Thanksgiving. It’s one of the simpler holidays: Eat a lot of good food and be thankful for your blessings.

The fact that it’s always on Thursday guarantees a four-day weekend right before the insanity of the Christmas season ramps up.

Most of the time, the weather hasn’t gotten unpredictable yet, so travel plans go uninterrupted and old friends can gather for reunions and flag football games without incident. It’s pretty much the perfect holiday.

This year, we’re trying something new. If it works out, it will be a new tradition. If it doesn’t work out, well, I’m sure it will serve as another cautionary tale for others. You’ll hear all about its success, or lack thereof, next week. Changing up our tradition has gotten me thinking about what I’m going to miss about our regular holiday plans, and it turns out, not that much. While I do enjoy a good feast, I don’t enjoy spending all day in the kitchen preparing a meal that gets scarfed down in record time, or that goes uneaten by picky kids. While I do enjoy setting the table with the best silver and china and feeling fancy for a few hours, I really don’t enjoy hand-washing all of it afterward. For every plus to our Thanksgiving meal, there seemed to be a big minus.

At the kids’ old school, the kindergarten and first grade had a wonderful tradition of sharing a Thanksgiving Feast. One class would dress up like the Pilgrims and the other like the Native Americans.

They would then come together for the “feast.” Parents were asked to contribute a few small items: crackers, sliced fruit and vegetables, and juice boxes.

As kindergartners, this idea of a “feast” was a new one for them. Since the planning that went into this event started a few weeks before the actual event, this “feast” became a very big deal. My kids looked forward to the feast every year, and “feast” became a word we used a lot! Sadly, I think they were more excited about their simple feast at school than they were about the huge feast I spent hours preparing.

I took a cue from that and made some changes to our home feast. We gave up on most of the traditional Thanksgiving meal and asked the kids what they wanted to eat instead. We kept some of the standards, of course. Thanksgiving without a turkey would be sacrilege.

But no one shed any tears when we didn’t have green bean casserole, creamed corn and candied yams on the table.

The kids mostly wanted dessert items, and E would subsist on mashed potatoes all day, every day, anyway. Since apple and pumpkin pies have a healthy serving of fruit in them, we figured why not!

Also on the kids’ menu: Shirley Temples. This helped kick up the fancy level just the right amount. G, the meat-atarian, also requested ham. So, we found a smoked turkey breast that fit the bill perfectly.

I also instituted another rule: if you want to eat it, you need to help make it. Since we were having mostly low-key, simple dishes, everyone helped make their favorites.

While it wasn’t quite the grand spread worth of a Norman Rockwell painting, it did get eaten and enjoyed by everyone. Since we weren’t having multiple courses, we got by with using just a few pieces of china and mixing it up with our regular serving pieces, a few of which could go in the dishwasher and a few which still needed to be hand-washed. It was a pretty good combination.

Our feast this year promises to be something completely different, and I’m hoping very exciting, but one thing that won’t change is taking some time to appreciate our many blessings. We usually go around the table a few times and list all the things that we are thankful for, and if we’re lucky, everyone has a turn or two before the words butt, fart or something else completely inappropriate makes its way onto the list.

As always, I am thankful for the WH and my children. It’s been a crazy year of changes with both of our jobs, the kids’ schools and just life in general, with still more changes on the horizon. Although tempers have flared, tantrums have been thrown, and attitudes have required adjustment on more than one occasion, for the most part, we have weathered the changes.

The kids are thriving in their new schools, making new friends and rising to new challenges. All three of them seem to have just the right teachers for where they’re at right now, educators who are patient and kind, but also demanding. It’s nice to see them being pushed and loved at the same time.

I am thankful for my village, my tribe, my crazy group of friends. Whether it’s cluing me in on the cheapest place to find the elusive JoJo bow, or picking my kids up from practices when I am at another practice, or sending me just the right text message when I’m sure I can’t take one more minute of the insanity, to let me know that I’m not alone and they have my back, I couldn’t get through the day without these folks.

And finally, I am thankful for all of you who have read and supported me through this column. Many of you have reached out over the past year to laugh and to cry with me, and that has been a reward that I never expected.

As we begin this holiday season, I hope that I can continue to lift your spirits and remind you that you’re not in this crazy alone! Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, whatever your plans and traditions may be!

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.