While in today’s day and age most people don’t celebrate a ‘harvest’, Thanksgiving is still a day to commemorate everything that we have been blessed with or are grateful for. Every person’s celebration is unique to their family. These traditions are important to each individual because it’s a time for families and/or friends to come together and celebrate one another in addition to the things they’ve overcome in the past year. 

Thanksgiving is a holiday dedicated to acknowledging all the things a person is thankful for. Everyone that chooses to celebrate Thanksgiving has their own traditions that are unique to them. Especially at Arcadia High School, there are, unsurprisingly, many different Thanksgiving traditions amongst the students. 

“Usually my family just eats duck together in the evening,” states Nathan Liu, a junior at Arcadia High School (AHS). 

This is the way he has celebrated Thanksgiving for as long as he can remember. He can count on this yearly occurrence as he knows that the tradition of eating duck with his family won’t change in the coming years. His experience, however, is different from other students at AHS.

“My dad makes dinner for us and we stay home for the day,” comments junior Emily Kwon. 

Thanksgiving, for her family, means enjoying the togetherness this holiday brings. It’s the little things like these dinners that Emily enjoys because she gets to spend quality time with her family which is often taken for granted. 

“Some relatives come over and we all say grace at the table and then we eat the dinner that my mom and aunties prepared for us,”  adds senior Odessa Hairapetian. 

Seeing her extended family is what matters most to her on this day. During the height of COVID-19, it was challenging to get together with anyone other than immediate family members. Meeting with cousins, aunts, and uncles is priceless for her, seeing as how those kinds of interactions were heavily restricted over the past year. 

“On Thanksgiving, during the day, we start off by preparing the food for the Thanksgiving dinner. Throughout the rest of the day, we play games such as Jenga, Monopoly, or Apples to Apples until the dinner is ready. During the meal we say thanks and ‘dig in’ and after we all pass out,”  says junior Camila Cosme.

Lasting pretty much the whole day, her Thanksgiving consists of giving thanks and making sure each person feels loved and appreciated. It’s a very important aspect of their celebration because sometimes, thanking our loved ones can be easily forgotten.

Photographic Courtesy of ARKANSASTIMES.COM