I’ve been chatting a lot with a friend who grew up jehovas witness and therefore didn’t celebrate any holidays, and she was like “having been through visiting with a lot of friends and exes, y’all think you don’t have traditions but you DO because I’d try to suggest something and people would be horrified”

I threw A FIT when our families (extended) decided to do Thanksgiving dinner at a cafeteria. This was when I was in college.

I am still the biggest Traditionalist in our family WRT Thanksgiving dinner and watching the parade and if we are all together playing board or card games and watching football somewhere in the house. I do not care one whit about Christmas dinner. I DO care about having Christmas decorations up and at some point watching certain Christmas shows, but not so much about how the actual day goes.

That's an interesting perspective, meara. I feel like my family didn't have much in the way of tradition - we'd celebrate every year but maybe very differently from one year to the next. Although when I was a young child we were probably more consistent, but none of that really carried on to be something we have to do, or not that I can think of

Y'all. My boss is trying to tell me how to do my job and I am irrationally angry about it.

Rationally, I realize this is him doing his job. But still.

I've been the quiet but firm voice of "nobody actually likes eating this so let's start a new tradition" in my extended family for YEARS. The trick is to only replace one menu item at a time, so every year still *feels* like exactly what we ate last year minus that one thing nobody will actually miss.

Micromanaging sucks.

What do you make, Jessica, and how do you change it up? What's your ultimate dinner goal?

Micromanaging sucks.

I know this was in response to -t, but I'm laughing because actually micromanaging my family is NECESSARY and FUN in order to get what I want at holiday dinners.

What do you make, Jessica, and how do you change it up? What's your ultimate dinner goal?

This year would have been the ultimate victory (duck instead of turkey at Thanksgiving) if we'd had the chance to gather, but mostly it's been a subtle shift away from dairy-heavy white foods and towards a wider variety of vegetables. (Nobody likes creamed onions, Dad! They don't make good leftovers!)

Agile works better than anything else, IME (which is 20+ years in the tech world mostly as a writer). You just have to be real flexible about what it means and be all up in everyone's business.