I am definitely a traditionalist.

I never realized how I was a creature of habit until I finally broke some long ingrained traditions.

I certainly am a traditionalist when it comes to Thanksgiving dinner. There was never any question what I would serve on Thanksgiving. I had to have a big turkey, browned to perfection.

And it wasn’t Thanksgiving unless I made my stuffing the same way my family did and the same way I’ve been doing all for more than 60 years.

No matter what was going on in my life, Thanksgiving dinner had to be the same.

In years past Thanksgiving was “my holiday.” Our extended family gathered at my house for our good old-fashioned Thanksgiving.

The menu never varied. Everyone knew they could count on plenty of what we called filling, but most people call it stuffing.

They knew they could count on candied sweet potato casserole and plenty of extras followed by at least two homemade pies.

Truth be told, I knocked myself out each year, trying for culinary perfection.

This went on for decades, through a big crowd then just as family. And finally it was just my husband and me.

Didn’t matter. I did everything the same as when we had a crowd. Sure we had leftovers, but that was fine with us.

This wasn’t the best of years, and as Thanksgiving approached I dared to utter words I would not have dreamed of saying years ago.

I said I was going to have a relaxed Thanksgiving, complete with doing the unthinkable — buying our Thanksgiving dinner instead of making everything myself.

My husband was thrilled when I said I was going to change the hour we ate because I wanted to watch the Thanksgiving parade.

In the past I never could watch the parade because I was too busy getting Thanksgiving dinner on the table by 2 p.m.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” my husband said.

What? He never mentioned he wanted to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

No, he told me, he hated watching how hard I worked every year.

My husband suggested we buy the complete Thanksgiving meal at our local supermarket. For the first time, they were offering everything in a boxed precooked Thanksgiving meal. It said it would include a precooked turkey and all the trimmings I normally make, including dessert that sounded like the Heaven that was popular a long time ago.

I didn’t expect it to be like my Thanksgiving dinner and it wasn’t. But it was fine, and no one threatened to arrest me for doing things the easy way.

For the first time ever I watched the Thanksgiving parade from start to finish. It was quite enjoyable to sit on the sofa with my husband, watching the parade together.

Then I leisurely made our Thanksgiving dinner.

No one complained not having Thanksgiving dinner at 2 o’clock like we always do.

And I expected to feel guilty about taking the easy way out. I was raised to cook everything from scratch. But there was no guilt. In fact, my husband and I thought it was one of the best Thanksgivings we had. We had plenty to be thankful for.

Thanksgiving is long over, but what isn’t over is my willingness to try new things and to embrace new lifestyles.

Sometimes what I call “tradition” is my own little “living in the past jail” that keeps me from walking new paths.

It took too long for me learn that there are new delightful paths to explore.

All I had to do was to forget clinging to what was done in the past.

My kids learned that early in their married lives. Maybe there are other homes where parents wonder why their kids are breaking away from long-established traditions.

I know I didn’t understand it when my daughters and their families let go of what we did in the past.

I was befuddled when they first ended our longtime vacation tradition.

Every year, for 21 years in a row, we all vacationed together. We saved our money all year so we could rent a big vacation home for two weeks on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. When Andrea got married, her in-laws joined us in our big family vacation on the Our Banks.

We all loved it, and I thought we would do it forever. So I was a bit shocked when our daughter told me they didn’t want to continue going to the same place every year.

She said there was a big world out there and they wanted to explore it, rather than staying in the same place every year.

Her family had great adventures in other countries while my husband and I continued vacationing by ourselves on the Outer Banks.

It wasn’t as great when we didn’t have family, but we still looked forward to our Outer Banks vacation every year. It was more than a tradition. To us, it was a little bit of heaven every year.

We couldn’t understand why “the kids” no longer wanted to come.

Now I understand. I learned how great it is to forget what was done in the past in order to forge new paths.

Hopefully, I will be doing much more of it this year. Call it the lesson a different kind of Thanksgiving taught me.

Email Pattie Mihalik at newsgirl@comcast.net