How to Survive Thanksgiving Dinner with Your Family

Guide Note How to Survive Thanksgiving Dinner with Your Family offers tips, tricks and advice on how to survive Thanksgiving with your family.

Table of Contents

Further Thanksgiving Help

You can do it! Cook, deep fry or smoke your own Thanksgiving turkey

More important than turkey? Learn how to make your own gravy

Read our guide on easy ways to make mashed potatoes

Bring your dinner to the next level with homemade cranberry sauce

Enjoy dessert even more with homemade pumpkin, sweet potato, and pecan pie

Introduction

  • Not every family's Thanksgiving dinner looks like a Norman Rockwell painting. While family ties can be close at Thanksgiving, so can family tensions. If your family get-together feels more like an obligation than a celebration, don't worry. You're not alone. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to help make the holiday less stressful for yourself and your loved ones.

Step 1: Manage Your Expectations

Be thankful every day of the year. (Creative Commons photo by Tom Purves)
Be thankful every day of the year. (Creative Commons photo by Tom Purves)
  • Why are our expectations so high when it comes to the holidays? We have preconceived notions of how the dinner should be, how people should behave and how we should feel. Psychiatrist Frank Pittman speculates that somewhere along the way we got the idea that "if we stuffed enough turkey or put up enough colored lights, then our problems would go away and everything would be wonderful."
  • Thanksgiving gets much easier when you lower your expectations. If you go into your holiday celebration making fewer assumptions about what will unfold, the less likely you are to be disappointed and the more likely you are to appreciate what everyone does bring to the table - literally and figuratively.
  1. Forget Perfection: Perfection is overrated - in celebrations and in people. There is no textbook Thanksgiving.
  2. Be Flexible with Rituals: While rituals provide structure and meaning to our lives, a slavish adherence to them can result in disappointment and may even unintentionally alienate guests. Be open to new traditions, and don't do anything just because you think it's "expected."
  3. Don't Try to Change Anyone: The only thing you can control is your own behavior.
  4. Treat People Well All Year: Don't expect one dinner to compensate for a year's worth of neglect. Take the emotional weight off Thanksgiving by letting your family know that you're thankful for them the other 364 days of the year.

A ping-pong table and popcorn was good enough for Snoopy!

Step 2: Let Other People Help

Share the labor. Make it a potluck. (Creative Commons photo by Matthew Moore)
Share the labor. Make it a potluck. (Creative Commons photo by Matthew Moore)
  • The responsibility of preparing, serving and cleaning up the Thanksgiving meal shouldn't fall to one person. It goes without saying that if you're a guest, you should help your host. Hosts, however, sometimes forget to accept that help. Let your guests shoulder some of the responsibility for the holiday, and consider these stress-busting Turkey Day alternatives:
  1. Go Out: It may sound blasphemous to some, but guess what? Plenty of restaurants serve up a tasty Thanksgiving dinner. You won't have to lift a finger, do the dishes or cry into the cranberry sauce because no one fully appreciated the hours you slaved away in the kitchen.
  2. Make It a Potluck: If your guests live nearby, consider a potluck Thanksgiving dinner. You provide the turkey, the guests provide the sides. Share the love and the labor.
  3. Don't Host the Party: Take a year off and relax. Let other people have a turn playing host.
  4. Volunteer: Spend part or all of Thanksgiving Day helping others. People come together in unexpected ways when they're working towards a common, altruistic goal. Find volunteer opportunities in your community through the United Way's online database.

Step 3: Be Aware of Family Dynamics

Be aware of family dynamics. (Creative Commons photo by Ben Garney)
Be aware of family dynamics. (Creative Commons photo by Ben Garney)
  • Family dynamics can become strained at holiday gatherings for a variety of reasons: adult children may slip into old roles while parents feel taken for granted. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you negotiate your familial relationships:
  1. Don't Regress: You're not 8. You, your parents, your siblings and all of your assorted relatives are complicated adults. You all have your own lives, concerns and needs. Everyone wants to be loved, and everyone fears going unnoticed.
  2. Be Sensitive: Families change through divorce, marriage, death, illness, birth and all the other unpredictable events that keep life interesting. Be sensitive to how these changes affect your family members especially during the holidays.
  3. Go Easy on Mom: Psychologist William Doherty explains that one person is typically assigned to "take on the emotional and physical responsibility for the holiday" and "actualize the cultural belief that the family is one big harmonious group." That person is usually mom, but no matter who it is in your family, don't take this person's role for granted. Help in the kitchen, grease the wheels of dinner conversation and let this person know that they're loved.

