It’s that time of year again! Second only to Christmas, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I always loved my older siblings coming home for the holiday or going home myself for a college break.
My family goes to Mass together in the morning, comes home to the smell of Dad’s turkey roasting in the oven, eats Mom’s pumpkin log and hot cocoa, and makes dinner together all day. My sisters and I had a special job of decorating the table together and then preparing everyone’s drinks.
I loved Thanksgiving growing up. So did Joshua. We both have wonderful families with great traditions.
Last year, our first Thanksgiving together, we decided to stay in Lubbock instead of choosing a family to visit. I could not be happier that we did!
We went to Mass together, came home to Joshua’s turkey roasting in the oven, ate my pumpkin log and cocoa, and prepared our dinner with friends who could not go home to their own families for the holiday.
Getting married doesn’t mean you abandon your family of origin. It doesn’t mean you lose all the precious things you loved about growing up. It doesn’t mean you have to bounce between families and keep score between you and your spouse, or run yourselves into the ground in an attempt to “enjoy” your holidays.
Instead, marriage is a whole experience of becoming gratefully new. It’s an experience of taking everything you love most from both of your families, maybe letting go a little and growing in selflessness for your spouse, and creating new, beautiful traditions for your family.
“Therefore a man must leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife.”
While this is different, it’s not a bad thing! If you’re struggling to decide how to spend your Thanksgiving, whether it’s where to have it or what to eat, remember that making new traditions doesn’t mean you’ve lost something. It means you’ve found everything.
