When my wife and I were together, we hosted Thanksgiving and Christmas. I did it for a couple of years after until I decided that my kids were old enough to take over. Thanksgiving is one of two holidays that we get together in the same place. (Long story) Thanksgiving has traditionally been hosted by my youngest and we are all going there. The other traditional family gathering was started by my parents on Christmas Eve. That one will be at my first borns house. Christmas itself is the one where both wanted to stay home with their families, particularly when they were younger, so I go to one for a noon dinner (usually with ham) and the other for evening dinner with prime rib. It works out well that way. I suppose if it gets to the point were I can't drive anymore, they will have to drag my butt to their places.
On a side note... 49 years ago today JFK was assassinated just 6 days before Thanksgiving. By the time that Thanksgiving came we had witnessed the Kennedy Assassination on the 22nd, the funeral and procession on the 25th and watched live on TV as Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby. By that time we were in a state of shock and as far as I remember were pretty quiet three days later on Thanksgiving. What a week that was.
It was a strange year anyway. It started out in February when my grandmother, my mothers mother passed away. Then in June my fathers mother passed. My father said the wrong thing to his boss and got fired from his job in August. He was hired by another company just two days later but we had to quickly move from New York State to Vermont. My father and I seemed to adjust to it quickly but my sister and mother were lost for about a year. Living in a haze, as it were. I had to adjust to a public High School instead of the Catholic schools I had attended since I was 6 years old. I had to adjust to being in classes with, hang on this is a shocker,
girls. Catholic School segregated the genders after 1st grade. I assume they wanted to prevent us 2nd graders from having bad thoughts. Anyway, that took a little while to adjust to that because I was a little on the shy side at the time. Then there was the Kennedy thing in November. Oh yeah, and my father caught me smoking. Other then all that, it was a calm year.
It didn't seem like it was going to stop, but it did as much that the 60's possibly could. We had that War thing going on around that time as I recall. After a couple more assassinations, riots and general unrest I went into the service to avoid all the violence.
www.thewrap.com
reaction, but then noooooo, you had to bring up assassinations, family deaths, and job loss.
