What comes to mind when thinking of Thanksgiving? Most likely one will think about turkey, football, family, lots of food and no school or homework. These traditions are very important to Americans. Most students’ traditions for Thanksgiving include having a humongous dinner, with a big turkey, lots of family, and watch football.
Erma Bombeck said, “Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not a coincidence.”
Many people revolve their dinners and such around the football games. Kristen Green, second-year student, said that her annual Thanksgiving dinner has been switched to Thanksgiving lunch. This is because a few of her family members have tickets to the Eagles game this year, and cannot miss it.
Fourth-year student, Jackie Aliotta said, “We pretty much just eat and watch football all day long. Sometimes women will go in a different room to watch a chick flick while football games are on.”
It is very clear that football is a huge part of our culture. So important, it consumes our Thanksgiving holiday.
Irv Kupcinet once said, “An optimist is a person who starts a diet on Thanksgiving Day.”
West Chester University students said there is lots and lots of food at their Thanksgiving meal. Each person said that Turkey is the main dish. Other food items include potatoes, stuffing, green beans and corn. Tara Soprano’s family has two kinds of stuffing and three types of potatoes during their meal.
Soprano said, “Apparently it’s a big deal because my family has been getting excited about my mom’s cooking since August.”
Some people love this holiday so much they celebrate it twice. Heather Manorek, third-year student said the night before Thanksgiving she has dinner at her house with her family. Then on Thanksgiving Day she goes to her Nanny’s house to have another dinner.
Fourth-year student Alyssa Rose said, “We usually eat dinner at 3pm, digest, eat again, and repeat.”
All families have their own particular ways of celebrating Thanksgiving. Some families start cooking from scratch first thing in the morning. Others buy their food pre-made. Some people have more than one Thanksgiving meal. There are some families who say what they are thankful for, and there are others that do not.
Amelia Reed, third-year student, has an interesting tradition. The last eight years her and her family each take a shot of Wild Turkey before they eat their Thanksgiving dinner. They do this because her Uncle Stan always use to drink it on Thanksgiving.
In addition to the turkey and all the delicious side dishes, dessert is also a very important part of the Thanksgiving meal. The people that discussed their meals all said to make sure to save room for that dessert. Most of the common dessert items were pumpkin pie along with other types of pie. Other people also said they had ice cream, brownies, and cookies.
Melissa Calebrese said, “I will be making a more sophisticated dessert this year. Meaning anything other than brownies or chocolate chips cookies. This is my first time making the dessert, so hopefully everyone will enjoy it and I don’t make anyone sick.”
Turkey talk made the students excited for Thanksgiving on Thursday. Have a delicious and safe Thanksgiving!
Elyssa Sobel is a fourth-year student majoring in communication studies. She can be reached at ES608235@wcupa.edu.