Step 4: Respect Your Differences

  • It's not always easy to make conversation with a family member who doesn't share your politics or worldview, but everyone deserves a fair shake. Here a few things to keep in mind when dealing with difference around the dinner table:
Image by someecards.com
Image by someecards.com
  1. Be Empathetic: Take the time to understand where people are coming from, and you'll have a much easier time interacting with them in general.
  2. Be Attentive: People are pretty interesting. They also like to talk about themselves. Ask your family members questions, and listen to their answers. Did they ever meet someone famous? Were they in a war? How did they meet their spouse? You never know what you'll discover.
  3. Don't Discipline Anyone Else's Children: People have very particular ideas about child-rearing. Even if a child is throwing mushy peas at your head, do not discipline the child.
  4. Don't Criticize: Don't ask your adult children if they're dating, when they're going to have children or whether or not they could stand to lose a little weight.
  5. Differentiate Between Public and Private: While you may be amongst friends and family, wait for a quieter moment to come out to mom and dad or announce that you're dropping out of college. Don't force someone to perform his or her response in front of others.
  6. Accommodate Special Dietary Needs: Make vegetarians and those with special dietary needs feel included by providing a couple of alternatives dishes, and don't feel insulted if they can't eat everything you've prepared.

Dealing with Difficult People

Don't drink too much at dinner. (Photo by Steve Woods)
Don't drink too much at dinner. (Photo by Steve Woods)
  • If you must invite an especially difficult person to dinner, you may need a few conflict management tricks up your sleeve to make it to dessert.
  1. Choose Your Behavior: Remember you can't change someone else, but you can control your response. Favor logic rather than emotion when dealing with a difficult person.
  2. Acknowledge Comments: Be honest when someone says something inappropriate or hurtful. Being too polite can result in a blow-up. Sometimes simply saying "I heard you" is enough.
  3. Use Humor: Humor can diffuse even the most volatile situations, but be careful. Don't make a joke at anyone's expense but your own.
  4. Team Up: Talk to a family member you get along with well before dinner. Come up with a couple of strategies to manage a difficult person.
  5. Create a Refuge: If you're feeling overwhelmed, excuse yourself. Take refuge in another room.
  6. Call a Friend: Sometimes contact with the "outside world" can help put things in perspective quickly.
  7. Don't Drink Too Much: Having too much alcohol can make dealing with difficult people even more difficult. You need to keep your cool, and alcohol won't help.

Step 5: Opt Out

Overwhelmed? Order a pizza. (Photo by Moi Cody)
Overwhelmed? Order a pizza. (Photo by Moi Cody)
  • If family communication has broken down completely or expectations for the perfect holiday are just too high, you can always opt out. No one said you have to celebrate Thanksgiving with a trip down tryptophan lane. Here are some other options to consider:
  1. Limit the Length of Your Stay: If you can't opt out of Thanksgiving entirely, limit the length of your stay. As the fabulous say, "Arrive late. Leave early."
  2. Give Kids a Break: If you are obligated to attend dinner, be sure your kids have a quiet place to play or watch TV. Kids can pick up on tension and will act out without an alternative.
  3. Order a Pizza: Really take the pressure off the holiday by forgoing the fancy meal. Order a pizza, pop in a holiday flick and enjoy the company of your immediate family.

Conclusion

  • Whether you love or loathe your annual Thanksgiving gathering, an extra dose of empathy and a renewed appreciation for your loved ones can only make it better. Thanksgiving doesn't need to be a big production. As Dr. Frank Pittman said, it's simply a "day to feed and nurture one another" - the same thing we should be doing all year round.

Resources for How to Survive Thanksgiving with Your Family


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