Each month we share the story of an inspiring family and their shared meals. But as we head into the 2020 holiday season, we thought it might be fun to share a little bit about our families and how we all have different approaches to the season. From Thanksgiving to the New Year, here are all the ways we keep old traditions and create new ones. The Family Dinner Project Team wishes each of you a healthy and happy December!
Some families will need to adjust their holiday celebrations this year due to COVID. How do you adapt?
- “Usually we host an in-person Thanksgiving for friends and family, and we also have some kind of virtual event with friends and family across the country. This year, we are not hosting the in-person event, but celebrating through multiple Zooms with the usual attendees and some new ones. For the usual personal audience, we still organize by providing safely prepared full meals for everyone. And we deliver to everyone on Wednesday night – the party packs include food, flowers and a special drink. Then on Thanksgiving we all zoom in while preparing food (with some) and before the meal together. We will also play charades and possibly other games. – Shelleyco-founder of The Family Dinner Project
- “Since we moved to Seattle, we have been having holiday dinners with my ‘sister-of-another-sir’ and her wife, but we can’t this year due to COVID. Instead, we have a small family dinner with just us and the family we have pods with (since they can’t see their family either) and tend to gluttony by doing “Best of” dinners. Each family will cook 3 of their favorite dishes and we will share food stories over dinner!” – Cindildeputy executive director
- “I love this quote: ‘There is no creation without tradition; the new is an inflection of a previous form; novelty is always a variation on the past.’ So we’re definitely keeping our tradition of celebrating the holidays with our family and friends, but this time we’re adding the “new”: a digital celebration. It is so sad that we cannot physically visit family and friends, but we can celebrate together: with food, fun and conversations.” – AnnaSEO and marketing consultant
- “While large family gatherings are the norm, health is key this year, so we’re keeping it low key and close to home. We are part of a neighborhood school pod and will be starting new traditions together – giving friends, swapping books for the kids, wine tasting for the adults, game nights, etc. While we don’t celebrate with all our loved ones, we do celebrate the wonderful friendships we formed in our small town.” – ShannonWebsite and Analytics Advisor
- “I reimagined Thanksgiving this year so I could have a quick outdoor dinner in chilly New England with a son who lives in New York. Like so many other families, I ended up thinking again and now neither son will travel. On Wednesday we bake together via Zoom and on Thursday we zoom in with most of the other twelve guests who usually attend and plan to play a round of the Hat Game and Top Four. My sister in law suggested we all watch the Last Waltz earlier in the day which was filmed on Thanksgiving Day in 1976 Late evening my family will join my sister and her family during zoom in California which is a silver liner is since we don’t normally see each other on Thanksgiving. – Annaco-founder and executive director
- “Usually the holiday season gets extra hectic for our family because both my oldest son and I perform with different music groups and often have a lot of rehearsals and concerts. Everything has been canceled this year, and while we are sad and missing this huge part of our lives, we are also taking the opportunity to do other things that we normally don’t have time for. My youngest son has always wanted to design his own gingerbread house and do a multi-day baking and building project as a family, so I told him this is the year to dream big! He already has schedules and stock lists ready for us. And my oldest son and I are talking about working on a musical collaboration with some of our own arrangements of special pieces that we could record for friends and family as we wait for the day when our performing life returns. – BriContent Manager
Still, traditions are an important part of family life, especially during the holidays. What traditions will you honor this year?
- “The menu is unchanged, but there will be more leftovers than usual!” – Anna
- “Food, fun and conversation… and charades! Charades is a long tradition of ours.” – Shelley
- “The weekend after Thanksgiving, we go to a small tree nursery in the Cascade Mountains and cut down our Christmas tree. We will definitely do that this year – rain or shine!” – Cindil
- “Coming from large Italian and Portuguese families, food has always been central. Traditional multi-course meals, starting mid-morning and lasting until late in the evening. While we don’t have these traditional celebrations, we keep a few of our traditional menu items: homemade ravioli (my grandmother’s recipe), sausage and peppers on Christmas Eve, and cinnamon rolls for breakfast. My father always made a nice antipasto on Christmas Day. This will ALWAYS be a tradition.” – Shannon
- “My great-grandparents immigrated to America from Sweden, and every year they opened their house to friends and neighbors for a Christmas Eve Julbord (the Christmas version of a smorgasbord or buffet). They would host more than 100 people for some years! Each generation of our family has carried on the Julbord, even if it’s just a small one for immediate family. So on Christmas Eve we will gather around my dad’s favorite movie – It’s a Wonderful Life – with full plates of the Julbord that I will make with all of our traditional family recipes. – Bri
- Looking for happiness in 2021? We all need it, right? This is our favorite tradition: make your wish on New Year’s Eve, write it on a piece of paper, then burn it. Put the ashes in a glass of champagne and drink it. It functions!” – Anna
What is a funny or fond holiday memory you would like to share?
- “Our friends had just bought their new house and we decided to spend Thanksgiving there. Our GPS was wrong, and we came to another house. The lovely family who lived there explained us where to go, gave us some sweets and even their phone number in case we couldn’t find our friends house. We found the right house and we had a great Thanksgiving feast. But we decided to call this beautiful family the next day to thank them. Almost 15 years later we are still good friends!” – Anna
- “Years ago we organized Thanksgiving for a large group. We were all eating and the dessert cakes were on the counter. Suddenly we heard creaking in the kitchen. We ran in to see several pies on the floor, and our naughty cat Willie gleefully (no, voraciously) licking everything. – Shelley
- “During Thanksgiving after the 2016 election, when I was concerned that political tension could arise at the table, I created the Hat Game. Each person answered a question: Which character in a children’s book did you most want (or want) to be as a child? What was (is) your favorite toy? — and wrote the answer anonymously. Then at the table I brought out the answers and everyone tried to guess which answer belonged to each person. Two members who never talk to each other came up with the same answer!” – Anna
- “In 2011, my brother decided to start Christmas Day off by sharing YouTube memes of the Norwegian Butter Crisis with the family. We were all in tears by 9 a.m. and the day turned into a cascade of sharing our favorite YouTube memes. This has become one of our favorite things to do during the holidays. Each year, the best videos are added to an ongoing collection that we review every Christmas. Timeless favorites include “Honey Badger Don’t Care,” “David After Dentist,” and “A Butter Message to the USA.” This year we’re sharing via FaceTime and I’m hopeful that the latest addition to our list will be “Harry Potter Laundry”, one of my contributions for 2020.” – Cindil
- “A few years ago, my son and I joined a group from our church to sing Christmas carols at the local nursing home. We were asked to pay a special visit to a room where a man who had grown up in our church was bedridden and unlikely to make it to the New Year. He asked my son and me to sit by his bed, hold his hands, and sing him his favorite Christmas carols. I think we both felt this was the most meaningful afternoon of the entire year. We still talk about it every year in December.” – Bri
- “I have 14 cousins and we spent every Christmas together. For a year we wanted to stay up as young kids to see if we could see Santa Claus. We all slept together in one big room, trying so hard to stay awake. Although we couldn’t keep our eyes open completely, I remember that night like it was yesterday. The laughter and stories we shared into the small hours will always be cherished!” – Shannon
Do you have your own family dinner project to share with us, or would you like to tell us how your family is sharing meals and getting through the holidays during COVID-19? We’d love to hear from you! Contact us.