I don’t celebrate Christmas, and to top it all off I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving either. To be fair, I’m Jewish, so obviously celebrating Christmas is totally out of the equation for me — but Thanksgiving is different. Thanksgiving is something that as a family we just don’t particularly celebrate. Instead, we go to Disney. There really isn’t a crazy reason for us giving up on the holiday and no longer celebrating, we just decided as a whole we’d rather be at Disney.
Having to deal with people harping on me for not celebrating Christmas is one thing, but when I tell them that my Thanksgiving is spent at Disney, it’s a whole different thing. People try to persuade me into thinking that what I’m doing is wrong because it doesn’t conform to their idea of how that holiday should be celebrated, and truthfully, it gets tiring to hear. My family as a whole has never really cared for Thanksgiving or for taking the whole day to prepare all of the food that we don’t particularly like to eat anyway. We decided to do something as a family that we all have always enjoyed, and that’s going to Disney for a few days — who wouldn’t love that though?
When everyone goes home for the break, all I see on my social media feeds is them with family stating what they are thankful for. My feed, on the other hand, is filled with my annual picture of me with Chewbacca and whatever other various pictures I take while I’m in the parks. My Thanksgiving meal changes every year, too. It’s never your traditional turkey, stuffing (unpopular opinion: I HATE stuffing) and mashed potatoes; instead, it’s some random park food at the first restaurant we see because we’re all starving. I truly believe last year I had chicken nuggets for my Thanksgiving dinner…I’m not lying. My day is spent riding the rides and dealing with the crowds of Disney. We start our day early in the morning and after several hours and way too many coffees we go to sleep and do it all again the next day. It’s truly the only way I’d want to spend my Thanksgiving.
You don’t have to celebrate a holiday just because everyone else does. I learned this growing up, primarily because I’m Jewish so I don’t celebrate Easter or Christmas or any of the other major holidays and kids always thought that was weird even though it was normal to me. I’m grateful that my family has created our own Thanksgiving tradition. Fighting the crowds in Disney has become our Thanksgiving norm, and I am perfectly okay with that.
All images provided by the author