Springbreaksgiving

What Even Is Entertaining?

When my husband and I watch shows like Fixer Upper and House Hunters, we are always struck by the number of times we hear, “Oh! This would be great for entertaining!” I don’t know if it’s just a certain type of super extroverted personality that gets cast for television shows or if we are just seriously out of the norm, but entertaining others is not a regular function of my house. Sure, we have people over every now and again. But “entertaining” is definitely not tops on our list of activities. Maybe that’s actually because my housekeeping skills can be categorized as “disastrous.” But they’d stay that way even if I did have a sweet island in my kitchen perfect for chatting over finger foods while the guys grilled steaks on our stellar deck. (Complete with an outdoor kitchen of course). And that last sentence was a little bit sexist, but also true.

However, I do get the allure of entertaining. I love the sounds of the whole family filling the house. I love spending time with our families and friends, and it always leaves me with a sense of satisfaction knowing people left my house after a good time. It’s always like 100 degrees in my house after a group of visitors leaves, but I truly do enjoy it. Maybe there’s lots of people who are better homemakers than I, or those who are better than me at actually planning and scheduling things, or are just more social. Maybe they truly do entertain frequently, but I don’t feel like I know any of those people. Are y’all out there hosting get-togethers that you don’t even post on Facebook?!

The truth is, I wish I hosted friends and family more often, but I truly “entertain” only four times per year. I have three kids, so 75% of those gatherings are birthday parties. The one other time I fill my home with people is for Springbreaksgiving. My made-up, totally unnecessary, definitely not mandatory, only actually important to me holiday. (In my head right now I’m legit singing “It’s the most wonderful time of the year…” I don’t think that’s what that song’s about!)

The History of Springbreaksgiving

It all started my last year living away at college. My roommate and I decided to host a Thanksgiving meal for our friends before everyone left for actual Thanksgiving break, and I loved it. I loved cooking for everyone, I loved having everyone in our apartment, I loved seeing the empty plates stacked around, and I loved that we were the hostesses of a good day. The only problem (and you may be aware of this if you have friends who celebrate Friendsgiving) is that once you have a Thanksgiving meal, the anticipation of all that delicious food is gone. The food is still awesome even if you eat it back to back to back, but the sheer excitement of tasting those foods we save for the holidays only lasts until the first gathering. And multiple gatherings close together gets exhausting.

I loooooove Thanksgiving food. I wanted to host Thanksgiving. But my husband and I both have family traditions, and those shoes were filled on both sides. So, one year when turkeys were on sale, I bought one and froze it to use later. I ended up hosting a Thanksgiving meal during Spring Break. Springbreaksgiving was born.  We have quite a few teachers in the family, so Spring Break is a good time to get everyone together. It’s several months removed from the holidays and not in the middle of summer when travel and activity schedules get crazy. So it’s generally a time where people can make room for an afternoon together. The official celebration occurs on the Thursday of Spring Break week – which has caused issue in the past as different schools try to get cute with what week they are off!

The Big Event

Our Springbreaksgiving menu is basically the same as my family’s Thanksgiving menu, but we try some fun things that are “frowned upon” at the real Thanksgiving. Like instead of pumpkin pie, we can test out a pumpkin pie cheesecake. (I asked once to bring this to Thanksgiving and was shot. down.) Or instead of candied yams we can have the copycat Ruth’s Chris sweet potatoes – if you haven’t tried these, try them! Though now we make BOTH sweet potato dishes as we now have lovers of both types. I can’t bear to disappoint my husband. Candied yams are seriously like the only thing he truly enjoys about Thanksgiving food. I get the joy of having my favorite meal of the year twice, and March really is pretty far from November, so it doesn’t feel like we just ate this stuff.

I never really know who will be at Springbreaksgiving, but I always invite our families first. We have a relatively large family, so if they all come it’s quite a crowd and I don’t think I could accommodate any extra folks. If it looks like several of our family members are busy or out of town, I then invite a few friends or neighbors to join the party! I can’t really describe the looks I get when I invite an outsider to come. It’s kind of a progression from confusion to acceptance to excitement. But I always like it when we get to let somebody else in on our weird little holiday. Part of me hopes they’ll think of it later and want to host their own. A big part of me hopes if anyone reads this that you’ll want to host your own. Or come to mine … maybe I need to have one in the summer for neighbors and friends too!

The Future of Springbreaksgiving

My absolute favorite part about this holiday is that my kids think it is like a real actual thing that people do. My oldest son was born just after the 2nd celebration, so it’s been going on for their whole lives. I will keep hosting this holiday as long as I can forsee, and I hope the tradition sticks with my kids and their families too. How fun is it to think that maybe decades down the road there could be several branches of my family tree getting together for a no longer made-up, totally unnecessary, definitely not mandatory, only actually important to me holiday?

Do you have any “extra” holidays or excuses for entertaining?