On Christmas Day last year, I was waiting in line at a Chinese buffet for some General Tso's chicken and steamed rice.
That day marked two milestones in my life. The first time I ate a Christmas dinner outside of my home and the first time I celebrated Christmas with just my 74-year-old grandpa, whom I've lived with since I was 8-years-old.
I bring this up because it's November 10, which means Thanksgiving, a holiday traditionally built on a large family gathering with lots and lots of home-cooked food and lots of relatives you rarely see, is coming up in a couple of weeks.
And for the majority of my 22 years, I've had the privilege of having that type of holiday experience for almost every major holiday, as I'm sure the majority of people have.
But as my immediate family gets smaller -- whether it's relatives passing or moving away -- and my grandpa gets older, dining out on holidays is becoming the best option for us during the holidays.
Has anyone experienced this? It's one of the weirdest feelings in the world, especially when you go from home-cooked meals with family members surrounding you to chicken lo mein served out of a steamtable with bored waitresses refilling my soda. As I ate my Chinese food last Christmas, I couldn't help but feel like the whole concept of my family had changed severely.
After my grandma passed away a couple years ago, my grandpa didn't want to deal with the hassle that comes with preparing a big Christmas dinner -- and understandably so. We took home-cooked approach on Thanksgiving last year, and it turned out fine, but when you're feeding at the most three people, making a whole lot of food just seems like a time-waster.
Hence, the comfort and ease with eating at a restaurant on the holidays.
Last week, my grandpa called and we got to talking about this year's Thanksgiving dinner options. If we weren't going to cook, I was at least hoping for a nice restaurant where people would actually serve us food. He suggested we spend Thanksgiving at a diner -- perhaps a step-up from a buffet, but a diner nonetheless.
I didn't understand. If someone wanted to eat at a restaurant on the holidays, why not pick a nice restaurant?
Then it started to make sense to me. My family dynamic has changed, yes, but my vision of what a family should be hadn't, unfortunately. Though it's just me, my uncle and my grandpa as far as immediate family is concerned, I still was expecting us to live up to this standard of a large family feast with relatives from all over coming to congregate.
Though it would be nice to have all the Colemans from Seattle, Las Vegas and Mississippi up for the holidays, circumstances make it tough to do so for all of us.
My grandpa, on the other hand, doesn't need to dine in a nice restaurant or have a big home-cooked meal in order to celebrate a holiday with his family -- even if his family just consists of me on that day.
Every family is different and has different traditions. Some are big and celebrate home-cooked meals and invite the whole extended family out for a big shindig. But others, like mine, are smaller and celebrate in simpler ways.
No doubt, changes to a family unit are tough to go through. Relatives might pass away or move to different parts of the country. Change is hard -- even if it's something as simple as a holiday meal -- but it's vital for personal growth.
What I've realized is that it doesn't matter if your family doesn't celebrate holidays the same way a big family might celebrate. It's family that matters most in the equation. You've got to be thankful for what you have -- while you still have it.
