"I would say the stuffing, and what is that red fruit thing?" he asked.
"Cranberry sauce?"
"Yes."
This was not exactly what I was looking for. I was looking for memories of our big, roistering backyard touch football games after dinner, the charades contests around the fireplace, and our recitations of old American classic poems. Of course, Joey would be more likely to remember those things if any of them had actually happened.
I got out some of our photo albums to review scenes of Thanksgiving gaiety. It turned out there weren't any. There was a blurred picture of a dog darting around a corner with something that might have been a stolen turkey leg, but that was about it.
Prompted by my own life-embracing curiosity, I began canvassing people from other families to find out what they do after Thanksgiving dinner. The first responses were less than promising: "There's nobody here named Frank Givings."
Then I talked to a woman named Lynne Glover, who told me her family puts on a kind of variety show every year after Thanksgiving dinner in Pittsburgh. Guests discuss their acts for months, and Lynne even prints up programs.
If you come from a mostly shy clan, the family follies may not work for you. But the folks I talked to say it's still a good idea to plan something. And as you do, keep the following principles in mind:
SOME KIND OF MOTOR ACTIVITY IS A GOOD IDEA
It doesn't have to be kick boxing, but even working together on a 1,000-piece puzzle involves a physical component that takes the pressure off a food-addled brain.LET THE COOK SIT
If there has been one primary cook, a person who has wrestled with the bird and several of the other major dishes, that person should be given a comfortable seat and no further duties.LOOK FOR GAMES AND PROJECTS THAT WILL APPEAL TO A WIDE RANGE OF AGES
The idea is to get the young person with the Game Boy interacting with the old person who has never used a hand-held computer.ALLOW EQUAL TIME
If there are to be recitals of any kind, let them be democratic and let no one person, adult or child, perform for more than five minutes. Nobody should have to listen to a one-hour-and-20-minute cello concerto.KEEP IT SIMPLE
You're dealing with victims of stuffing stupor here. If the rules of a game take more than three minutes to lay out, you might as well be teaching water buffalo to play backgammon.DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU
Remember: A happily idiosyncratic family is better off than an uncomfortably normative one. If your family has a bunch of stuff it's comfortable doing on Thanksgiving--a few people throw a Frisbee while others discuss the implications of proton decay--and if that works for everybody, why buy into somebody else's vision?These guidelines should be immediately committed to memory. Or, you can simply try out any of the activities that follow, each of which has been carefully selected by FAMILYFUN magazine. Please note that "Hit the Mummy" does not require an actual mummy and that no mummies were hit in the making of this article.
Colin McEnroe is a writer and radio talk show host in Hartford, Connecticut.
