Thanksgiving in New York
The pleasant surprise of creating new traditions after childhood has come and gone.
It’s late November again, and my thoughts, like many of yours, turn to crisp leaves, perhaps an early season snow, gallons of freshly pressed apple cider, and the upcoming gratitude for the harvest. Ah, the romanticized Thanksgiving.
When we’re young, our holiday traditions feel like all there ever is. With my whole family living within a 15-mile radius smack dab in the middle of South Carolina, holidays were gleefully predictable for us kids.
There was Easter at our house, complete with table decorations made by me, with my grandmother’s help, and an egg hunt my brother and I set up in the back yard with strategy and intention.
Thanksgiving was at my cousins’ house, the origin of the “over the river and through the woods” song, since they lived in the woods on the banks of a literal river. Lots of good Southern food: white rice, biscuits, turkey, platters of dressing (not stuffing, mind you), cranberry relish, and that strange gravy made with hard boiled eggs.
And Christmas Eve, first at my grandmother's house, and then rotated every year between our house and my cousins’, with a finger-food menu of french onion dip, Christmas cookies, and pigs-in-blankets that was as highly anticipated as the present-opening itself.
And so it went, for me, for twenty-three years. There was only one interruption, during my twenty-first year, and I’ve written about that elsewhere. But otherwise, it was the same people, the same food, the same order of events, the same decorations and songs and perhaps even conversation. It was predictable and lovely and exactly what I thought the holidays should be.
And then came 2003, when I moved 2,000 miles away, and had to abruptly change my understanding of holidays and traditions.
That year, I spent Thanksgiving in Tucson with my freshman year college roommate and her family, witnessed the power and danger of a turkey deep fryer on the sunbaked pavers in the Tucson sun, and though I didn’t plan it at the time, ate my last Thanksgiving turkey for the next 13 years.
Christmas was also spent differently, and I’m not sure I can even recall the next Easter. I was far, far away, and getting through the holidays on my own, as an adult, was something that I couldn’t have prepared myself for. I’d signed up for it, but it wasn’t easy the first time around, or even after. I was missing out on something I had always assumed was a given. It was jarring, to say the least. I had to reframe my narrative.
But slowly, it got easier, and while going “home” to South Carolina was still the pinnacle of holiday comfort for me, establishing new traditions with new people I loved was important, too.
After getting married and moving to Vermont, we started to build our own traditions, like going blueberry picking on my birthday, or eating at a particular restaurant after our annual hike of Camel’s Hump, or buying a new Vermont-made ornament for our tree every year we celebrated on our own.
For ten Thanksgivings, 2009-2018, with only a handful of interruptions (more on those later), we made the 5-hour, 300-mile journey from our apartment on Lake Champlain (“the West Coast of Vermont”) to Uncle Joe’s and Aunt Lisa’s home in Mount Kisco, New York, down in Westchester County, about an hour north of the city. David’s parents, aunts, and uncles grew up in the Bronx (for more about that, listen to last month’s podcast) and while many of them scattered further afield, the cluster of family in that area was, for the decade-plus we lived in Vermont, the nearest family we had.
The drive down from Vermont to Mt. Kisco is meandering and scenic. You can’t get north to south in Vermont quickly, and the same goes for northern New York. Half the drive is on smaller state highways, roads with one or two digits in the name, through even smaller towns. We made the trek so many times I looked forward to landmarks—the post office housed in an historic log cabin in tiny Fort Ann, New York, the armory in depressing-as-hell Whitehall (where it’s always cloudy, in my expert opinion), and that “Coming Soon! From Ellsworth Construction” sign that was posted in between outlet stores in Lake George for multiple years (but not soon enough?)…we got to know the I-87 rest areas quite well and which ones had no viable food options when we were driving back late (they were all bad, but once or twice we got lucky with a farmer’s market in the parking lot).
Once you get closer to Mount Kisco, coming off the Taconic Parkway or the Saw Mill Parkway, the scenery greatly improves, which I expect is fairly typical of a lot of the towns in Westchester County (an ugly road connecting pretty villages to a city that is both of those things at the same time). The rolling forest around the New Croton Reservoir and the widely spaced homes are what invited people inhabiting the cramped quarters in Washington Heights, Greenpoint, or Riverdale to seek out nature, privacy, space, and quiet.
