109th Thanksgiving Day Picnic in Vattman

Every year, Our Lady of Consolation Church in Riviera, Texas opens their doors and their hearts to break bread with total strangers.

The trip out to tiny Riviera, Texas (also known as Vattman) is flat, isolated, and uneventful which conversely makes the drive to this annual community ritual near Baffin Bay all the more compelling.

Baffin Bay creates a small crook reaching in from the Laguna Madre between Texas’s Coastal Bend to the north and South Padre Island to the south. It’s an area with a fine reputation as an angler’s paradise: Quiet, off-the-beaten-path, and a total stranger to big coastal development.

As in previous years, the 2023 Thanksgiving Day Picnic – the parish’s 109th – will host raffles, silent auctions, a turkey shoot, daub BINGO, kids’ games, fish pond, a handmade crafts country store, a wheel of fortune, an after-dinner C&W dance with a live band called Tumble Dry Low, and of course, a turkey meal with all the fixin’s – all masterly proffered by a church with fewer than 50 members, total. It takes an extra hundred or so family members to come and help – family-reunion-style – to pull off such an ambitious and heartwarming event.

And also as in previous years, around 1,800 folks will drive the distance to wait in line, get their plates, and be seated with new friends they’ve never before seen.

All are invited!

Event details subject to change. Click source links for latest information.