Growing up my parents never said a prayer. Although they believed in God, they weren’t big church goers. My MIL always says a prayer before big family meals. I never have. I feel uncomfortable doing it, so when I host I typically would ask a family member who didn’t mind to do it.
There have been just a couple of times when I am hosting that there is no one around to do so. This is one of those Thanksgivings. It is just too awkward for me and DH and his brother would probably just start laughing, and it would go down from there…haha. So, what do I say as we sit to eat, and guests will look to DH or I to say a prayer…and we won’t. Very awkward.
If we invite someone very devout, we ask them beforehand if they want to bless the food. The norm in our social circle is to just wait for the hostess/host to pick up her/his fork, and then everyone begins eating. Sometimes the host/hostess raises a glass and makes a short toast and then we begin eating.
No. Neither side of our family ever did so. It’s a foreign concept / tradition to us. We do go around the table at T-giving and say what we’re grateful for, but there are enough of us who are atheist / agnostic that it doesn’t make any sense to have any kind of group prayer.
My husband gives a toast/prayer every year. We don’t pray before meals normally but with everyone here it is a nice little kick off to start eating. I serve soup in tureens on each table so when we all sit down he speaks, then everyone digs in to the soup.
We say a blessing and then raise our glasses and say “Love you” before every meal. When we have guests, we just say we would like to say a short blessing, after which we raise our glasses and say “Welcome.” As far as I can tell, none of our guests have ever felt uncomfortable.
Not at my house. I put up with it at my sister’s house. I much prefer the idea of saying what you’re grateful for but we stopped that when my sister’s MIL lost a son that year and didn’t want to have to do it. Although I must admit that with 20-30 people it got a bit much and tended to be the same thing all the time. Maybe just ask those who wish to share and not go around the table.
Our group (large extended family) is 80% -90% athiest/ agnostic but my sister, the hostess, is a traditionalist and likes the prayer because we have always done it that way. Just the basic “Bless us O Lord” Catholic prayer. Then we have toasts, where whoever wants to can say what they are grateful for or make whatever toast they want to make. There are maybe 3 or 4 of those. Someone makes a touching toast about how much we miss our departed relatives and how happy we are to be together.
For the last couple of years my niece (now 8) has given a little speech abt how grateful she is that she saved the house from burning down when she was 5. (At a Thanksgiving dinner when she was five, someone had put a cloth napkin down on top of a lit candle and walked away; my niece was the first to notice that the napkin was on fire. It was quickly extinguished, but her speech abt saving the day is now reaching tradition status. Will be interested to see if she tells the great Thanksgiving fire story again this year.)
There are about 50 of us, so we can’t all say what we are grateful for, but there are plenty of speeches all around.
We usually have someone willing to say the prayer, but I personally never volunteer.
One year, D1 wanted to say Grace. I said sure (she was probably 7). She said a very heartfelt prayer, thanking God for several specific blessings, thanking him for putting every person at the table in her life, and being just really very sweet, per usual. D2 (3 or so) insisted she wanted her turn. She said “Dear God, thank you for this food, but I don’t want to eat these peas, and please don’t let Uncle David take the biggest sweet roll. Amen.” No one has ever topped those two prayers imo.
No, we never have prayed, before a meal or otherwise. I actually can think of only one time in my adult life where I’ve been at a dinner where someone said a prayer. That was a couple of years ago at a new neighbor’s home in SC where we have a second home. The couple prayed and my H and I sat there. It was awkward, I must admit.
The only time I’ve ever experienced it was when I spent T’giving with my in-laws. The extended family is evangelical preachers and it was a LONG blessing… and I was hungry! Even my very Catholic in-laws began inching towards their food because they were over the praying.
Otherwise, an atheist in an atheist/agnostic family- nah, we don’t. I would allow someone to lead one though if they felt it necessary.
ETA:
I haven’t said this prayer since I was 12 and it was only said by me at school… and the whole thing just came back. It’s funny how ingrained things become.
We do not say a prayer since we are not religious . At times we have said what we are thankful for, but this really upset my mother the year that my step-dad passed away … It has been a decade and the holidays are still hard for him without him. I usually just say something about how happy I am that we are all together.
