Thanksgiving history began in 1621 when the Plymouth colonists and the local natives shared a feast celebrating their new relationship. Since then, Thanksgiving Day has become a time when families get together and celebrate their own traditions. A tradition I know best of course is the one that our family celebrates.

While typically Thanksgiving celebrations involve a Thanksgiving dinner, the variations between families make each Thanksgiving day an individual experience. For each of us the way our families celebrate Thanksgiving dinner seems pretty typical.

Our family gets together early in the afternoon and nibble on a few light snacks such as chips and dip or a veggie tray. We drink a little red wine drink a little red wine -- or at least the adults do. The children drinking ginger ale base punch. We tell our stories and remember past Thanksgiving Days. Speaking of red wine, there are a couple of people in the family who keep insisting that it should be white wine with poultry. However the consensus is if they feel that strongly about white wine than they should bring their own.

For some reason the dinner at our house is served around the middle of the afternoon. A theory is that because it's such a big dinner we want to get a good early start on it. The reality is because we are a free meal a day kind of household we don't want to waste trap types having both breakfast and lunch so we opt for a small breakfast, get lunch, and let our appetites really build for the Thanksgiving turkey, mashed potatoes, carrots, roasted parsnips, mounds of dressing, rivers of gravy, cranberry sauce, and for some reason mashed turnip.

A dear friend of mine shared this with me and I am publishing it here with her permission:

"Regarding your own traditions, our Thanksgiving dinner always begins with a favorite recollection. This recollection is of grandma's rhubarb wine. I never had the pleasure of tasting it because I was a child time but according to history it was very eerie good however what we remember is not the case of the line, what we remember are the courts flying over the dinner table. Grandma made a wind in the fall and laid the bottles on their side on the buffet. It's The corks from drying out. Over the fall the rhubarb wine would work and build up pressure and from time to time the pressure would drive the cork out like a little rocket. The dining room to save special occasions such as Thanksgiving dinner which is why they were rarely any incidents involving corks all fall. However it was a guarantee that during the meal Couric would come flying past a dire diner".

Every year as we get around the Thanksgiving turkey, we all lift a glass of red wine or punch and toast grandma and her rhubarb wine.