Uncle Joe (my father-in-law’s brother), Aunt Lisa, and their son Adam (before he left for college and moved to the city) lived in a well-appointed home at the top of a hill with a front yard that was always green and a backyard hosting plenty of wildlife on quiet, starry nights. There was always an active but timid dog (Nikki, then Maggie, then Nala), a comfortable bed, a nice selection of Stew Leonard’s fruit and nut breads to toast for breakfast (I’ve been thinking about that bread a lot lately), and plenty of good company.
It was a chance to spend time with my husband’s extended family, with Aunt Ilona, her daughter Alyssa, and later her fiance James popping up from Yonkers. Sometimes David’s parents would fly out from Arizona to join us, and an occasional sister or two. Sometimes cousin Jennifer and her girls would come out, and our family from David’s mother’s side would stop by for a visit, or we’d pop over to see them. And on the big years, Aunt Lisa’s mother, brother, two sisters, and all their families—eight kids in all—came up from that very mysterious, undefinable locale further south: New Jersey.
Growing up, my mom had told me about the years she spent living in Manhattan, when she had been a flight attendant for Pan Am and was based out of one of the airports there. She loved the thrill of living in a bustling city like New York in the sixties, but never quite overcame that fish-out-of-water feeling. She told a lot of stories about how Yankees were not very nice, and generally looked down on people from the South. She was relieved when she moved back to South Carolina and settled in Charleston to be a teacher.
I took this narrative to heart, but most certainly not in the way my mom intended. I mean, it’s not like I went to absurd lengths to distance myself from my Southern upbringing; still, as a kid, whenever I got the chance to travel to a new and exciting place, I was always doing things (like…curling my hair?) that I hoped would get me “discovered” as a child actor so I could have a more interesting life. Not like I had any idea of what that would actually entail; it just seemed less boring than my very normal (i.e. stable and comfortable, both of which are a kind of privilege) life. (How silly we are to wish for something more than what we are truly lucky to have)! But I digress.
My mom was wrong about Yankees not being nice, and she did come around, especially meeting much of my husband’s family. I have never met a kinder or more hospitable family, and that goes for extended family, too. I might not have deep roots in New York or New Jersey, but I know people who do, and they’re some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet.
There could be as many as 25-40 people at once, and I think that was the case the year with three dogs in attendance: Maggie, who lived there, and two other pups, both named Coco/a (a little white fluffball spelled Coco, short for coconut, and a little brown puppy, aptly christened Cocoa). That year was wild. Nothing like that dog-and-turkey scene from “A Christmas Story”, but we were getting close to that point when Maggie started freaking out, Coco peed under the hors d'oeuvres table, and Cocoa had to get crated.
And the food was glorious. Living in an apartment with just two people, it wasn’t the easiest or most fun to do a lot of heavy cooking, though I did try sometimes. But when there are people gathered together for Thanksgiving, you get to try it all. People even make things for you!
Being from Vermont, we’d bring lots of craft beers, but the main item we would provide would be an incredible French loaf from Gerard’s Bakery, a one-man show and the best bread we’d ever had. Gerard’s would arrive at the Co-Op still warm, and it was the kind of delivery that you’d wait to get there at just the right time to grab some loaves before they were all snatched up.
Thanksgiving Day was done right at that house on the hill. All the day before peeling potatoes for the mash. Two types of turkey for those who partook (or a turkey and a ham, I think). Aunt Ilona and Cousin Alyssa would try out gourmet twists on traditional sides, like green bean casserole with truffle oil, or cauliflower gratin with Gruyere; they were always kind to make sure there was plenty for the vegetarians to eat. And who can forget the year that Uncle Joe got into sous vide?
And the food leading up to Thanksgiving dinner and the following days was also unparalleled. The night before, while peeling those potatoes, we’d get take out, incredible Greek food from a place called Lefteris, and another night would get real New York pizza (complete with thinly sliced eggplant), something that I haven’t been able to enjoy since the last time we were there in summer 2019.
I’m obviously not a native New Yorker but these many visits—and deep family connection—gave me a sense of what it might have been like to grow up in a place that had felt so foreign to me as a child, that just seemed so much more exciting than what I had been accustomed to.
