So, there's a couple food-centered threads already, but as we move into the time of year for Thanksgiving Dinner and Christmas Dinner and all those other wonderful holiday feasts, it seems appropriate to look more into these meals-to-end-all-meals!

What does a holiday dinner look like for you? Not just the food (although don't leave that out! It's still important!)- how much of an event is it? Who shows up? How elaborately decorated must things be? What's the kid's table like? Paint a picture for us of your holiday feasts!

I'll probably go to a local restaurant and have turkey with all the trimmin's.

Heyheyhey, @tsyokawe, your history was great! Why'd you take it away! "Historic" holiday meals are fun too!

My own "historic" holiday dinners usually meant getting a big group of family (basically everyone who was descended from one set of great-grandparents, so quite a crowd) together at my great-aunt and uncle's house out in the woods. They had a great big dining room, plenty of space for that classic longlonglong table with lots and lots of chairs, and the classic array of dishes- turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, green-bean casserole, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, lots of different stuffings (looking back, I'm pretty sure there was an undeclared war between a few cousins over who could make the best stuffing), gravy, cranberries, different breads, different wines (for those who were old enough, and once again looking back, I'm now very jealous, since I realized that my great-aunt has a fantastic wine collection) and sparkling juices for the kids, and then lots of different pies for dessert- mostly the traditional ones- pumpkin, pecan, cherry, but the one that sticks in my head the most is the pecan-fudge pie that my mom found a recipe for... really more fudge than pie, but SO GOOD!
I'm pretty sure a few years ago I passed that point where Christmas Dinner became more important than opening presents on Christmas Morning, but I didn't realize it until this year... and now I'm sad, because we haven't had everyone get together for a dinner like that in a long time! Of course now, I tend to be more likely to have holiday meals with coworkers (lots of rangers don't bother travelling for the holidays, so there's plenty of people to get together within the parks), and those "orphaned" holiday meals are great fun too, especially since there's always so many different cooks contributing to everything!

Damn Americans shoving their holidays in everyone's faces...I'm kidding

But seriously Canada celebrated Thanksgiving last month

So how about not just "Thanksgiving" (which I thought was not just American...but don't know) but other cultural feast days around fall harvest time. There are certainly many cultures in the US, with their own special celebration days - and people everywhere share food as a social thing. I have Wiccan, Jewish, and American Indian friends -- all have their own fall special days, but they are happy to share Thanksgiving too! I used to be married into a huge Samoan family - pig cooked in the ground! And a Mexican boyfriend--tamales made by his gramma. Feast and Family, it's the real deal!

Absolutely! Include any great food-related holidays! I'm American, so our Thanksgiving coming up is what has ME thinking about this, but if your October Thanksgiving was a great production, tell us about it too!

(I'm mentioned before) I have an eating disorder called Selective Eating Disorder/Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (SED/ARFID). So you don't have to go googling it (unless you want to) it's basically extreme picky eating. It affects all of my interaction with food, from meals to snacks, even drinks.

So for me things like "christmas dinner" (I'm in the UK so no Thanksgiving for me) are less 'happy family events' and more 'anxiety inducing spectacles' (specially when it's not my family, who are used to and accept my weirdness). Growing up, starting from a small child, I slowly progressed from sitting at the table with my family and being served what everyone else was and refusing to eat it, to sitting at the table but being served something I'd specifically asked for, to not sitting at the table, but alone on the sofa in the same room, to finally, not coming downstairs for christmas dinner at all.

By this time it was my mid-teens and I would spend that time alone in my room, probably on the Sims or sleeping. I loved it. But then shit got awkward again when me and my partner had been together a couple of years and I had to spend christmas dinner at his mums... She was kinda cool with my weird eating, to be fair, but her new husband was less understanding and would make jokes, which made my anxiety double.

I have "safe foods" that I'll eat, but that list doesn't include any holiday specific foods, so I feel so awkward when everyone around me is eating turkey and... sprouts? Whatever people eat at christmas, and I'm sat there with a plain cheese pizza, or on a bad week/month, a bowl of cereal.

