NEDERLAND - This time of year, there are cherished rituals that we share with our loved ones, certain traditions that—thought their importance may wax and wane through the years—transcend generations.

In our youth, they were coveted events that could not be missed. In our adolescence, they were unwelcome distractions from some sort of teenage debauchery. 

Some of us worked through the holidays in our 20s, just trying to earn enough for that fancy packaged ramen. Many others spent those same holidays at empty college campuses, reaching out to loved ones over email or phone if we had enough minutes to call long distance. 

Once the fog of being a 20-something lifts and you finds yourself immersed in adulthood, those traditions become important again, the weight of their meaning feeling different. 

It’s that urge to embrace those traditions that comforted you as a child, that made you feel warm, not only to practice them again, but to share them with the loved ones you’ve chosen to surround yourself with now as an adult. 

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. I’m a person of simple desires who wants nothing more than to share a good meal with the people I love. I want to eat and laugh way too much and fall asleep in front of the television by 2 p.m., content in my bloated merriment. 

I’ve spent many years of my adulthood trying to create new traditions, a bastard amalgamation of those that actually had a positive impact on me from my childhood, and those I always wanted to have. Perhaps they could best be summarized as: I always wanted to live in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

In the Charlie Brown’s world, a group of neighborhood friends get together and share a meal of popcorn, jelly beans, and buttered toast, all prepared by a dog and a wild bird. That seemed like paradise to me. 

It was the running theme in my imagination as a child: familiar scenarios borrowed from popular culture and my babysitter, Television, but the cast replaced with my “chosen family.”

The Nederland Thanksgiving Potluck is like living in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. An entire community of people, traveling over the river and through the woods to grandma’s house—aka the Nederland Community Center—for an amazing meal shared with 1,600 of their loved ones, their chosen family. 

For the last four years, I’ve had the pleasure and honor to report on an event, an experience, that I thought did not exist in the real world—an event that has been a part of Nederland for 30 years, one that exemplifies exactly why this little mountain town is so special. 

Friends and neighbors work together to make the potluck a success. There are the volunteers roasting the turkeys in their ovens at home, peeling hundreds of potatoes, carving turkeys as they sweat in the hot Community Center kitchen, dishing out scoops of delicious gravy on the day itself.

There are some providing fun and games to entertain the kids, some lending their beautiful voices and undeniable talent to create the perfect atmosphere, and some who clean up, who scrub dishes, and fold up chairs and tables. 

This concept of community does not exist in the real world. It only exists in cartoons—and in Nederland. 

This town’s natural wonder is a forest of strong and beautiful trees, and the loss of material things in the face of change will never be a death rattle for Nederland. The spirit of the town doesn’t exist only in festivals, or in buildings. The Nederland Thanksgiving Potluck is a testament to that fact.

A very special thanks goes to Nate James, Danielle Knollenburg, Michelle LaPointe, and Isabel Szucs for their work organizing and managing this free event.

Thanks also go to Sarah Banker and all the talented artists who performed during the event, to Wild Bear Nature Center (WBNC) for providing activities for the kids, and to all the amazing local sponsors who made this event such a success.