What is a normal Thanksgiving?

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I thought about this a lot today, as our Thanksgivings and Christmas meals are not what anyone would have used to call normal. Just what is normal for these holidays? Big dinners at parents or grandparents' homes, the clan gathers, maybe some friends...there is way, way too much food. I have fixed many of these meals for family in my past. The whole deal, china and crystal, in the dining room, everything beautiful and nice and ...um, incredibly stressful and a ton of work for the host and/or hostess. Don't get me wrong, nice things and beautiful settings are wonderful. They can also be stressful. I truly do prefer a more casual setting. I have been spending some time this week with my daughter and her family in Florida. Their little guys are 1 and 5 now, and a lot of fun. My ex lives here, and his parents are not far away as well. Yes, I'm divorced, and yes, I have been for quite a while now. We have all remained family as that's what we are. The ex has a significant other and has had for a long time. It sounds odd, but we all get along just fine. His parents came. They are very good to me, in all honestly, I have known them and been close to them for a longer time than I ever had my own parents. His mom was so excited to have me there. So, I was elected to cook 2 turkeys. My daughter made the potatoes. We took that over there, the rest they took care of. The ex brought the turkey over to house for me to fix and kept saying how much he appreciated it because they were swamped at work. The ex has always been about THINGS. His tastes run to the extremely expensive to the ridiculous and they always have. The house was decorated to the extreme, fresh flowers, we ate off of gold-plated china and used Waterford crystal, and so forth. He gave a one-year-old and a 5-year-old Waterford crystal to drink out of. Um...we had 4 kids, and he didn't do that then. Of course, all of the china and the crystal have to be hand washed, as does the silver utensils. Was all the food good? It was excellent. Was it all beautiful? It truly was. But with small children and tired out adults, it just wasn't really necessary to be that fancy. Yes, I have some beautiful china at my own home. I used to use it often, but now i really don't very often. This all started me thinking about what normal is for holidays. None of us are paper plate people, we always cooked a huge, nice meal, but...it would be nice to just get together on a holiday and keep it simple. The little guys were very well behaved and ate like troopers. It truly was wonderful food, and everyone got leftovers to take home. Ex's parents, my former in laws that I love dearly, are very frail. She is 89 and he is 90. We all do cherish our time with them. I am glad my own children have no desire to make things this fancy, especially when there are little children to serve. It just makes so much work that the food fixers and the hosts are exhausted. Other than all of that over-analyzation of the holiday, we did have a good day. But tomorrow, we will happily eat at the kitchen table with ordinary dishes and no crystal. Funny, I bet the food will taste just as good, too. Picture is mine. As the ex's grandmother used to say about him, ''he has gone beyond his raising.'' she may have been correct.