Just Go Out to Eat for Thanksgiving

Seriously, stop killing yourselves.

Every year my mother-in-law hosts my family here in Athens and my brother-in-law’s family in Buffalo at the cabins of Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountains, Georgia. Callaway is a rickety old “resort” complex, but I put “resort” in quotes because you don’t ski there, or lie at the beach there, or really escape from much of anything. It’s just a place with a outdated mini-hotel, a bunch of bike-riding trails, a ropes-climbing course and something called Fantasy In Lights, a Christmas-themed light show that doesn’t seem to have changed since 1945 and is all the better for it.

My family didn’t have much of a Thanksgiving tradition growing up — my mother’s father died right before Thanksgiving in 1988, and it soured her on the holiday; she actually made sure to work a double shift at the hospital every Thanksgiving after that — so I’ve always been appreciative of this one. My kids get to hang with the cousins they only see once a year, the trails are perfect for running off all those extra calories and yeah, I’ll confess, I do think those Nutcrackers are sort of charming, in a chintzy sort of way. Thanksgiving is, in total, a generally…