Recently I've made progress with my disorder and I've started eating vegetable pizzas. I know, it's still pizza but this time last year I would have a panic attack or throw up if I tried to eat a vegetable pizza. I'm hoping that this will bridge the gap and some day I'll be able to eat vegetables without pizza underneath them.
I've also started eating curry with quorn chicken pieces (quorn is meat substitute, I'm not vegetarian but my partner is, so I just eat what he eats) and white rice. It's taken me years to be able to handle the texture of rice, but through exposure I'm almost at the point where it doesn't bother me at all... Almost.

These days, me and my partner just stay in and snack and eat crap all day, I might make pancakes.
We just, enjoy eachother's company for the day. It's just like any other day, but with presents.

I spent Christmas at my sister's house. Christmas eve my family always eat Chinese food. It was a tradition started with my Aunt and cousins, we'd go round on Christmas eve and the kids would have pizza and the adults would eat chinese take out. Our cousins have moved away now, but we still do it. My fiance is also there because his family don't do anything on Christmas eve and he has a good relationship with my family. He usually leaves quite late at night to sleep over at his to spend Christmas with his family and then come back on Boxing day, but this year he's staying at mine on Christmas morning and then we're going to his later in the evening.

Christmas day is the usual turkey, stuffing, sprouts deal for "Christmas dinner". We also get pigs in blankets and mini scotch-eggs and stuff for lunch. Oh and I always have to have a King Prawn dish, which I will eat almost all of and then feel sick for the rest of the day and have horrible fishy-burps. My Dad will visit in the morning and drop off presents but that's pretty much it. My Nanna use to come round when we were younger but after my grandpa died she can't exactly get there (even though its literally only 100 miles away, its a 6 hour train ride for her) so she usually has my Uncle take her over a few days before to drop off presents and we see our little cousins and whatever. i miss her coming on Christmas day. I hope when I live in North Wales (where she lives) I can have Christmas at my house and invite my sister and younger siblings over, or maybe drive her down myself so she can spend Christmas with us.

Boxing day is usually spent with my Fiances family. Though not always. Probably will this year though. Nothing interesting happens. We mainly just sit around the fireplace they have in the front room.

Sorry. It would be nice to hear about other country's traditions and celebrations... Don't be shy about sharing.

For the last couple of years my son and I visited friends for Christmas and New Year. They have a huge farm in seriously remote countryside at the top of the South Island of New Zealand. As it's the height of summer for us, we sea fish, help with milking the cows twice a day, practice shooting at targets, pan for gold, go horseback riding, fly around on vintage motorbikes on dirt roads and across fields (that's my favorite part!) and go for long walks through vast tracts of native forest with the sheep dogs.

Food wise its roasted ham, salads of all kinds (rice, seafood, cous cous) warm new potatoes and maybe some turkey. Desserts consist of fruit salads, pavlovas and loads of home baking. All that amazing outdoorsy stuff makes you so hungry! At night because there are no other homes around for miles, the night sky is incredible, full of stars in the blackest sky. It's a real contrast to my former Christmases in Ireland.

That sounds wonderful.

What's Christmas in Ireland like?

Ok let me explain my joke - I'm American and I'm making fun of non-Americans...which is kinda lame so sorry about that

Anyway I hate Thanksgiving. I guess I'm supposed to be grateful that I'm going to someone's house for people I don't care about and eating food I don't care about...the only food I like at Thanksgiving is mashed potatoes and I don't like stuffing myself. BUT I do like seeing my cousins at Thanksgiving! Also we say grace and stuff.

And at Christmas we don't really have a feast, but my grandmother sends us these cookies so I guess that counts :D

Normally in Ireland, it would be pissing with rain or grey and damp. Pass a bar on Christmas Eve, (if indeed it is at all possible for any Irishman to pass a bar, in Ireland, on Christmas Eve - Because I am sure in the Catholic religion its one of them 'Thou shalt nots ...') and in the wet, greasy streets you'd hear strains of this flowing out. Christmas dinner would be turkey and all the trimmings followed by Christmas Pudding (a steamed, dark fruit pudding) with cream or brandy butter - a meal prepared solely by Irish Mammys from the recipes passed down to them from Mammys before them, and so on, and so forth. Any man entering the kitchen is systematically beaten with a wooden spoon and sent back to the living room in shame for having dared to enter the Kitchen.

