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Student Opinion

10 Prompts for Talking and Writing About Thanksgiving

What are your Turkey Day traditions? What are you grateful for this year? What is your favorite Thanksgiving memory? And more.

By Natalie Proulx

Every school day, we post a writing prompt based on a New York Times article for teenagers to respond to. And every November, we ask about Thanksgiving.

This year, we’ve decided to round up some of these Thanksgiving-related prompts in one post. Below, you’ll find 10 questions that can be jumping-off points for writing or discussion in the classroom, or conversation starters for the dinner table, such as: What are your Turkey Day traditions? What are your favorite side dishes? Do you participate in Black Friday shopping? And do we need to rethink this holiday?

Each prompt we include has links to a related Times article, essay, photo or graphic, and many of these prompts are still open for comment for students who are 13 or older.

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

1. What are your Turkey Day traditions?

Every family celebrates Thanksgiving differently. What are your holiday traditions?

Look at these photos and videos to see what 15 families from all different backgrounds across the country cook on this day that speaks to their heritage. Then discuss the questions from our related Picture Prompt : How do you and your family or community celebrate Thanksgiving? What does the food you serve or the things you do that day say about where you are from?

Or, read about how the Turkey Trot became a Thanksgiving tradition and then use these questions as a guide to talk about the activities you do on Thanksgiving and in the days that follow.

2. What has been your most memorable Thanksgiving?

In 2017, we asked teenagers to tell us about some of their favorite Thanksgiving memories . Here is what Kate from Wilmington, N.C., wrote:

The Silver household celebrates Thanksgiving a little differently than the typical family. We spend our holiday roasting ducks instead of turkey, and steaming dumplings rather than sweet potatoes. I’ll never forget the first time my family decided to try something a little different for dinner. My dad had no idea what he was doing and couldn’t figure out how to separate the skin of the duck from the meat. My mom then had the crazy idea to use a bike pump to solve our problem. Since everyone else in my family was disgusted by the idea of pumping a dead duck full of air, I ended up having to do it. That was definitely one of the weirdest half-hours of my life. Despite it being an unpleasant chore, my family has continued to use a bike pump every year since. Although my friends may give me odd looks when I tell them we aren’t serving the usual “Turkey dinner,” I’m glad we have our own traditions. It’s what makes my Thanksgiving holidays so memorable.

Students, share a “snapshot” of your most memorable Thanksgiving. What makes that day stand out in your mind?

3. What are your favorite side dishes?

What do people eat on Thanksgiving in your state? Take a look at the map above, which shows the most “distinct” Thanksgiving side dish by state as determined by the number of Google searches during the week of Thanksgiving from 2004 to 2013, relative to the number of searches in other states. Have you ever tried any of these foods?

You can use the questions from our What’s Going On in This Graph? feature as a jumping-off point for talking or writing about your favorite Thanksgiving Day side dishes:

What do you notice?

What do you wonder?

What impact does this have on you and your community?

What’s going on in this map? Write a catchy headline that captures the map’s main idea.

4. Who and what are you grateful for this year?

Thanksgiving, for many people, is a time to share what they are grateful for this year. Join hundreds of other teenagers in telling us what you are thankful for by responding to our Picture Prompt “ Gratitude ” from 2021.

Or, answer to the more recent question “ Who Is Someone You Would Like to Thank? ” It might even inspire you to send a handwritten thank-you note to a person you appreciate.

5. What does this holiday mean to you?

In this special Thanksgiving Student Opinion question from 2019, we selected four articles from around The Times, each of which takes on a different perspective about Thanksgiving — one on connecting with others, another on eating, a third on celebrating the holiday as a refugee and a fourth on challenging the myths around the first Thanksgiving.

Read excerpts from each of them and then share your response to the question — What does Thanksgiving mean to you ? — here .

6. Do we need to rethink Thanksgiving?

In 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic, a racial reckoning and a series of climate disasters, we asked teenagers, How should we honor Thanksgiving this year? How can we hold the complicated history and commodification of this holiday alongside celebrating with family and friends?

We think those questions are still relevant today. In “ How to Do Thanksgiving With Less Waste ,” Priya Krishna writes that these issues can feel daunting to tackle but that “food — and the Thanksgiving meal — is a great place to start.”

Students, read the article and then discuss the questions in our related Student Opinion prompt, “ Should We Rethink Thanksgiving? ”

7. What will you talk about at Thanksgiving dinner?

Do you look forward to gathering with family members and friends around the Thanksgiving dinner table? Or does the thought fill you with dread?

