Thanksgiving: Is it a big deal (for those celebrating it)?

I fucking hate it. At least 7–11 is still open so I can buy beer to drink pain away.

For me, it’s a nice time to get together with friends and family and feast. I have been blessed in my life, and I’m delighted to be able to share that with people I care about. And hey, @rebbel , if you plan you pop across the pond on Thursday, you would be welcome at my holiday table!

What’s not to like about Thanksgiving and Christmas? Scrooge?

@JilltheTooth :: This is what bugs me about Thanksgiving. It feels forced. If I want to have dinner with my family I will call up my sister and see if she wants to go Denny’s. I usually do this every couple months and she doesn’t have to deal with dishes.

Honestly, the whole thing seems like a excuse to ignore your family for 364 days out of the year without guilt.

I wondered if this is an important celebration for those of you that live in countries where it is held?

It is a holiday commemorating a specific event in American* history. It’s not celebrated anywhere else.

* I know that it took place before we actually became The United States of America, for those dying to ‘correct’ me :P

It’s a big deal in the States (it being an American holiday). But I wish it would go away. It’s really horrible, there’s all this pressure to be together and nice and act all “traditional family” with your family, even if they’re horrible to you, even if there’s a reason you don’t spend more time with them, even if the reason you don’t usually follow the traditional family model is because it so doesn’t work for you guys. Tensions are running high, and everyone’s so stressed out that their dish might not turn out well, or that so-and-so’s doing that dish this year even though they know it’s your dish to do, and by the time you get around to actually eating, everyone’s just one glass of wine away from telling everyone else “what their problem is” – and luckily, there’s wine! So it’s just a highlight of how irreparably fucked up your family is.

I think it really highlights something deeper going on when I’ve been invited to two different “orphans” Thanksgiving dinners (for those who don’t have family, whatever that may mean to them), and even the people who not only have family in town but get along fairly well with them are going to orphan dinners instead.

@johnpowell : I make dinner for KatawaGrey and some friends, and whatever waifs and strays come around. I’m sorry you don’t like it, but my holiday isn’t forced or guilted or whatever. It’s joyful.

To those who “hate it”, just don’t do it. It is what you make of it. If you’re a grown up, you choose what to do.

It’s my favorite holiday of the year, bar none.

And when we celebrated in the Netherlands once, at a restaurant we often frequented, who purchased and learned how to cook a turkey specially just for us (American expats working there and a few family members who had come to join us) and closed the restaurant on that evening for us, our Dutch and British co-workers and the restaurant staff – that was extra-special.

Actually, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, because it does not involve gift giving, and no one tends to take it personally. And it is not associated with religion or with patriotism.

I have had a lot of memorable Thanksgivings! Like the one where my sister’s German Shepherd got the whole turkey carcass off the counter and downed several pounds of meat while we were all outside. So my sister called the vet who said we had to give the dog an emetic. My sister said, “Come on, let’s go.” I said, “Nope, sisterly feeling stops there. Your dog ate the bird; you make her throw up. I’m not watching.”

@Rebbel you are invited to join my husband and I for Thanksgiving dinner. It is a holiday that needs to be experienced and observed in person.

It’s just another way to get some time off work, thanks to misinformed ideas about history.

American here: I respect the sentiment behind the holiday. When I am unable to be with my family or friends, I volunteer to deliver meals to those that are home-bound or serve a meal to the homeless.

Not celebrated in the UK.

Thanksgiving is usually a lovely time with family and friends. This year will be a little strained.

I could take it or leave it. I’m glad to have time off from work to spend with my SO, but the holiday in and of itself isn’t important to me.

It’s important to my sister this year. Her first time hosting a blended family event of 23 hungry peeps. She’s very nervous… and has already planned out which people will be paired off, and what they will talk about with each other.

Come on Sis… really?

@JilltheTooth “Just don’t do it” is a bit of an oversimplification of the problem. For starters, the feelings of hatred tend to come from all those years where people weren’t adults, and didn’t have a choice. And now, yes, they have a choice, but every year it’s a reminder that they have to make that choice where other people don’t. And it’s really not that easy to just not go – many times, the families who create such hostile holidays are also the families that will passive-aggressively bitch to anyone who will listen (including your friends, your new family, your boss, your coworkers, etc) about what a horrible and ungrateful brat you are for not showing up for Thanksgiving dinner.