The free and relatively single among us would still be nursing massive hangovers and dubiously acquired hickeys from the Christmas Eve spent in a smoky bar the night before. So after eating probably the most indigestible meal of the entire year, because let's not forget that Mammys of a certain age will roast that turkey for at least a week so we don't all die from food poisoning, on top of a hangover sent from Satan himself, and glares from the girlfriend (because of the hickeys) you find that the only cure is to open the Jamesons and float off into oblivion buried chest deep in discarded gift wrapping paper and the socks that unimaginative female relatives think it's a good idea to give any guy over 30 for Christmas.

Not much to say honestly. Thanksgiving has always been a holiday more suited for ones own mother as she loves to express herself through food. This one doesn't celebrate the holiday and never really has. Just always kind of "went with the flow" to appease family.

However, this years festivities are a bit unusual. Seems father has decided to come out here to Egypt and celebrate the holiday with this one. Usually it is the opposite where this one would usually go to him in the U.S.

Thanksgiving does not exist in my country, although I suspect people willing to change that, and Christmas is quite boring. Spending time with family and friends on both Christmas days, 25th and 26th of December (both are official holidays), and eat some fancy dinner you never eat on regular days. Christmas Eve has limited traditional status here, just like giving gifts. We have Sinterklaas (yes, Santa Claus is named after him), arriving on a saturday mid November (this afternoon) and leaving on 5th of December, his birthday, after brining all children here their gifts.

I'll probably have some dinner with my brother and parents. What we'll eat, don't know. It's just mid November!

@Viktor86 a Dutch friend once told me that if I was a bad boy, Sinterklaas's little helpers would put me in a sack and send me to Spain, is this true!?!?!

Find out if there's a tradition whereby bad girls get sent to New Zealand. Meantime, I'll try to come up with something on-topic. It might not happen right away.

If it isn't, it damn well should be! :lovestruc

Little helpers? These are just normal sized grown ups, no dwarfs, And they aren't his helpers, but his associates.

And yes, it's unfortunately true.

There's a state holiday celebrating the state monarch's birthday exactly the day before mine, and if I was in the US, my birthday would be close to Thanksgiving.

Though what I usually do is the same routine of loafing around at home and having my meals. A little more fancy than rice with mixed up dishes.

Christmas - do you know I haven't thought about it yet. I often get the menu sorted out months before. Last Christmas, it was asparagus with lemon crumbs, followed by three-cheese galette and roast veg and then a jewel trifle (individual). Hmmm. This year I think, as last, we will be going over to see Him Indoors's mother. I usually do a special meal because I displike the idea of a traditional meal. I do, however, manage to fit in a nut roast will all the trimmings somewhere over the Christmas break because, sadly, it's a meal I love (look, it's traditional for vegetarians) - I particularly like making stuffings and nut roast is just a jumped up stuffing anyway. Oh, and stollen. Well, now you've reminded me, this Christmas - what are we going to have?

My boyfriend used to put in a Vegetarian Thanksgiving gathering with friends, usually a week before Thanksgiving, but that's fallen by the wayside these past few years because of other family concerns. It was always a big to-do, potluck affair that involved hunting for just the "right" hubbard squash (a huge blueish squash that is reminiscent of the pods from Invasion of the Body Snatchers) that would fit inside the oven, then it was stuffed and roasted for almost the same amount as a real turkey. Friends who played instruments would come and a music session usually broke out at some point after dinner with fiddles and concertinas. That was lovely. If only there were room for dancing!

