In my family, Thanksgiving is a week-long extravaganza where we basically try to hit as many of our cousin’s homes as possible. It’s not enough to just have one dinner because it wouldn’t be possible to fit my family and all of my cousins in one house. You may be asking; why do you need to see ALL of your cousins at Thanksgiving? To this question, I literally have no answer. I, personally, find it completely unnecessary to have separate dinners with all of my family. I think that everyone feels this urge to spend time together during the holidays because we are all so busy throughout the year, so we feel guilty for not taking the time to visit one another. I’m one of the youngest cousins in my family, and I’ve noticed that things have changed so much as I’ve grown up. We no longer have weekend sleepovers or spontaneous trips to each other’s houses. My older cousins are getting engaged or starting new jobs. Most of them have already graduated from college. All of us becoming adults means that we have to start moving on with our lives and living independently. With that being said, I still think that squeezing all of our family time into one month is truly exhausting and it would be way better if we could just make regular visits like normal people. We honestly have no excuse to be so distant since we all live in the New York metropolitan area, so maybe I’ll bring this up at the dinner table(s) next year!
