A big part of Thanksgiving dinner is indulging in the assortment of foods that are made for Thanksgiving dinner. Traditional foods include turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy. These types of food play a large role in the culture of my family’s Thanksgiving in that the absence of these foods would be out of the ordinary. Each family in my kinship group brings a different dish to contribute to the meal where we all sit around the table together and enjoy the meal in front of us. Although my Thanksgiving consists of more than just my family related by blood ties, I couldn’t imagine a holiday without the family we’ve “adopted,” our family of choice.

Kenneth J. Guest, Essentials of Cultural Anthropology (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016), Page 256.