Recruiting 101: Thanksgiving Traditions

Hey everybody! Welcome back to Recruiting 101. We have a little bit of just a short special today. I’m part of our DEI committee and so is Kierra and we just wanted to share a little bit more about our cultures and different ways that we’ve celebrated different holidays growing up and now as we do in the present.

So our intention and goals of our DEI committees are to create awareness and conversations about other cultures and different ways that we all celebrate. So this video specifically is about Thanksgiving. So I want to hear all about how you celebrated growing up here and what you do now. Any traditions around food gathering, movies you watch, anything.

Yeah. So growing up, every year we go to my grandma’s house. She is always in charge of the Turkey and the mashed potatoes and gravy, and she always makes a homemade gravy, which is something I would always look forward to. And then we also have other people bringing food. So kind of like a potluck style as everyone brings either an appetizer or something to contribute.

So that’s where we always went. So it was all my aunts and uncles and cousins and we would all go and just hang out at my grandma’s house, usually watch Sunday football or Thursday night football. Nope. We usually watch Thursday night Football. And we just get together. It’s really a really great time just because I don’t get to see my family that often.

My traditions have changed a little bit since then. So I’ll talk about that after. But what did you do growing up around the Thanksgiving holiday? Yeah, pretty similar to you. We would always have, we had a lot of family that lived out of state, so we had a little bit of a smaller group, just like grandparents and some aunts and uncles that lived nearby.

But pretty same. We would have Turkey, stuffing was always my favorite growing up. And we also had this cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, green beans were always my favorite too. And this really, really good carrot dish that we had. So that was always fun to do that. And then yeah, just kind of watch Thursday night Football, maybe Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving special was on tv.

So I always loved that and I think it was just a really nice day to relax. You just eat a lot of food and then you just sit on the couch for the rest of the day and hang out with your grandparents and your family. So it was always really fun growing up. I know our traditions are a little different this year.

We’re just kind of split between two families and just kind of who’s in town at the time. I feel like as you get older, a lot of people do things just with their partners instead of like big family gatherings. So it’s definitely changed a lot, but definitely always something that I look forward to.

And having those days off work just to spend time with family and relax is really nice. Yeah. After graduation when I moved away from Wisconsin, my traditions definitely have changed. So I now go to Dallas for Thanksgiving with my boyfriend and we celebrate it with his family. So I still come home for Christmas, but my Thanksgivings are a little bit different just because I am so far away now.

I moved to Colorado so it’s not a easy trip home. It’s like a 16 hour car ride. So unless I’m flying, I am not driving. Mm-hmm. And so, yeah. It’s a little different. But I would say the craziest part was going somewhere warm for Thanksgiving was different for me because I’m very used to cold weather.

Mm-hmm. So it’s kind of a nice change because I don’t like the cold. But I would say it’s just changed a lot as far as my tradition. So what about you? What has changed for you since you’ve gotten older? I think something that’s really interesting is I never did Friendsgiving when I was younger.

It seems like that’s more of an adult thing, or kind of like college and older. Yeah. So I think that’s been really fun to get together with girlfriends or just have like a double date or a whole group of people come over to celebrate. So I think that’s a really good time. And I know you just had your Friendsgiving recently too, so it seems very popular.

Yeah. Yeah, I definitely would say once you get to college I think it’s more common. I think that’s when we first started our Friendsgiving, which is just a really fun time and the food is amazing. So, I mean, you can’t really go wrong. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s always fun to get together and I’m excited.

But thank you for sharing about your Thanksgiving traditions, and I know we’ll be back in a couple weeks to talk about our Christmas traditions too. Yes! Sounds great. Thank you so much for joining us today. Remember to check out all of our content on talentinsights.hirewell.com and follow us on LinkedIn for more content.