Gratitude doesn’t always arrive on schedule; sometimes it’s a day late. Somewhere between the boiling pots on the stove, embarrassing memories being dished out, and laughter echoing off the living room walls, my family and I find our own rhythm of Thanksgiving.

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My mom is a dispatcher who often has to work holidays since she is a single parent. She has worked on Thanksgiving almost every year, helping people whose holidays may not be going as planned. She, and other first-responders like her, see the dark side to every holiday before celebrating their own. 

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While most families gather around a table on Thursday, for my brother and me, it’s just a normal day. Our traditions have developed around my mom’s line of work. As such, we usually celebrate Thanksgiving on Friday. 

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We don’t make a huge amount of food, only enough to feed the three of us and fill the fridge with leftovers for the week, but we all lend a helping hand in making it. My mom and I take on most of the cooking, while my brother helps with what he can, learns for the coming year, and taste tests everything. 

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Our kitchen isn’t very big, and there isn’t much counter space, so it can get rather cramped. Sometimes we take turns cooking one or two dishes at a time in the kitchen, all while shuffling around our three dogs, who are just begging for a scrap to fall.

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We then fill up our plates, sit down on the couch in the living room, and watch Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. However, it usually ends up just being background noise, as we start talking about all sorts of things. 

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Eventually, these conversations all lead to the same nagging and embarrassing questions about my love life, or if my brother has any crushes, which usually leads to embarrassing memories being dished out for dessert.

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The short movie is over by the time we’re done eating, and then the real fun starts–setting up and decorating the Christmas tree. 

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I have a rule in our house. No matter how much my mom wants to set up the tree early, until Thanksgiving is over, she can’t even touch an ornament. I think it should be given its time as a holiday, instead of being outshone by string lights and the earworm of Christmas carols and songs–though those have their time too. 

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As a result of this rule, my mom named the day after Thanksgiving as fair game. So we switch from one holiday to the other on the same day. 

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We bring down the ornaments from the attic, each one holding a memory or a part of our lives we may have forgotten, and start hanging them up. We then play a new movie on the TV, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. It is a tradition that has always stayed constant in my family, and by the end of December, we will have watched it at least eight times over. 

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I’m not entirely certain when this tradition started, but it’s gotten to the point that we stop whatever part of the decorating process we’re on just to quote our favorite scenes, word-for-word, as they’re happening. Then we laugh about it afterward.

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That movie has never gotten old, and as we watch it over and over again, I remember all the holidays that came before: the old traditions, the new, and the ones we never outgrew. 

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Those memories, the moments when I feel that connection and nostalgia pulling at my heartstrings, are what I’m most thankful for every year. Not the food, the tree, or even the movie, but the connection of the three within my family. 

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What I’ve come to learn is that you can be thankful no matter the day, and that what really matters in the equation of Thanksgiving is people you feel connected to, the laughter and memories you’ll hold onto for next year’s dishing session, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.