Thanksgiving, celebrated every November on the fourth Thursday of the month, places an emphasis on gratitude and connection with family and friends, as well as the traditions established over generations. The norms of the holiday typically include a large meal spent with loved ones with a roasted turkey as the crowning centerpiece in the feast. However, members of the school community have their own niche takes and adaptations on the uniquely American holiday.
From camping trips and cooking techniques to adapting for dietary restrictions and running a 5K to alleviate the guilt of a bountiful Thanksgiving dinner, there are a variety of ways to celebrate. For many, the Thanksgiving spirit often does not lie in the specific activity or event but rather the people that the holiday is spent with.
For Julie Neubauer, Advanced Placement World History teacher and varsity softball coach, her family’s longstanding tradition is to go camping in the desert east of San Diego County between Ocotillo and Anza Borrego. There, twenty to thirty of her relatives, friends and extended family cook their Thanksgiving turkey in the ground “pig luau style.”
“My grandparents started the tradition because my grandpa was a geologist, and he went out there to look for rocks and geodes and petrified wood,” Neubauer said. “Because of that, he started taking my dad camping, and then it became a tradition. They found a group of friends that camped too, and then they learned how to cook their turkeys in the ground, which is a specific process of trial and error that my grandparents figured out.”
The process of cooking a turkey in the ground requires substantial amounts of tedious work. The process begins at 5:30 a.m. by digging a pit four feet deep by three feet wide. The next step is starting a fire in the pit and waiting until it burns down to coals. The turkey is then wrapped in foil fourteen times in a crisscrossed fashion, wrapped in wire and dropped into the pit. Coals are shoveled around it and then the turkey is reburied.
“It cooks from nine in the morning till about four in the afternoon, and then you dig it back up … and it’s never been anything but absolutely perfect,” Neubauer said.
Over generations, this tradition has been passed through the family and is something Neubauer “plans on doing [her] whole life”
“Every Thanksgiving, for 45 years of my life, I think there have only been two Thanksgivings we haven’t been [to the desert],” Neubauer said.
Similarly, Humsa Venkat (11) also celebrates Thanksgiving with family and food. However, since her family is vegetarian, the dining scene looks slightly different. Instead of a customary turkey centerpiece, lasagna and eggplant parmesan take the forefront. Traditional Thanksgiving desserts stay the same, but with some twists. Venkat’s mom makes pumpkin pie, a conventional Thanksgiving dessert, as well as key lime pie and chocolate chip cookies. The key lime pie and cookies, though often overshadowed by traditional pumpkin and apple desserts, are nonetheless a staple for Venkat’s family. Sides include sweet potato fries, mac and cheese and mashed potatoes.
“My mom has always been cooking from scratch, because she learned … all her recipes from her mom,” Venkat said.
Venkat’s mom starts the cooking on the morning of Thanksgiving, with some meal preparation the day before. To top the evening off, Venkat’s family takes a moment to express their gratitude.
“My family goes around and we say why we’re thankful for each other,” Venkat said. “And that’s just something special.”
For Charlize Thompson (11), a burst of physical activity is integrated in addition to the Thanksgiving feast. Every year, the morning of Thanksgiving day, she runs the Encinitas Turkey Trot with family friends.
“It’s not too big of a commitment,” Thompson said. “It’s really quick, but you get to see everyone in the community come out. You just see random people from school … who do it … It’s so chaotic too … and there’s like hundreds of people on Encinitas Boulevard, which is crazy.”
The race runs from around 8 to 9 a.m., from Gelato 101 to the Cardiff Kook statue and back in Encinitas. The event also includes a group costume contest, in which Thompson and her family friends won third place last year as “Tutu Turkeys.”
“It makes you feel better about eating so much food that day, and you kind of bond with people because, you know, if you go through something tough, you come out stronger together,” Thompson said. “And after you run, everyone’s all dead, but we’re all smiling, because we know we’re just going to relax and eat pie after.”
These traditions, similar and different in various ways, all bring unique value to a day centered around gratitude and family customs.
“I’m just grateful that my family has such a unique tradition and that my friends and their families have really learned to appreciate it,” Neubauer said. “Now it’s something that our entire group wants to do every year.
