says he goes to Gatlinburg with his family and rents a cabin for Thanksgiving. They go hiking afterwards in order to burn a few cranberry sauce calories. Ninth grader Jake Mize says that his family goes to Washington D.C. for Thanksgiving, “Every year we go to Washington D.C. My mom has eight brothers and sisters so all fifty of us get together.”

Now, the pumpkin pie has already been thrown away and the kitchen has been cleaned beyond the point of recognition.  But as Christmas approaches, new visions of sugarplums dance in many heads and Thanksgiving is soon forgotten.