As the night grows longer and sunlight slips from the hours minute by minute there a few highlights to the colder season.

One of the biggest gems are the homemade meals of this time of year, which brings us to November’s Thanksgiving.

Ah, Thanksgiving, the middle child of the holiday season. Everyone knows Halloween is the wacky free-spirit baby of the family and Christmas is clearly the favorite firstborn, but as a middle child in my own family I’ve always related to the feast day.

The early afternoon dinner has developed a stressful attitude as the day before the monthlong holiday shopping extravaganza begins. The simple traditions like warm stuffing, fresh pie and the multiple sips of boilo imbibed to help us sit at the long table next to the uncle who voted and the cousin who is to jaded to vote at all are forgotten when the last plate is cleared.

I have always had fond childhood memories of the third Thursday of November.

One of the few meals our mother would let us get “under her feet” in the kitchen to help create the meal.

From the start of the week my mother would leave the bread bag open to dry out and later would set up my siblings and me in a stuffing assembly line to pull apart the old bread, adding sage to the crumbs while she sautéed the sausage and onions.

I remember watching her over the stove while Bruce Springsteen or Journey played in the background. She would look over the high steel pot of hot potatoes while she mashed them into oblivion or cut chunks of cheese for her homemade macaroni and cheese as the oven warmed the house to almost desertlike temperatures.

I remembered her gravy technique that years later I would use at a friend’s dinner for a last-minute adjustment to a holiday get-together.

In our dark wood dining room we all had our own chairs at the table that was only used for holiday meals.

The woman would place dishes piled high with hot homemade recipes in a circle while we waited patiently for the last ingredient, canned cranberry sauce, to be slipped from its tin and set on the only free inch of the red-clothed old-fashioned oak table.

She was no slouch in the baking department. She made a fantastic pecan pie, one of my favorites to this day, and of course the pumpkin pie with whipped topping on top.

Few meals I’ve had in my life have come close to those delicious memories.

So this holiday season, take a few minutes to kick back, cut yourself some slack and savor that second-helping plate.

And afterward help load the dishwasher, kiss the cook and raise a glass to the meal you’re about to enjoy and just remember someone was up before the sun putting butter into a cold bird for you to chew as you watch “the game” or argue with grandpa about whether the back roads or turnpike are quicker to get to the house.