Holiday Message Echoes at Home and Far Away : Thanksgiving: It’s high-tech turkey for astronauts. Freed hostages join families. Charities feeding needy say crowds are bigger than usual.

Some Americans were far from home on Thanksgiving Day: eating high-tech turkey in orbit aboard the space shuttle or working at a Haitian refugee camp at Guantanamo Bay. But three recently freed hostages spent the holiday in the United States for the first time in years.

“This year we have our family complete again. We’re very thankful we can celebrate it that way,” said Estelle Ronneburg, mother of ex-hostage Jesse Turner.

Charities and community groups nationwide served up turkey with all the trimmings for the homeless and needy, and said the recession brought crowds bigger than usual.

And thousands jammed big-city sidewalks to watch parades, including the 65th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York, featuring huge helium-filled balloons of cartoon characters.

“I’ve seen it on TV before, and I wanted to see it in real life,” said Erin Cooney, who drove from New Castle, Ind., to catch the parade.

Not everyone had a good day--Kermit the Frog sprang a leak and wilted.

Thousands more people lined the streets of Philadelphia for that city’s annual Thanksgiving parade, the nation’s oldest at 72 years.

The six Atlantis astronauts were awakened by a recording of turkeys squawking and gobbling, followed by Jimmy Buffett’s tune “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” in which he sings: “Tryin’ to amend my carnivorous habits.”

“We hope you liked our turkey music,” Mission Control said. The shuttle’s pantry had no room for a 20-pound turkey, but the astronauts did have a choice between “thermostabilized,” or precooked, turkey with gravy and dehydrated turkey tetrazzini.

The holiday felt all too familiar to some of the 850 servicemen and servicewomen sent to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo, Cuba, to help thousands of Haitian refugees.

“I left Thanksgiving week last year to go to Saudi Arabia,” said Sgt. Stephen Boesch, 23, an intelligence analyst in the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion at Ft. Bragg, N.C.

While soldiers and sailors were far from home, Thomas Sutherland got to spend Thanksgiving with his family for the first time after six years as a hostage in Lebanon.

“We really do want to give thanks to everybody, all of America, for the reception we’ve had, for a homecoming like this beyond all possible expectations,” Sutherland said Wednesday from a daughter’s house in Berkeley, Calif. He spent Thursday in private.

Turner planned a quiet day with his family in Boise, Ida., his mother said. And Edward A. Tracy ate turkey dinner at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Boston, where he has been since his captors freed him in August. Tracy has a history of hospitalization for psychological disorders.

Many families accepting holiday meals were not homeless or without income, said Susan Speed, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless in Louisville, Ky. She said recession-depressed wages force many to go hungry so they can afford rent.

Greg Schneider of New Horizons Inc., which runs a soup kitchen and food pantry in Manchester, N.H., said: “I’ve never seen the amount of food go out the door to people who 18 months ago would never have dreamed of needing a handout.”

Dinner for 25,000 was prepared in Indianapolis by 500 volunteers, while 17,000 turkey dinners were prepared in Baltimore.