Growing up, Thanksgiving was my parents' favorite holiday. My dad loved the company and the food, my mom loved how it was about family and not buying presents. I think each Thanksgiving took her back to happy childhood memories, Oh, but the work! My mom or my aunt would cook for days and we'd have turkey, pies, mashed potoes, baked creamed corn, molded jellos, canned figs stuffed with cream cheese, olives (had to have the olives - my sister always sat in front of them and ate almost all of them), vegetarian lasagna, cream cheese stuffed celerly, and salad. Mom always managed to surprise us with something a little bit different or new each year. Afterwards, cleaning up always seemed like a herculean task. Ah! And then there were the left overs! They were always wonderful!

One year we all gathered at my aunt's farm. There were lots of cousins and a beloved grandfather in attendance. The rooms quickly filled and the older cousins and I slept on the cold attic floor in sleeping bags. It was magical. These were some of my most favorite people on earth and the chance to spend extended time with them was my idea of heaven.

Last year, my son put on a small feast for a handful of us and dazzled us with his gourmet skills. Helping him to get ready really warmed my heart, especially since the preparation started with a trip to Ikea to get an extra chair and a few more things so that he could serve five people. But my favorite feast day so far was the year he and I were alone. We walked to the grocery in the morning to get the ingredients for our celebration, walked back and started prep. He made a pizza from scratch, dough included (he always does) on a cast iron pan in the oven. While the dough was doing its thing, I made up some margaritas from a mix and poured out tortilla chips and jarred salsa into their various bowls. We binged watched Downton Abby.

It's too early to think about Christmas. I am thinking about my gift list, but food will come later.

Thanksgiving - Going to my dad's house. Traditional homecooked meal. We'll have to pay extra attention to what we buy because of my food allergies. Usually it's just us since my dad is pretty much the biggest loner I know, but he made friends with a lonely old widow who has nobody to spend the day with and he's invited her to Thanksgiving dinner.

Christmas - I'll be at my mom's house. Probably turkey or ham. Hell, I really don't care what we eat. We hardly celebrate Christmas as it is. I think last year I slept half the day and spent the rest playing TF2. This year probably won't be much different.

No, they take you to New Zealand. Hahah! That's why you find a lot of Bags-end there. Get it?

Oh... nevermind.

In the early 80s, the economy up here tanked, and my husband was laid off. He decided to go back into the Marine Corps.
(He'd been out for more than 3 years.)

When we arrived at Camp Pendleton, we pretty much had nothing. We didn't have the money
to move our furniture, so we'd left it behind...gave it all away. Our truck couldn't make the trip, so we sold it to a friend for 5 hundred dollars.
We spent pretty much all the money we had flying the three of us to LAX, and then taking the bus down to Oceanside.

It was 2 days to Thanksgiving, and we didn't know anyone. It was impossible to get emergency funds till the following Monday.
Tom no sooner reported, and he was given a 3-day pass (on account of Thanksgiving). We were checked into temporary accommodations
(for arriving Marines with families) that afternoon. Its kitchenette was no more than a double hot-plate, a tiny cube of a fridge, and really nice surface for food prep.

We were the only people there! There were no other families in that particular building. It was spooky that first night...way too quiet.

I went to the commissary with the few dollars we had, and bought one family package of Banquet sliced turkey meat in turkey gravy.
I also bought a can of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce, 5 potatoes, a packet of dry gravy mix, one package of Pepperidge Farm Chessman cookies, one pound of butter, one package of bread stuffing, and a package of Stove Top cornbread stuffing.

It was actually cheaper in the short run to buy premade items than to purchase the ingredients needed to actually make them from scratch.

Besides our clothes, we had dishes, a can opener, one saucepan, and one skillet. I prepared the stuffing in the saucepan, and the potatoes in the skillet. The skillet had no lid,
so I cleaned my knitting needles, and laid them across. And I placed one of our plates across the top. It worked out great.
My daughter was only 12 at the time, and groused a bit at first, but once she thought on it, she came around.

We had a TV there, but nothing was on that we wanted to see. So we played charades and 20 Questions. And we relived some family stories.
You know the ones...funny shit that's happened to this member or that member...retold to remind us that life is still good, and that we're all connected by those memories.

Years later, she told me that was one of her favorite Thanksgivings.