But visiting enough times made it comfortable, in its own way. It’s a part of my story of home, now, too, and I miss it.
One year, we missed Mt. Kisco because I had a nasty cold. In 2011, we flew out to Chicago to spend Thanksgiving with David’s sister Rachel and her boyfriend (later our brother-in-law) Matt, where we got to experience the Christkindlmarket and a lovely Friendsgiving, complete with Matt’s unforgettable smoked mashed potatoes. (It’s been over ten years, Matt. Why are those potatoes not in my life)?!
In November 2016, we trekked our 3-month-old down to Mount Kisco for Baby’s first introduction to her larger family. That was her first trip to another state, and the longest car ride she’d endured, and we all survived! It had been years since there had been a new baby to celebrate—the most recent one now about nine years old—and David’s parents and other sister Elizabeth, her partner Luciano, and his son Kaiden joined us for that year’s festivities.
All of the kids were very sweet to her; the lines of “who is an actual cousin and who isn’t” get blurred and don’t matter in these moments, or even at all, really. These were the types of moments I had fantasized about before becoming a mom; the times when so much love gets concentrated in one place at one time. And a new baby symbolizes so much hope and the recognition that life carries on, even as others around the world carry the impossibly heavy burden of loss.
My father-in-law got a call that day from one of his best friends. His adult son had died of an overdose just a few hours before Thanksgiving dinner. While we were celebrating the new life of our daughter, another family was experiencing the most devastating Thanksgiving of their lives. The juxtaposition of these enormous life events is something I try to sit with and pay attention to. That the older I get, the more this will happen, and the more grateful I am for the ways that I’m incredibly blessed, and this luck won’t last forever.
In 2017, my mom died a few weeks before Thanksgiving. Because of the timing, it just made sense to stick around South Carolina until the holiday arrived. It was such an important part of the healing process to be there with my family at that time. I treasure that year, because it would be the last “real” Thanksgiving at my cousins’ house from all those years ago. With my mom gone, my grandmother in 2021, and my aunt earlier this year, the absence of the matriarchs of the family leaves a huge hole. While I would love to be able to celebrate Thanksgiving there sometime again, I know it will feel a lot different.
Perhaps all those years trying new traditions prepared me for never having those childhood ones again. Perhaps it made it harder, knowing I wasn't there for a lot of those years in between.
Since moving to Washington State to be closer to my brother and sister-in-law, both officers in the Navy, it’s been a gift to be able to celebrate lots of milestones and traditions with family again. But now, like a lot of military families, I also get to experience the uncertainty and strangeness of the holidays with a loved one on deployment. We’ll do as much as we can to make things fun like we always do, but the three of us remaining collectively decided that we’d rather order the turkey, veggie roast, and trimmings than do a whole lot of cooking. And we’ll give thanks for the challenges of this year and look forward to “normalcy” again next year.
We all know that the only constant is change, and in 2022, Uncle Joe and Aunt Lisa said goodbye to their longtime home in Mt. Kisco and moved to the North Carolina coast. So we can’t go back to those Thanksgivings, either. But maybe someday we can visit them in their new home, and it’s far closer to my own family than I would have ever expected. (Funny how the wider your circle gets, the more it comes back around).
We don’t often realize it’s the last time we’ll be gathered in a sacred place with special people until the moment has already passed. But when I do know, or think I know, I try to pay attention, absorb the energy of the place and the people gathered around me, and give thanks for what I’ve had the privilege to experience, taking as much of it with me, even as I have to let it go.
Reflection questions
What are some of your childhood holiday traditions? Do you still celebrate them?
What are some traditions that you started mid-life (or later than childhood) that you celebrate now?
What’s your favorite Thanksgiving food item? (Bonus points if it’s not turkey)!
Mount Kisco, New York, is located on the land of the Munsee Lenape, Mohican, Wappinger, and Schaghticoke peoples.
Image: For all the years I spent there, I don’t have many photos. A Google Maps image of the house, as it looked in April 2023.
This says so much and really captures the heart of this post:
“Perhaps all those years trying new traditions prepared me for never having those childhood ones again. Perhaps it made it harder, knowing I wasn't there for a lot of those years in between.” 🧡
Home is indeed a changeling.