Both my wife and I come from families that celebrated Thanksgiving Day every year with the traditional Thanksgiving fare. After marrying, we often would travel to either of our parents place for Thanksgiving dinner. As time passed, the strain of Thanksgiving Day efforts eventually caused our parents to stop hosting Thanksgiving dinner but yet attend one of their children's dinner on that day. This meant that about 12 years ago, we started having Thanksgiving dinner at our house pretty much each year with our kids, and now with a couple of our kids spouses.

During these last years I have learned, to my surprise actually, how much my wife dislikes Thanksgiving Day. I absolutely love that day, as it is one of my favorite and beloved traditions. I truly have an emotional connection to this day. At first, my wife's comments were fairly benign, but with each passing year, and especially in the last five to six years, the sentiment has been more strongly expressed. We have talked about this, and there is a definitive reason for her dislike that I can understand. When she was growing up, her family would gather for Thanksgiving dinner, and all the men would go down to the family room to watch football, and the women would go to the kitchen to prepare the meal. After the meal, the men would return to the football games, and the women would return to clean things up. I on the other hand, came from a family where mostly everyone voluntarily and eagerly pitched in to help get things ready and clean up afterwards.

The other dynamic to this is that my mother-in-law, who has many great and admirable qualities, would lean heavily on my wife (even as a youngster) to do a lion's share of the prep and cleanup for day (and many other events as well). My wife as a teenager learned to hate this holiday, because it was a day of hard, nearly unrelenting work. When we were first married, there was no clue for me of this, and I suspect that that is because the responsibility was more dispersed than when she was a teenager.

Over the last dozen years, my wife now has been the point person for pulling off Thanksgiving day, and her old feelings have resurfaced, and it's a day she still struggles with. So one dilemma we have to deal with is the contrast of emotions that each of us have for this day. As we have talked about this, I have strived to make sure that I and others in the family really pitch it to help (I done this even since we were first married, because of how I was raised), but I have strived to try and do even more. Over the last five years, I have worked to change some things about how we approach Thanksgiving to lighten her load. While she continues to have negative feelings about this day, they have decreased as we have implemented some of those changes.

This is a list of some things we do to make this day less of an emotional burden to her:
1. We start days before, doing prep on dishes than can be prepped early an put in the fridge or freezer. I try to do the lion share of that.
2. I make myself available to run to the store (even multiple times) to get things that we may forget (only one trip this year).
3. Asking the adult children to contribute a dish (this is a bit of a struggle at present, but we're improving here); however, sometimes they don't "get" quality.
4. I take charge of cooking the turkey; she'll often help prep it, but I'll fetch it from the fridge and vice-versa. I fry the turkey now, which she loves fried turkey.
5. Day-of preparations are split among the kids (we still have a griper among them).
6. After dinner, she is banished from the kitchen. She is not allowed to help cleanup at all.
7. All dishes are washed and dried manually, and put away. There is no food left out, and no dishes left in the dishwasher. Every thing must be put away.

We had a couple visitors with us today that asked why we were not using the dishwasher. One reason is practical, and the other part of my effort to lighten the load for my wife. No one wants to come back an hour or so later and do more work, plus I don't want any dishes anywhere that needs to be put away--that my wife may have to do; I just don't want to chance that.
When everyone pitches in for clean up, we have everything done usually within about 30 minutes after we finish our meal. It just works.

If any of you have something practical you do to help lighten the load for your spouse, please share.