Thanksgiving is a holiday that—even more than any other holiday—centers around a lavish meal with family and friends. Preparations for Thanksgiving dinner begin days, or weeks, in advance, and the day before Thanksgiving is traditionally known as the busiest travel day of the year. Yet in the rush to gather loved ones for a perfect meal, people sometimes overlook the holiday’s tradition of simply giving thanks.

There are many ways to show thanks during the Thanksgiving holiday. Here are just a few suggestions from Sears Imported Autos to try with your own family:

Participate in a food drive

Food drives are easily found in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving and on throughout the winter holiday season. Many grocery stores host food drives, making it easy to add a few extra canned food items to your order and dropping them at the collection site on the way out of the store. Local schools and service organizations, like Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, host food drives as well.

Make a Thanksgiving tree

Start a new tradition by creating your own family Thanksgiving tree. Using construction paper, create a poster with a tree trunk and bare branches. Now cut out paper leaves in a variety of fall colors and place them in a bowl next to the poster. As Thanksgiving guests arrive, ask them to write something they are thankful for on a leaf and use a glue-stick to attach it to one of the tree branches. Keep filling out leaves until your tree is nice and full, then gather to read the leaves out loud after dinner.

Give thanks around the table

Perhaps one of the most common Thanksgiving traditions is to go around the table before dinner giving each guest a chance to give thanks for something in their lives. As most people feel compelled to show thanks for their family and friends, it might help to start by acknowledging that shared appreciation at the beginning and ask everyone to give thanks for something in addition to family and friends.

Volunteer at a soup kitchen or shelter

Helping others who are less fortunate is sure to make your family feel more appreciative of what you have. Make arrangements to volunteer well in advance and consider volunteering on a day other than Thanksgiving if the shelter already has plenty of help for the holiday. If you volunteer in the weeks before Thanksgiving, have everyone write down a few things they learned from the experience and read their lists aloud on Thanksgiving.