As the beginning of the fall season brought a change of weather, the MFS “T-Hap” Committee brought major changes to the school’s classic Thanksgiving Happening tradition, which took place on Tuesday, November 20 before the long weekend. Between alterations to the smaller activity groups, emphasis on MFS’s diverse community, and the official use of the nickname “T-Hap,” the celebration took on a new meaning this year.
“Obviously,” Dan Zemaitis, head of this year’s T-Hap Committee, noted, “the big difference this year is how we do the [smaller classroom] groups.” As opposed to past years, in which groups composed of students and faculty from every division would come together for craft-making, students were with their advisory and “one, some two, other groups, whether that’s a Lower School group, or Middle and Upper School together,” Zemaitis explained.
Regarding one of the reasons for this substantial alteration, Zemaitis cited a connection to MFS’s Friendship Day event: “These are going to be the same groups that we have Friendship Day with. And so in the past, there's been some push to have more opportunities for the Friendship Day groups to get together and engage in that community building. We thought this was a good way … to have these groups meet at least once more throughout the year.”
Zemaitis also elaborated on how Lower Schoolers have previously felt uncomfortable in gatherings with a majority of older students, causing this change: “There were some concerns from the Lower School that having one or two kids in a classroom with nobody they knew from an adult perspective was difficult and intimidating.” In past iterations of T-Hap, preschoolers and pre-kindergarteners had remained in their classrooms during the first half of the event for this reason; Zemaitis hopes that this alteration allowed for even the youngest community member to be involved in the event as they’ll attend a classroom with their full class. “With this change, we are able to have them actually be engaged with [the celebration],” he commented.
The other major alteration to the overall T-Hap celebration is the holidays it recognized; rather than a focus on the American holiday of Thanksgiving, the school recognized various cultural and religious harvest holidays during the arts and crafts portion of the event. According to an email blast sent out to students and families on November 9 on behalf of the Thanksgiving Happening Committee, “We want students and adults to feel a sense of belonging at MFS, which is why we have decided to build on the legacy of this tradition by grounding it within a wider spectrum of harvest festivals which are dear to those in our community, including Lohri, Makar Sankranti, Moon Festival, and Sukkot.”
The email also touched on the change to the smaller groups: “Across the school, advisories and classes will be matched in interdivisional friendship pairs and engage in a range of arts and crafts that borrow from the symbolism of these celebrations and observances to further our development as global citizens.”
In further explanation, Zemaitis touched on the connection between the diversity of the MFS community and T-Hap’s recognition of other holidays: “We felt that, because of some various things happening both in the school community but also in the wider world, focusing on the diverse community that we have was an opportunity that we wanted to take. And so, we looked at our community members and people who are part of our community, and pulled harvest festivals from other groups that we know are represented here and incorporated them into the design of the activities that we would have.”
While, according to Zemaitis, there are many benefits to the changes of the classic MFS tradition, he also remarked on his awareness of the community’s love for the old version of the event: “Look, changing traditions is not easy. And I know that there are some people, particularly, who've been here for a long time … who may feel that it's not what they remember.” Yet, he believes that these types of alterations are necessary, adding that “it's important for us to revisit these kinds of traditions and make sure that what we're doing today reflects where we are as a community.”
Upper School teacher Gail Barna shared Zemaitis’s sentiments, noting that “generally people don't like change, especially something like Thanksgiving Happening that's a school tradition. However, I do think it's time for a change. Thanksgiving … was not the actual happy Pilgrims and [Native Americans] dinner that we all learned in school. So, I think it's time we respect our indigenous community and honor their history.”
Specifically commenting on the changes to the small groups, Miles Wilkins ’25 “[felt] like [the event] was more interactive and engaging as a community [before], and it really emphasized togetherness when we were all together from separate divisions instead of just advisory groups combined. I think it'll still have an aspect of togetherness, but it won't be as [meaningful] as it used to be.”
Video by Dinah Megibow-Taylor '24, Ethan Cohen '26, Livia Kam '26
As a part of this year’s “T-Hap” celebration, students and faculty took part in the creation of a thumbprint mural installed in Stokes Hall on November 20. This new mural comes with several other changes to Thanksgiving Happening, representing new traditions while retaining its sense of community. The mural is composed of MFS students’ thumbprints from all three divisions alongside faculty and staff. To add individuality to the display, each student was instructed to make their thumbprint their own by adding a face and hair. After the miniature portraits were collected from Upper and Middle School advisories and Lower School classrooms, they were then arranged in the form of a color spectrum on the art gallery wall in Stokes Hall.
The colorful display was orchestrated by the T-Hap committee, as committee member and Lower School teacher Rachel Kaplan explained: “We wanted to bring the community together in a fun and interactive way … We saw a class do it at another school and thought it would be cool to see our whole school do it.”
Despite MFS’s relatively small size, with a current body of 620 students, students across divisions don’t interact frequently and rarely gather in one place as a whole. The new mural serves as a colorful alternative to that, where students can see the student body in its entirety in the form of thumb-sized recreations. “I think it's a very good way to show the whole community because we don’t have any [event] where we can see everybody else in the school,” stated Jaiwant Singh ’26.
Although students were told where their ink thumbprints would be going, some didn’t fully understand the extent of the project:. “I was kind of confused when I was asked to stick my thumb on an ink pad, then on a paper, and decorate it in advisory, but after seeing the final product I think it's a cool way to represent the whole school,” voiced Charlie McFadden ’27.
This new mural comes with several other changes to Thanksgiving Happening, representing new traditions while retaining its sense of community.
T-Hap Activities
By Livia Kam '26
As this year’s Thanksgiving Happening brought many new changes, its activities also changed from previous years. Some traditions such as the introductory game “Keepy Uppy” repeated this year, but all of the crafts this year were new additions. The crafts this year were related to cultural harvests, with the “USA Harvest,” “Indian Harvest,” “Jewish Harvest,” and “East Asian Harvest.” Students and faculty made crafts that corresponded to each culture’s holidays to acknowledge myriad identities. Regardless of the changes, students and faculty enjoyed T-Hap because of the interdivisional connection and fun games and crafts.