Like most of the sentiments above, Thankgiving is my all-time favorite holiday (next to the 4th of July), and I also appreciate the sentiment behind both my favs. I love getting together with family and friends and eating good food in fellowship.

But never fear @rebbel, the 24th of November will be very lively here on Fluther. Wish you were here to partake in a grand feast!

Yes, @Aethelflaed , I had to break from such a family. And I did it. I’m a grown up, I make the hard choices, nobody said it was easy, nobody said it was uncomplicated, but bitching about it doesn’t fix it. Fixing it fixes it.
And BTW, I still get crap for what I did, and I live through it.

@JilltheTooth Who’s bitching? @rebbel asked for some insight into the holiday, and how various people feel about it. Why is some people sharing their less than warm feelings towards it such an issue for you? If someone started a thread just to go on a rant about how horrible it is, then maybe that would be the place to have such an issue. But isn’t this type of thread exactly the place for people to share if they like it or not? The “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” line has some pretty serious downsides.

It’s a big deal this year! First Thanksgiving uniting my family and my significant other’s family (and we’re on dessert duty!) The only downer is that my love has to work the night shift right when dinner ends. I have mentioned elsewhere on Fluther, but this is the first year in a long time that I have genuinely looked forward to Thanksgiving. Someone is always fighting (which is still the case this year because most of my family will not be attending), my older brother usually can’t reserve the day off, and I end up feeling pretty lonely by the end of the day. Not this year! I’m going to stuff myself full of yummy food and get drunk on pleasant conversations and laughter.

Thanksgiving is a very big deal in my family, and is probably my favorite holiday (I always sway between Thanksgiving and Christmas…Thanksgiving doesn’t have presents, but it has better food :P). My family is pretty large and very family-oriented (sounds redundant), and since a lot of us live far away from each other, it’s just a nice opportunity to sit down, have great food, catch up, and enjoy being together. My mom always forgets about the yams and either ends up burning them in the oven, or she remembers to turn the oven off when they’re done but doesn’t remember to put them on the table until dinner is over; we go through approximately ten bottles of champagne, having started drinking mimosas around 9 am and continuing through dinner (we’re WASPS); and my great-grandma always takes about ten minutes to take a single picture of the family because she can never remember how to turn on the flash on her ancient camera. It’s the small, silly things that make it a great holiday, especially for those who truly enjoy being with their family.

@JilltheTooth Less Fluthering, more Scrabble!

@Aethelflaed : I was responding to @johnpowell‘s post that was directed to me, then I responded to your post that was directed to me. If you don’t want a response about what you said to me then don’t direct to me. That simple.

@FutureMemory : On my way!

@johnpowell: What crawled up your butt and died? @JilltheTooth and I invite our friends over. If they don’t want to come, they don’t have to. If they do want to come, yay! For us, it’s like any other dinner party. We invite a bunch of people over, some of them bring food and we spend the evening laughing and chatting and generally having fun. When my grandfather died, instead of my mom and I resigning ourselves to pain and sadness at the empty chair at the head of the table, we decided to make our own tradition. You go ahead and be miserable. We’re going to be happy instead. :)

Meh, the only reason I like it is because I get a few days off from school.
I won’t hold it against anyone who likes it though. You can celebrate whatever you want.

I love it, the food is unbeatable. Seriously.

Hey – this Fluther thread sounds like a real family Thanksgiving. What’s not to love about it?

Thanksgiving is awesome. After busting ass all year and working hard, theres at least one known day where most of the nation is taking a break, eating with family and just relaxing for the most part.

And I don’t care how corny it is, I love the parade!

@JilltheTooth: Reminds me of Grandpa. :)

I love Thanksgiving, maybe even more than Christmas. No pressure of gift giving. Just family and friends getting together for the day and knowing everyone else in the country is doing the same, regardless of what country you originally came from or what god you worship (or don’t worship). It’s a big deal to me.

@Chuckie Where ya been boyo?

I always thought Thanksgiving was a little too much family, coming as close as it does to Christmas. But when I learned how it started as a regional holiday by those who didn’t emphasize Christmas, later being accepted nationwide, that part made sense.

