Create a Simple Thanksgiving This Year

Inside: Tips on how to create a simple Thanksgiving this year.

Thanksgiving is a beautiful time of reflection and practicing gratitude. It’s also often a time of overwhelm and stress.

The pressure of an extravagant, over-the-top Thanksgiving can often overshadow the true meaning of getting together and feeling grateful for our blessings.

tasty dishes and wine on table served for thanksgiving dinner

Use the following tips to practice a simple Thanksgiving this year:

Simple Thanksgiving Planning

While Thanksgiving can be a big, elegant event, it can also be a fun, flexible gathering of family and friends. This year, practice the art of delegation and simplicity in your planning.

Often the holidays get overwhelming because we don’t have a plan. Or, our plan is so complicated that we can’t possibly carry it out as a single person within a confined time frame! This is when the holiday becomes more work and stress than relaxation and connection.

You need a plan, and you need a simple plan. Keep the day flexible. Times are good, but they don’t have to be set in stone.

Traditions are good, but you don’t have to do every single one on your list.

Talk to your family. What are their favorite traditions? What are their favorite activities? Focus on those and not all the extras. You don’t have to have a Pinterest/Instagram Thanksgiving to have a memorable time with those that matter most to you.

Also, as you meal plan for the week, make sure to incorporate a meal plan for leftovers. This will make your life so much easier, and it will help your food budget recover from the large meal!

Simple Thanksgiving budget

As part of your planning for Thanksgiving, you need a simple Thanksgiving budget. Before you buy a single thing, set a clear spending limit and stick to it!

There’s nothing more stressful than entering the holiday season with spending more than you have in your account for your celebrations.

Have a budget for:

Food
Beverages
Decorations
Paper products
Activities / Traditions
Items you will inevitably forget

Simple Thanksgiving Food

The biggest solution to a simple Thanksgiving is to simplify the food!

You don’t have to have a 10-course (or even 20-course) meal to make it memorable and delicious. Ask your family what their must-have dishes are for the meal, and stick to those and ONE main meat (if you eat meat).

Also, you don’t have to cook a turkey. I know, I know. Hear me out. My husband and I made lamb for nearly a decade for Thanksgiving. Why? Well, because we really don’t like roasted turkey. Lamb is expensive, so it was a special treat for our holiday.

We once had a friend so appalled that we weren’t making turkey that we asked him to bring one. He did! That was the beginning of our fried turkey days.

To that same point, encourage a pot-luck-style dinner. Guests normally don’t mind bringing one dish to contribute to the masses. There’s so much beauty in a properly executed pot-luck-style meal. My favorite is that the clean-up is so easy! Everyone takes their own leftovers, leaving a whole lot more space in your fridge the day after Thanksgiving!

Also, don’t be afraid to keep the food stupid simple. If people want green beans or corn, it’s OK to use frozen or canned options. Make your life easy. Simple food is good.

It’s also OK to use the boxed mac n cheese your kids likely prefer to the based casserole type! Stop fighting it, and make your life easy.

Simple Thanksgiving decorations

Thanksgiving isn’t about who has the most elegant table, no matter what Instagram or Pinterest tell you.

I don’t remember any of my past extravagant attempts at Thanksgiving centerpieces and decorations. I do remember which friends laughed the loudest, when we fried a turkey in the road because it was the safest location, and when we were too far from family so we hosted an international Thanksgiving feast with my work friends from other countries.

Keep your Thanksgiving decorations simple. Use what you already have, like fall foilage, candles, tablecloths, and simple tableware.

Get the kids involved and have them create fun decor to decorate the table. One year, my daughter found a leaf stencil, cut out a whole bunch of construction paper leaves, and we wrote what we were all thankful for on them. It’s a tradition she’s carried out for several years. Children are quite creative if we give them the time and space to do so.

pumpkin on brown wooden surface as simple Thanksgiving decor

Teaching gratefulness

I really enjoy using the season of Thanksgiving to teach my children the practice of gratitude. During November, we’ve embraced different traditions that help us practice gratitude.

Here are a few of my favorite traditions to practice gratitude:

Start a gratitude jar
Make a gratitude tablecloth (we did this project this year at my girls’ school)
Say three “gratefuls” before bed each night
Have everyone at the table write down one “grateful” and then read them aloud