The holidays can bring back fond memories of years past. Remembering one’s youth or when the children were young are often aided by the carrying on of traditions.

For a number of Oak Harbor families, Thanksgiving is a time to repeat and pass along their traditions, some revived each year for decades.

This Thanksgiving will be bittersweet for Sarah Kodalen. The wife, mother and grandmother recently lost her father, Donald Goodwin, at the age of 91. Goodwin moved his family to Oak Harbor in the 1940s and he was one of the engineers who worked on designing the Seaplane base. Kodalen remembers moving here when she was in the first grade.

Today, Kodalen and her husband, K.C., live in what used to be her parents’ home, designed by her father and built in 1947.

While Kodalen will spend Thanksgiving feeling the absence of her father, she is renewed by the continuation of life, evidenced by her year-old grandson Kyle.

The Kodalen’s son Steve, Kyle’s father, has called his mother, apparently remembering a Thanksgiving tradition from his own youth that he’d like to pass on to his son.

When Steve was little, Kodalen said, he and the other children would color and decorate paper cutouts of both male and female pilgrims. The final touch on the project was the addition of individual guests’ names on the paper cutouts. Men’s names went on the male pilgrims, and women’s names on the females. The cutouts were then used as placecards at the dinner table.

The project would keep the children busy during the day while the food was cooking and it made them feel that they took part in the preparation of the festivities, Kodalen said.

Kodalen laughed as she recalled yet another Thanksgiving tradition that was passed down from her own mother, who passed away about five years ago.

Kodalen’s mother had purchased an enamel turkey roasting pan during World War II. That same pan was used to cook the turkey every Thanksgiving until just a couple years ago, when Kodalen decided it was so worn it needed to be thrown out.

“I bought a lovely one” to replace it, Kodalen said. Her elderly father was still in charge of carving the turkey, and he immediately noticed that it was not cooked in his wife’s old pan.

“My father said, ‘This isn’t the same pan,’ ” Kodalen said, and he had asked where the old one was.

Kodalen told her father about replacing the pan, and he understood, and he even agreed that the new-fangled pan was easier to work with.

Other families’ traditions involve food as well.

Virginia Hoover, 89, a resident of Oak Harbor for 19 years, still makes a recipe passed down from her mother. For as far back as Hoover can remember, her family always had an oyster souffle as part of the Thanksgiving meal.

“We always had that … always, with our turkey and dressing and we always had cornbread stuffing,” Hoover said fondly.

Although Hoover is not planning to host guests at her home this year, she might still make the souffle for her husband and herself.

Jim and Candy Slowik’s family Thanksgiving tradition turns the day into sweet fun.

“There are 12 of us. We have four children and two of them are married,” Candy Slowik said. The 12 guests also include parents and in-laws.

“We do gingerbread houses during the day,” Slowik said. Each family member, with the exception of Slowik’s father, makes and decorates a gingerbread house. Slowik’s father is usually “upstairs watching TV,” Slowik said, so he has no idea who made which gingerbread house.

Upon completion, the gingerbread houses are numbered, and Slowik’s father judges them. He picks a winner and the creator wins a prize.

Jim and Candy Slowik are eagerly awaiting the birth of their first grandchild, due next June. Next holiday season there will be a baby in the house.

And the tradition continues.

You can reach News-Times reporter Christine Smith at csmith@whidbeynewstimes.com or call 675-6611