Thanksgiving has been a little hard on me, not just with the “too much family” part, but it’s also the time of year when I’ve broken up with some very significant others, so those memories and melancholy kind of mar the season a bit.

But I do enjoy taking a day to see the in-laws, and be thankful for what I have in life. We shouldn’t need a special day for that, but we forget in the rush of day to day life sometimes to step back and be grateful.

Plus, it’s a paid day off. You can’t beat that with a turkey drumstick!

I think Sarah Vowell is right; screw Thanksgiving, bring back Evacuation Day!

I absolutely love thanksgiving! I look forward to it all year round even right after one just ended. I look forward to it more than I do Christmas. I love all the yummy food! Turkey, potatoes, cranberry sauce, corn, pie. Oh and did I mention cranberry sauce? I don’t particularly care for the people though. I can’t wait!

I’ve always liked Thanksgiving for the same reasons already mentioned.
It is a low pressure holiday, good food, friends, family.
I did the huge combined family thing for years, but now, the last handful of years I split it up between friends when family is doing an alternative thing.
Last year went out of town to old friends.

Works out fine for me, I am not emotionally attached to any holiday criteria these days.
I also love making my cranberry/apple relish and giving it away to friends & neighbors.
My daughter and I canned 15 jars a few weeks ago. :-D

I like the sentiment behind it, and I enjoy all of my family being able to get together in the same place on the same day. Everyone makes an effort to be there for Thanksgiving. I see many relatives only on Thanksgiving, because they live very far away, but everyone flies or drives in for Thanksgiving.

@johnpowell Some people may feel “forced” to be at a gathering, many people do not. Many people, like I said above, live far away from the rest of their family and only communicate via phone and email, but they make an effort to travel to the chosen location for Thanksgiving to see everyone.

Just because some people have shitty attitudes and make Thanksgiving into a miserable family drama, doesn’t mean everyone does. My first Thanksgiving meal of the season was today, with my biological father’s family, and it was fantastic thank you very much.

Everyone was happy, there was no drama, and we all laughed and loved around heaping tables of delicious food. No one mentioned drinking away the pain or being forced to be there, or that Bob and Mary should feel guilty as fuck for not coming to see us before Thanksgiving. We were all just happy to see each other.

Man, someday I will have to have a Thanksgiving specifically for all of you haters. It is extremely important to me and the best holiday by far.

My family is horrible and fucked up so I don’t spend Thanksgiving with them. I have spent the last 4 years or so having Thanksgiving with some very good friends, two of the best, kindest, warmest people I know (and the last couple years included their awesome kid).

The first year I was in grad school, I had moved 400+ miles away and was exhausted and stressed out and terribly lonely. Thanksgiving was my first trip back, and having a break from everything to come home to people who knew me and loved me was so comforting. Things are different now but I still look forward to it every year and am reminded of how many things I have to be grateful for.

For it to be truly joyful, you need people who are capable of having fun. For years ours was family who were very unhappy for various reasons. We kept up the tradition until my mother-in-law died and then my husband and I went away for the holiday every year. Until 5 years ago when my son and his SO’s family and ours got together. We all got along famously and had a great time. Each year, whoever hosted it had a theme for the food (or not, as they chose). One year everything was a variation on the usual dishes; another, everything was stuffed. It was fun.
This year the couple who started it all broke up. We’re all sad about it and back to scratch, but we learned what makes it a good holiday: good and interesting food and people who like to be together. If it feels like a duty, the fun is undermined. Go some place else with people you like. Go where you can honestly feel thankful, be it a pub or a picnic. Tradition can be a downer.

Thanksgiving became less stressful for us when we decided to take control of the day and stay home on Thanksgiving. We make a ton of food, have football on the television, drink good beer and eat all day. Any family member or friend is invited to join us.

We get to stay in our pj’s all morning, enjoy the smell from the kitchen all day and eat all the leftovers for the next few days.

I love this holiday

Thanksgiving is about friends, family, food, and football.
This holiday rocks!

@Frankie

Oh yeah, CHAMPAGNE! That was one of the traditions with old friends of mine too, we would drink champagne all afternoon, and, of course, the Turkey was always an hour later being done, sooo, more champagne. Then….eat, fall into a stupor, recover a bit and go for the pies and coffee. lol

Perfect! :-D

Someday I will host a thanksgiving dinner with bacon wrapped turkey, with bacon flavored gravy and bacon bits in side dishes, lots of Jack Daniels and plates made out of bacon. All that with Slayer blasting in the background

No cutleries, no peace, no mercy!

