Welcome to the sixth installment of our countdown-to-Thanksgiving series. Today we make our case for a timeless Thanksgiving craft.

 

Day Six: Hand Turkeys Please permit a little personal anecdote, here. One of the most pleasant Thanksgivings I ever spent took place about four years ago. I was living in San Francisco, and road-tripped with a few friends to visit another old friend who was living in an adorable small house in Seattle. This friend had invited over some of her own friends, for a long, jolly day of cooking, beverage-sipping, and hanging about, before a large late dinner. Since only four or five people could be actively involved in kitchen activities at one time, and since there was a typical Pacific Northwest drizzle falling from the gray, gray skies, there was much time spent sitting in the living room.

 

 

This brings me to a very common structural problem of Thanksgiving: either before or after the meal or both, there are likely to be a number of people hanging around for quite some time. If you're hosting, it behooves you to provide something to entertain them. Flag football or a long walk before dinner are traditional and lovely; copious amounts of television also seem to get the job done. At the particular Thanksgiving celebration that I went to, the hostess had set out white paper, construction paper and markers so that the guests could make hand turkeys. This could have been a hokey activity, and in some sense I'm sure it was,  but because it was not forced on us, it didn't seem too contrived. People would just kind of casually circle by and make hand turkeys as the mood struck. Just between you and me, now: drinking while making hand turkeys with your friends is fun! And writing the things you are thankful for on or inside of your turkey, while silly, is also a pretty fail-safe and feel-good way to make yourself focus on what you are thankful for. If you don't know how to make a hand turkey, perhaps on account of not having attended elementary school in the United States, you can check out a tutorial here. But N.B., it's about as 'what you see is what you get' of a craft project as there is going.

 

[Image: from Rodfather, on Flickr]