A Non Traditional Thanksgiving

All the housewives in my town hate my mom. For years she has been instilling non-American traditions in our family. We've become radicals in my small suburban east coast town. We don't eat turkey on Thanksgiving.

"Look sweetie, the turkey matches the cabinets."

The simple explanation is that no one in my family particularly cares for turkey. It's just a taste thing.

The longer explanation goes like this:

Thirteen years ago my family of four moved to the east coast from California leaving absolutely every single one of our relatives behind. Since then, nearly all of the holidays have been just the four of us. It's been really hard because we don't even get the chance to complain about inappropriate and obnoxious relatives on the holidays like everyone else. Just another way in which our Thanksgiving is non traditional I suppose.

We've had one 'normal' Thanksgiving our entire time here. It was our first year in New England and we jumped through all the Thanksgiving Day hoops: dressing up, football on TV, hosting friends we only moderately liked, and hours spent stuffing butter and herbs under the skin of a dead turkey. Gotta love it.

I don't know what spurred her exactly, but the following year my mother asked if we were okay with trying a turkey-less Thanksgiving. Given that we didn't like turkey much and it was just going to be us four that year, we okayed her plan. So instead she made enchiladas, quesadillas, and sweet corn cake. Yum. And the leftovers were even better. There was simply no comparison to that stuffed, frigid turkey. With no one to impress we stayed in our sweats all day and only spent 2 hours in the kitchen opposed to the usual 7 (elbow-deep in giblets). Traditional Thanksgiving had officially been beat. We never looked back.

Some of the families in our town strongly disapproved. They claimed we're non-American, and unpatriotic. Even some friends I've explained this to over the years have the same opinion. But we've stuck with our tradition for the last 12 years. We do the same thing every year chicken enchiladas, sweats, and Its a Wonderful Life**

Eat me.

We're all supposed to eat turkey because that's what some pilgrims and indians did one Thursday, but what if they had eaten mutton instead? We'd all be screwed, that's what. Sheep are cute, it's a good thing turkey's are so damn ugly.

Tradition is tradition no matter what you do. My mom claims that she will always host her Mexican Thanksgiving and our future families will just have to deal. Guess I will end up with disapproving relatives and awkward holidays after all.

**Yes, I know that Its a Wonderful Life is categorically a Christmas movie, but it also stresses the importance of thankfulness so it is able to straddle both holidays. We watch it on Christmas too... because it's that good.