A Biden Thanksgiving: Wide Views of Nantucket Harbor, Calls on Israel

“I think he should do everything he can for the Palestinian people,” Mr Butterworth said. But he added: “I’m a fan of Joe Biden, so I don’t mind him coming. I think he’s doing the best he can, despite all the resistance he’s getting from Congress and everything.”

The Bidens have been visiting Nantucket since 1975, when Mr. Biden, then a first-term senator from Delaware, and Jill, his wife-to-be, spent their first Thanksgiving together there. In his memoir “Promise Me, Dad,” Biden called it an “act of diplomacy.” The family received multiple invitations and he worried that each choice would offend another invitee.

“Nantucket proved worth it when we finally got there, eight hours after leaving our home in Wilmington,” the president wrote of that car ride from his home in Delaware to the ferry in Hyannis, Massachusetts, that crosses to Nantucket .

“At the end of November it was chilly on the small island, but you could smell the spicy salty air of the Atlantic Ocean. The island had emptied out during the season, so we had a lot of the place to ourselves,” he recalls.

“Nantucket Thanksgiving became our tradition for the next four decades,” wrote Dr. Biden in her memoir “Where the Light Enters.” “With a few exceptions, we have made the trek every year since, creating rituals that would become an important part of our family along the way.”

Over the years, Mr. Biden has participated in the Christmas tree lighting ceremony and once participated in the Thanksgiving Day Cold Turkey Plunge, a plunge into icy water to benefit the island’s Weezie Library for Children.

These days, Thanksgiving on Nantucket is a big family affair. Last year, the Bidens were joined by their daughter Ashley, and Mr. Biden’s son Hunter, his wife Melissa, and their young son Beau. This year the family is joined by Ashley and her husband, Howard Krein; Hunter, Melissa and Beau; and other grandchildren, Naomi, Finnegan, Maisy and Hunter, the White House said.