This is my favorite time of year and my favorite holiday.

No, not the big one that’s still a month away on the calendar but has been on the store shelves since Labor Day.

I mean Thanksgiving, of course. I love Thanksgiving. I always have.

And it’s not really the food. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love the food. I just always loved Thanksgiving because it was the one day on the calendar designed to be spent relaxing at home and taking stock of how much we as Americans tend to have to be thankful for.

I loved going to my grandmother’s house for dinner and watching my dad and my uncle polish off an entire turkey on their own, even though they knew full well that Nan was about to bring out six or seven different pies.

(My family’s heritage is Pennsylvania Dutch. Baking is what they do. And they do it well.)

“I’ll just have a little slice. Of each,” my grandfather joked every year.

Some years we would go down to my dad’s mother’s house for dinner, but we would always make sure to stop back at Nan’s for pie on the way home, you can bet on that.

But the day itself was just a day to spend inside with family, watching football, the Macy’s parade, or playing board games and just enjoying each other’s company.

Even when I was a kid, I knew those days when everyone could get together and just spend time together were rare. Shoot, they only happened once or twice a year.

Plus, you know: pie.

Even as I got older and we stayed at our house more and more for the holiday, it was still a day to stop, be with loved ones – friends and family – and be thankful that we were all there and that we made it through another year.

Once my friends and I went away to college, Thanksgiving became the first time since summer that we could usually count on all of us being back home at the same time. Which again, made it just a special time spent with friends. And pie, obviously.

More than 12 years ago I moved out to Seattle, well outside “driving distance” from any of my family members in Upstate New York or Philadelphia.

At first, the woman with whom I moved out here and I hosted our own small event, inviting a few other transplanted East Coasters to our apartment for dinner. Even after we broke up, but before she moved back to the East Coast, we gathered every year with our misfit friends and spent the afternoon eating good food, drinking wine and just enjoying each other’s company.

When she moved back east, another group of friends took me in on the holidays. My good friend and fellow reporter Shawn Skager and his family adopted me as one of their own on most holidays and I was welcome to break bread and watch football with their whole crew on Thanksgiving.

It was not quite the same as seeing my family, but there were few times when, honestly, I was as thankful as I was that Shawn and his family and his wife’s family would take me in and treat me as one of their own.

Then, several years ago, I stumbled into a volunteer opportunity that has become a Thanksgiving tradition ever since for myself and now my wife.

When I was working in Kent, I did a story about a local restaurant that every year on Thanksgiving passes out vouchers at local food banks and other places and then does two free servings of dinner for anybody who can make it up to their restaurant. Volunteers from around the community serve food and bus tables. At the end of the day, we push all the tables to the center and the restaurant treats the servers to a meal.

The first year I did this, I felt so incredibly good about how I spent my Thanksgiving that I resolved to do it again every year. And I have.

It is now a tradition for my wife and I and we look forward to it every year. The group we volunteer with has many of the same people each year and it creates that family atmosphere that the holiday so needs (we’ve been going long enough now that we even get the “When’s the baby coming?” questions, just like home!).

Plus, it is an in-your-face reminder of everything I have to be thankful for and provides me with a chance to give back. And there’s usually pie.

Jokes aside, my wife and I have decided that even if we are not volunteering at the restaurant every year, we plan to do some sort of volunteer work every Thanksgiving and we want to instill that in our (future) children: Take time out of this day every year to give a little back.

Because as our columnist Lynn Bohart always says, giving makes you feel good, along with that fact that there is always a need. Lynn is so right.

Which brings me to this: Once again, the Renton Reporter in partnering with Renton Area Youth and Family Services on their annual drive, which this year is for new coats, jackets, sweatshirts, hats, mittens and gloves.

The idea, very simply, is to “Give the Gift of Warmth” this holiday season.

Founded in 1970 and located in Renton, RAYS has referred students from the Renton and Tukwila school districts who have experienced trauma or abuse and then provides ongoing treatment.

Most of the kids they work with are low-income and their sessions are paid for with government funding. The group serves about 1,000 children from right here in our area each year.

This year, more than 500 children, youth and adults in our community are expected to attend RAYS annual holiday event and each guest will receive a hot breakfast, some much-needed resources and, through donations, new warm clothing.

If you were cold during that run of chilly weather a few weeks ago, please consider how it might feel without a warm coat or hat to brace yourself against the wind.

We will be accepting coats, hats, gloves, hoodies and everything warm at our office, 19426 68th Avenue S., Kent, until Dec. 12. Additional drop-off locations are 1025 S. Third St., Renton, and 12704 76th Ave. S., Seattle.

In addition, the Snake Hill Neighborhood will be collecting coats and such for RAYS, as well as toys for Toys For Tots, during a special holiday party from 4 to 8 p.m. Dec. 13 at Springbrook Church of Christ in Renton.

If you’d like to organize a collection in your neighborhood, work or house of worship, you can email Morgan Wells at morganw@rays.org.

Last year, thanks to your donations, RAYS received 1,500 full-size toiletries, hundreds of travel-size items and $4,000 in cash and donations.  Together, we helped hundreds of Renton families. Let’s do it again.

Trust me, you will feel good. And, yes, there will still be time for pie.

Happy Thanksgiving.