Over the river and through the woods?

This Thursday's Thanksgiving feast finds 74% of Midwesterners heading HOME, to their family of origin, for the meal (Gallup). That's a higher percentage than anywhere else in the country. I was curious about the people who have chosen to spend Thanksgiving with friends and what they might describe as their "new family."

I spoke with Lisa Knight from Two Harbors, Minnesota. She said the drive down to the Twin Cities each year, in unpredictable weather conditions, had just started to get to her. One of her friends had a turkey, she invited herself and her partner over, and a tradition was born.

The feast includes potluck dishes from several friends' kitchens. The get-together has been annual for 13 years.

"We spend Thanksgiving with the family we choose," said one of Lisa's friends.

Lisa still calls her parents sometime on that Thursday, and she doesn't feel overwrought with guilt for bringing her own kids up with friends as family for that day.

Tani Hemmila from Cromwell, Minnesota, spends her Thanksgiving with her kids and her husband and their friends LeRoy and Helen. Ten years ago Tani's parents were killed in a car crash, and that first Thanksgiving she just couldn't face getting together with her siblings. They had always gone home to Mom and Dad's, and it was just too painful.

So they went to LeRoy and Helen's. Now it's a tradition and Tani's kids think of LeRoy and Helen as "not like regular adults, they actually run and play!" That's a big part of their day—playing catch outside in the snow or leaves.

But Ryan Carter of Washington, D.C. understands that his Midwestern family needs some "face time" just with him, so he makes the trek back to Minnesota almost every Thanksgiving and Christmas.

He's the only adult in his extended family to be putting down roots somewhere other than the Midwest, and although he deeply values the new "base of operations" that he has made for himself with close friends out east, he knows that what his family really wants is for him to be with them. He feels a sense of duty. He never mentioned guilt, but he was adamant:

"I do not regret going back to the Midwest to be with family. There are other factors pulling me in other directions, but it's the right thing to do, it's what I want to do, and it's what I will do."

Ryan did recall a Thanksgiving spent in New York City, a few years back:

"It was a large group of people and all of us were from the Midwest, coincidentally," he said. "And there was actually an element of playing house to it that was nice. It was special …It was kind of like we were making our own little family universe."

What about you? Do you spend your Thanksgiving with your family of origin? Or have you created a "new family" for the traditions? Do you feel compelled to go home, whether you want to or not?