110th Thanksgiving Day Picnic in Vattman

Every year, Our Lady of Consolation Church in Riviera, Texas opens doors and 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 find this annual community ritual near Baffin Bay all the more sweet.

Baffin Bay creates a small crook in the landscape, 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 has been tradition for over a century, the 2024 Thanksgiving Day Picnic – the parish’s 110th – welcomes all with open arms. In fact, you’re invited – even if you have plans for dinner elsewhere – to come out to enjoy a day chock full of free activities. The day features raffles, silent auctions, a turkey shoot, daub BINGO, kids’ games, fish pond, a handmade crafts country store, a wheel of fortune, and an after-dinner C&W dance (for a small donation) with Michael Burtts Band. And of course, there’s a delicious turkey meal with all the fixin’s for a modest price – 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.

As in previous years, around 1,800 folks will drive the distance to wait in line, get their plates, and be seated with friends – most of whom they are meeting for the very first time.

All are invited!

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