If the latter, try brainstorming some things to talk about ahead of time. These two prompts can help:

In “ What Will You Talk About on Thanksgiving? ” read about ways you can share gratitude “without rolling your eyes” and some suggestions from the NPR interviewer Terry Gross for having better conversations . Then, use our prompts to come up with some things you can say to start good discussions on Thanksgiving Day.

And in a time of political polarization, not to mention a recent election, it might help to have a game plan for talking with people who have views different from yours. Even though our prompt “ Will Your Family Members Disagree With Each Other About Politics This Thanksgiving? ” was written after the 2016 election, we think the questions are still relevant in 2022.

8. What Thanksgiving story could this image tell?

Now for something a little different: Use your imagination to write the opening of a Thanksgiving-themed short story, poem or memoir inspired by this illustration. You can read other students’ writing here .

You and your family or classmates can also use this image for an Exquisite Corpse-type story . One person starts by writing or saying aloud the first line of a story based on the image, and then another person adds on and so on.

9. Do you participate in Black Friday?

Look at the photograph above. What emotions do you feel as you look at the faces in that crowd?

Have you ever been in a crowd waiting for a store to open after Thanksgiving? If so, what was it like? Would you do it again?

If you want to debate the merits and discuss the mayhem of Black Friday shopping, you can find questions here and here to get you started.

10. What, if anything, is hard about the holidays for you?

Finally, we know that Thanksgiving isn’t easy for everyone.

“Family drama around the holidays is such a cliché that I can probably name a dozen movies off the top of my head that start with the premise of a moderately dysfunctional clan getting together for Thanksgiving or Christmas,” begins a recent Parenting newsletter.

Though the writer is addressing adults, holidays can be stressful for teenagers, too. What, if anything, has you worried about the coming Thanksgiving holiday, or any other seasonal family or community gathering? How will you cope? What tips can you offer others for making family celebrations go smoothly?

Weigh in on our recent Picture Prompt “ Holiday Stress .”

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.

Natalie Proulx joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2017 after working as an English language arts teacher and curriculum writer. More about Natalie Proulx

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Thanksgiving — Thanksgiving is the Best Holiday

Thanksgiving is The Best Holiday

• Categories: Thanksgiving

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Words: 789 |

Published: Aug 24, 2023

Words: 789 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Historical roots and cultural significance, familial traditions and bonding, gratitude as the central theme, generosity and giving back, culinary delights and shared experiences, conclusion: thanksgiving's enduring appeal.

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Thanksgiving Reflections: A Time for Gratefulness

Jay Sekulow

This Thanksgiving, it is more important than ever to take time to reflect on the true meaning of this important holiday.

Thanksgiving is a truly American holiday. It was instituted by President George Washington by a Proclamation on October 3, 1789, setting aside November 26th as a national day of thanksgiving. It commemorated the first Thanksgiving, where our forefathers gathered to celebrate God’s blessings on our non-yet-formed nation. Presidents have continued the tradition to this day (now the fourth Thursday in November), reflecting on the year and the bounties it brought and giving thanks to Almighty God. In our own way, every family gathered together this day participates in this solemn reflection as they celebrate their bounty, their families, and their God.

As I think about the history of this day and the state of our country, I could not help but reflect on the words of President Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863 . Despite the turmoil and division of his time, President Lincoln realized for how much there was still to be thankful.

Here’s an excerpt from President Lincoln’s proclamation:

“It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.”

In our own time of struggle and division there is much for which I am grateful.

Like President Lincoln, I am ever thankful for the many blessings that the Lord has provided to our nation and to our families.

I am thankful for a strong and resolute nation. Radical Islamic jihadists have tried to destroy us, and they have failed. They have tried to use our beneficence to pervert the promise of a better life here by radicalizing those we have welcomed. We know our enemies will not quit and that is why our nation must remain vigilant.

I am thankful that our nation has largely been spared the persecution and violence that plagues the globe. ISIS has killed thousands on account of their Christian faith. Genocidal jihadists commit unspeakable atrocities against Christians in the Middle East. Europe has faced wave after wave of radical Islamic terror. Yet even we face the hardships of these tragedies here at home. Turkey has seized an American pastor on false charges, denying him his rights and his family time with their father. We continue to battle across the globe for American Pastor Andrew Brunson, including recently before Congress .

I am also deeply thankful for you – ACLJ members. Without your hard work, unending support, constant vigilance, and faithful prayers we would not be able to do the work we do. We could not fight for the rights of persecuted Christians and the unborn.

As I celebrate Thanksgiving with my family, thanking God for his many blessings for my family and our nation – on behalf of the entire ACLJ family, I  want to wish you and yours a very happy and blessed Thanksgiving.