‘Not Without Smashed Potatoes’ Family Rituals at Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving, 1995. Married less than a year, husband John and I designed a pot-luck Thanksgiving dinner for our collective daughters and about 20 of my 42 cousins. In Thanksgivings before my first husband died, I had concocted an elegant dried apricot-grand Marnier wild rice stuffing. Each Thanksgiving afternoon, the aroma of apricots steeping in baking turkey heralded the sumptuous meal.
To please my daughter, I had also prepared Stove Top stuffing. And, because one cousin required sweet potato casserole with melted marshmallows, the menu became carb heavy, with unhealthy food choices. But who cares, I said to myself. Thanksgiving is once a year.
The setting was idyllic. Our 80-acre Maryland farm sat on a hill, overlooking pasture. I decided to go all out. The menu not only featured two kinds of stuffing and the sweet potato casserole, but I baked fresh cranberry bread. Since John’s bachelor farm did not own enough china, I raided the Pflatzgraff outlet and carted home 20 place settings of creamy fluted dinnerware. John and I hauled out folding tables and chairs and turned our country great room into a cozy restaurant with foot-warming fireplace embers. John outfitted one of the tractors for a hayride and we were r-e-a-d-y.
Early Thanksgiving morning John and I stuffed “Bubba,” a 34-pound turkey. At about 10 a.m. John’s daughter Cadi was padding around the kitchen in her jammies, surveying the menu choices, when she looked at me with alarm. “Where are the smashed potatoes?” Confident that she had no idea of the huge menu, I explained that we did not do mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving, and listed the foods being served. Twenty-four-year- old Cadi thought for a very long moment before she spoke. Lower lip protruding, she whispered plaintively, “but it’s not Thanksgiving without smashed potatoes.”
There are moments in life that one never forgets. Looking at Cadi, standing in her Father’s farmhouse with a new step Mom, a new sister, and a very large new golden retriever, I understood that she needed her familiar Thanksgiving family ritual. “Oh Cadi, I am so sorry. Of course there will be smashed potatoes, with plenty of butter.” Relieved that the Acme was open, I quickly added mashed potatoes to the menu, where they have remained ever since. So this Thanksgiving, as our granddaughters toddle around the table, Cadi’s smashed potatoes will be right next to the stuffings, where they belong. Smashed potatoes have become a permanent part of our Anderson Family Thanksgiving ritual.
I bet you have never thought much about your family rituals, but they are powerfully magnetic activities. They engage most or all members of the family, repeat regularly, and bring symbolic meaning. Your family looks forward to its annual rituals, which are universal to family life, everywhere and become part of the future of the family. Our national Thanksgiving rituals actually help our families to function, providing a sense of history, and creating an identity.
Rituals even help families heal from the multiple losses and crises that are part of all family life. Thanksgiving rituals allow us all to celebrate together, rebuilding after losses of loved ones. In fact, family rituals are so powerful that they actually impact our nervous systems, creating warmth and closeness inside the bodies of those around the Thanksgiving table. Because rituals stimulate both brain hemispheres, they generate deep emotional experiences, sending a literal “shiver down the back.”
And, because they are both verbal and nonverbal, they reach a level of meaning and significance that words alone cannot capture.
Not only do our Thanksgiving rituals strengthen family bonding, they allow us to re-create that first Thanksgiving with a comforting feast that connects us to our family values. Whether or not we cook from scratch, we create the impression of a home cooked feast, a harvest like that of our forefathers, a celebration.
In addition to offering us a nourishing dinner, these rituals enable us to feel good about our family, minimizing the inevitable conflicts that have plagued our family throughout the year. Instead of focusing on these painful conflicts, we focus on warmth and love. So this Thanksgiving, as you sit at the table with those you love, pay a little more attention to your own family rituals.
Do you, as we do, go around and ask what everyone is thankful for? Do you tally the collected years of life sitting at your table? Whatever your rituals, take a moment to taste the beauty of the emotional feast at your Thanksgiving table. It might just be the main course on your Thanksgiving menu.
To consider: Which rituals do I look forward to this Thanksgiving? Which rituals send appreciative shivers down my spine?