What could be better than a paid day off that includes family, fighting, and football?! ;-p

I like Thanksgiving, but it is not my favorite holiday. I don’t care if I do anything special. Usually my parents are over for thanksgiving, not always. It is kind of disgusting to me that the food is so fattening. At my house we do it JLeslie style, which is lower fat, and not tons and tons of food. My parents have health problem anyway, for my dad just eating turkey is a cheat.

I am not keen on traveling long distances to see family on the days most travelled. Wednesday before Thanksgiving (the holiday is always on a Thursday) Thursday, and the Sunday after is three of the biggest travel days of the year, driving, train, flying, all of it. It is much worse than travel for Christmas typically. This means people get taken financially, paying higher prices for, gas, hotels, flights, and more. I hate paying double for something because it is a holiday. Not to mention roads are jammed packed, sometimes the weather is bad, and travel can take much longer than on a non-holiday day.

I find it interesting that people commented on liking the holiday because there isn’t any gift giving. And, @Frankie the champagne at 9am, and WASP comment hysterical!

Doesn’t Canada have Thanksgiving? Does it not celebrate the same thing basically as the US?

I don’t celebrate it, unless someone invites me over. @Michael_Huntington, invite me over! I’d be up for that lol.

But yeah, I never felt I needed any holiday to get together with people and have a good time. That’s why I don’t like most holidays, actually. Like Christmas, the time for love and peace. Shouldn’t every day be for love and peace? Essentially, TG is about slaughtering a buncha people, and as far as that goes, I’d rather have a nice Friday the Thirteenth marathon, thanks. I mean people go, but if it didn’t happen, you wouldn’t be here! I guess not, I’d be in Europe, where I was born to begin with, haha.
Sorry. Not a fan, so I always end up ranting about it. :/

I like it, I love the meal, and I love it even more now that I’ve started cooking my own. It’s so much fun. I understand a lot of people have family drama….and I have had some too, and then it’s not so fun. But otherwise, when people are happy and the turkey’s not dry, it’s awesome.

Out of curiousity I looked up statistics regarding travel on that day. Some of my worst memories in the car were being a kid driving to my grandma’s for Thanksgiving. Here are the stats if you are interested.

It makes me kind of sad to see that Thanksgiving has bad associations for people. I’m one of those who mostly enjoys multiple dinners with different branches of family. Aside from my mom’s neurotic need to stress about everything, they’re always good with good to fantastic food.

It seems to me like an easy leap for black sheep to spend Thanksgiving with friends and other people they like. Anything less seems a little bit like a failure of imagination. I mean what is more natural and life affirming than having a great meal with people you enjoy? What could be a less Hallmark-y holiday than a feast at the tail end of a harvest season? What can be better for one’s psyche than spending a little time counting one’s blessings?

I’d be willing to trade my disdain for Halloween if it meant giving one of you some reason to have a Happy Thanksgiving.

You know, guys, I know that when you’re really passionate about something, it can be hard to hear that others don’t share that enthusiasm. And I know that your concern for those who don’t share that enthusiasm is coming from a good place. But, it’d be really nice if there were just people who like Thanksgiving, and people who didn’t care for it, instead of people who properly love Thanksgiving, and people who need to be saved from their hatin’ on Thanksgiving.

I like what @Aethelflaed wrote. Then again, I have been critical of people with so much excitement, love, and expectations for specific holidays. They seem the most devastated when the family does not all make the trip innfor the holidays, or the adult child, now married, decided to go to her spouses parents this year to celebrate, and not home. I am not a roller coaster type gal. I don’t get my expectations up to high, and I don’t get very dissappointed too often.

@Aethelflaed Makes sense.

@JilltheTooth, @marinelife and @AmWiser Thank you very much for your sweet invitations…, were I in your states I would gladly accept, to experience the holidays one time!
@all Thank you for your responses!
I have the idea that it isn’t very different from the Christmas celebration (family gatherings, food, drinks, etc.)

@janbb- I wasn’t aware that I had been away.

@AstroChuck Then maybe I have?