Traditions

I love the day after Thanksgiving. It's not because I necessarily buy into all the hype of post-Thanksgiving sales and general consumer craziness, (although I guess I do to some degree), but because for me the day after Thanksgiving is steeped in family tradition. Since the year I was born, the entire Danielson family has managed to arise sometime in the 5:00 hour on this one day out of the year in order to go "free stuffing." (Back in the day, stores actually used to give out fantastic prizes, like Mickey Mouse snow globes (!) or bags filled with coupons and Cheerios (!!), to the first 500 people through the door.) Not including the year all of the Danielson women were nearly squished to their deaths by the JC Penney elevator, this was historically quite a successful experience. We definitely used to amass some amazing trinkets. (Useless, yes, but they were FREE!) Sadly, sometime in the late 90s, stores became wise to people like my family who merely grabbed the free stuff and and headed off to the next store without actually buying anything, and began to instead offer "Early Bird Discounts." This has taken a significant thrill out of the whole experience, but no matter. I guess they have to make money somehow.

After the free-stuffing has been completed, we then rush Downtown as fast our vehicle can carry us (belting out Bruce Springsteen's version of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" all the while) and get in line for the 8th floor Dayton's/Marshall Field's/Macy's auditorium display. When we were little, the line stretched down to the 4th floor at least. I vividly remember waiting not-so-patiently in the furniture department, wondering if we were ever going to make it up the next escalator. Now, we can walk in without even waiting 5 minutes. It makes me a little sad. I always thought that the display was absolutely magical as a child, but it seems that today's kids don't see it through the same eyes. After we've worked our way through the auditorium, we always, ALWAYS get two gingerbread cookies to be shared by the 4 of us. (After all, by that time we've all been up for 4 hours and are ready for a second breakfast!) After that we do a little more shopping, and finally have a late lunch. When we've had all the shopping that we can stand (usually at least one of us starts to get ornery around 3:00) we go home and set up the Christmas tree whilst jamming out to everyone's favorite Christmas hits. We always spend a good share of the day laughing, making ridiculous jokes and just being together. It's definitely one of my favorite days of the year.

I think one of the reasons this tradition means so much to me is because it is one of the few that hasn't changed much over the years. The rest of our usual Thanksgiving traditions felt just a little different this year, especially without my Grandma. Try as she might, my mom just couldn't make the gravy like Grandma used to. No one insisted that the turkey carcass should be made into soup. My sister and I did the endless stack of dishes. On the other side of the family, my grandfather has gotten so far along in his Alzheimer's disease that it took us 10 minutes to help him understand how to sit down at the dinner table. Even so, the holiday was wonderful, and I feel so blessed to be surrounded by the loving family I have. Traditions are great and comfortable and familiar, but they will all change. Maybe sometime in the future I'll be lucky enough to start new traditions with my own little family. But I hope that I can still take them to the Dayton's display.