5 Quick Things #387 🦃

family estates, Thanksgiving food, seasonal puzzles, & holiday music

Hi there,

We’re officially on Thanksgiving break, and we couldn’t be happier around here! Do we still have essays to grade? Yes. Do some of us such as, say, the fifteen-year-old sitting next to me who’s easily distracted by every shiny thing around him still have Spanish homework to complete and Aristotle to read? Also yes. But powering through all this now means Future Us can enjoy cooking and baking next week with leisure while mocking the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in the background, waiting on the dog show to begin.

I love this time of year. I can’t believe next week is already Thanksgiving (maybe that’s because we’re still running the A/C and I’m currently still in shorts and a tank top? …c’mon, Central Texas), but I’m Here with a Capital H for the holidays.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Catching the Thanksgiving Turkey, by Grandma Moses (1943) #

---

5 Quick Things ☕️

1. In this week’s Drink With a Friend episode, I’m chatting with Autumn Kern, a mom of four and homeschooler, and all-around thinker and reader. She shares with me a favorite beloved book (one of my favorites, too, though not from childhood) and a recent one from adulthood—one I’ve never heard of.

2. Earlier this week I shared a short-and-sweet Advent reminder: it begins not this Sunday but the next (November 30)! As I said a few days ago, just as I say every year, here’s your gentle nudge that the last thing you should be during this season is overwhelmed. Remember, Advent, like all the seasons of the liturgical calendar, is a gift, not a burden.

3. This time last year I was sure adhering to a carnivore way of eating would make the saddest Thanksgiving feast ever. This year, and I’m so used to eating carnivore that it wouldn’t cross my mind to endure the carb crash and sugar hangover in the name of tradition. I won’t force my extended family to eat the way I do (don’t be That Guy), but my plan is to eat what I want at the family gathering, then enjoy cooking my own feast sometime that week at home. Not 100% sure what I’m going to make yet, but lots of these ideas are bookmarked, in particular the pumpkin cheesecake.

4. I really appreciated

Lane Scott

’s honest reflections on the slow death of family compounds as large houses are being sold by older generations in the name of ease (which is, in many ways, understandable). What does it look like to have a “matriarchal” home where your adult children and grandchildren can gather together? It’s been on my mind a lot, too: “Many millennial moms no longer go over the river and through the wood for holidays, but instead stay put and attempt to host multigenerational gatherings in our 1400 square-foot homes. There are definitely some upsides to this, as I no longer have to navigate busy holiday travel with young children. But one of my long-term goals is to establish a home and property large enough to host my children when they have children of their own.”

5. And finally, keeping up with my November practice of listing seven things I’m grateful for: new coffee mugs that are shaped just-right, the conversations I’ve gotten to enjoy for the podcast this fall, seasonal puzzles on the coffee table, my pillow cube (a birthday gift from this year), the narrow end table in the living room made from a tree stump by Kyle, my green velvet chair next to it, and our lovely little-but-growing parish community.

---

Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📚

Christmas Around the Fire: Stories, Essays, and Poems for the Season of Christ’s Birth, by Ryan N.S. Topping (our next book club read!)

---

---

Quotable 💬

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

- G.K. Chesterton

---

When do you start listening to Christmas music? 🎶

I realize I should have rephrased this question to “holiday” music, because Advent and Christmas music are two different categories. For me, there’s the theoretical answer and the practical answer. Theoretically, I hold off on holiday music until the first day of Advent; Christmas music after Mass on Christmas Eve. In practice, an Advent song gets a play or two starting around the week of Thanksgiving, and Christmas music in the house (because I mean, I can’t control Last Christmas already making its rounds at Home Depot 🤢) starts up sometime mid-December.

I care about traditional best practices, but I’m also not a purist.

• Day after Thanksgiving: 50%

• November 1 (or earlier): 15%

• Advent, Day 1: 14%

• December 1: 11%

• Christmas Eve: 6%

• I don’t: 5%

Find next week’s poll here.

---

Come to Scotland in 2026! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

I’d love you to join us for next summer’s pilgrimage: this time we’re going to Scotland to witness the beauty of the Highlands. We’ll wander through the Isle of Skye, spend a day with sheepdogs at a real working farm, sample some Scottish whiskey, walk the end of Fife’s Pilgrim’s Way into St. Andrews, go to the actual Highland Games, and much more. Your family is welcome to join mine! We’d love to have you.

Rosslyn Chapel

---

Quick Links 🔗

• 📐Create your own Rule of Life

• 🎧 Listen to A Drink With a Friend

• 📖 Read my books

• 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Join the next pilgrimage: Scotland!

---

---

Question(s) For You to Ponder… 🤔

What are three small things you’re grateful for?

---

Have a great weekend,

- Tsh

p.s. - It’s bring anything but your backpack to school day.