Thanksgiving is built around familiar traditions: a warm meal, a gathering place, and people to share it with. But what that table looks like is different for every family.
For more than six decades, St. Vincent's Dining Room has been a gathering place in Northern Nevada. What began as a small soup kitchen in 1961 now serves meals every day of the year. On Thanksgiving, that work grows into something much larger.
This year, Catholic Charities of Northern Nevada expects to welcome approximately 1,400 people for Thanksgiving dinner at St. Vincent's, with additional meals delivered to the CARES Campus. Guests include seniors, veterans, working families, parents with children, and people experiencing homelessness. Some come for a hot meal. Others come for the company.
For many years, the Nugget Casino Resort has joined the effort, with its culinary team preparing a traditional Thanksgiving dinner while Catholic Charities staff and volunteers welcome and serve guests.
But getting all those plates to the table begins well before Thanksgiving Day.
Teams coordinate food, transportation, volunteers, and serving schedules while St. Vincent's continues its regular meal service and Catholic Charities' food programs support tens of thousands of people each month.
Then there are the turkeys.
"A turkey takes up a lot more space than a can of green beans, and when you multiply that by thousands of families, the scale becomes very real very quickly," says Jennifer Hill, chief development officer for Catholic Charities of Northern Nevada.
Many of those turkeys are headed to tables beyond St. Vincent's. Through Gathering Together, Catholic Charities expects to provide Thanksgiving meal kits to approximately 3,000 families through food pantries and distributions across Northern Nevada, allowing families to prepare dinner at home and celebrate in their own way.
But a Thanksgiving meal isn't always as simple as having food on hand.
Several years ago, a mother and her 5-year-old daughter joined Catholic Charities for Thanksgiving dinner. When staff mentioned that she could receive a turkey the following year, the mother explained that she couldn't afford the gas required to run her oven long enough to cook it.
"Providing someone with food doesn't necessarily mean they have everything they need to prepare it," Hill says.
Meeting those different needs takes more than food. Volunteers, businesses, churches, civic organizations, and individual donors collect donations, assemble meal kits, and serve guests, with many returning year after year.
"The best gift someone can give us is support that allows us to be there not only for Thanksgiving, but for the family who needs groceries in January or the senior who needs a hot meal on an ordinary Tuesday," Hill says.
That sense of community has carried St. Vincent's through more than six decades of Thanksgivings. The holiday lasts a day, but the work of making sure someone has a meal and a place to belong carries on every day after.