I’m part of a big family and I love them greatly and get together with them often. But the Thanksgiving thing, I hate it. I hate cooking, I hate meal planning, I hate cleaning up and even if I’m not hosting I end up doing some of that and/or feeling bad for the person that did.
One of these days I’m going to figure out a way to get out of all that without hurting the feelings of someone I love.
I don’t mind giving thanks, but I do that every day, I don’t need a big meal that was a lot of trouble for that.
Jehova’s Witnesses don’t celebrate any holidays. You could become one of them, and skip them all- sweet, sweet freedom! Of course, then you have to go door to door and get treated badly, but, you know, whatever.
I am profoundly envious of a friend of mine’s Thanksgiving arrangement. Her family has mostly spread out across the country as they’ve left the house, but instead of all of them trying to get back to their usually snowbound hometown, they all fly to Vegas and do Thanksgiving there. She says it’s surprisingly crowded and occasionally a little depressing, but they get to see each other and actually have fun instead of the whole cooking and cleaning stress.
My husband and I do not have kids or family in town; neither one of us has any interest in cooking up a giant meal just because of tradition. We have attended a couple of other peoples’ Thanksgiving dinners, but generally that involves relatives even their own family doesn’t like; we decided it was a type of masochism and have steadily turned down every invitation since.
We usually get a pizza and either watch movies or go out for drinks. It’s a day off where everything is closed as far as I am concerned.
One year a while back, my kids were grown, my wife was divorced from me, my other relatives accepted “Sorry, I made other plans” from me, I was between girlfriends, my friends all figured I had dinner plans with family, so I got to spend Thanksgiving spooning peanut butter out of the jar and watching the Lions get their heads kicked in on TV.
I don’t skip it, but it’s always been my least favorite holiday. It started when I was a young child, I think because it was just Christmas without anything fun. It was hours of waiting and sitting but without presents at the end or even fun decorations.
I lived abroad for about 25 years. After the first attempt at forcing a horrible Thanksgiving with faux Thanksgiving food, I learned the lesson to simply have a nice meal with whoever wanted to join and avoid having to have a turkey with all the trimmings. Ha ha, many a wonderful Beijing roast duck dinner for a fraction of the price and none of the headache of friends who HAD to do Thanksgiving.
[hijack]My first thanksgiving outside of the US was actually in Tibet, a few days walk from the nearest road, outside of a tiny village. We had no food and the village was poor so we pretty much had some buckwheat bread and leftover peanut brittle candy. We did build a giant bonfire with the village kids and sat around and grinned at the villagers since we had abut 50 common words in Chinese. It was a crystal clear night with plenty of satellites. Not sure if it was a full moon but at least it was close and we watched it light up the deep upper reaches of the Yangzi River valley we were in. It was similar to watching dawn break but with bright moonlight and no electricity for 100 miles. As we were watching this, we figured out it was Thanksgiving. Awesome. [/hijack]
I’m single. Unless I have family over, there’s no reason to go to all of that fuss, just for one. Now that I live in WA and am closer to a lot of relatives, I go over there and bring something with me.
I wish I could. I would if I could. I hate the tug-of-war I have between choosing to go to my mom’s or aunt’s. I hate my mom and can’t stand being there but I try to rephrase it in a nicer way (she’s a sociopath who just doesn’t understand.) No matter what, I’m treated to a guilt trip. My aunt is more of a mother to me, but I hate getting together and feeling inadequate to the rest of that side of the family. She’s always telling me of things I should be doing atop of my already packed schedule and just leaves me feeling more drained than when I had arrived.
I am thankful for things and people everyday. I don’t need to devote one day out of the year to it. I’d rather just have the day off, grab some fast food (or make a nice, small meal for myself and people around here) and relax or something. No hassle.
We don’t skip Thanksgiving, but we’ve never done the zillions of relatives under one roof with a kid’s table thing.
We have a small family that is fairly widespread geographically.
From time to time we had grandparents or an aunt or uncle with us. I think at least once in my memory we went to the grandparents’ house.
Other years we had friends with no local family over.
This year, as every year since my parents moved to this state, we will go for a hike and eat in a state park. With friends, but still . . . we’ll have the turkey and the trimmings, but no family connections.
Last year we couldn’t make it to my aunt’s house a few hours away, which is where we usually go, so while we didn’t quite skip it, we went less traditional. I made homemade orange chicken, fried rice and chocolate cake. It was a lot less effort than is typically made and tasted much better (I’m not a turkey fan, though I did miss the stuffing).
It was nice not having to dress for dinner and sit around and make small talk. At my aunt’s house it’s usually pretty formal.
For many years, almost 10, I think, we spent Thanksgiving week at Disneyland. It was our one holiday where we didn’t have to run around trying to see all sides of the family or figure out whose turn it was to host and who was bringing what. We do plenty with family at Christmas.
This year we took our Disney vacation in October during fall break instead for a change. I wish we hadn’t. It’s just that I felt guilty spending the holiday away from home when we’re all my mom has in town this year. She would have spent Thanksgiving by herself, since my sister and brother have both left town.
So while I would gladly continue to skip Thanksgiving with family, I am not this year out of guilt.
After my husband’s mom died, the first Thanksgiving was next to impossible for us to get together for. It was all still to painful and some not so nice things had came out during the settling of everything that had to do with my husband’s brother - and since she was basically the only reason we all got together, we just didn’t. Same for the Christmas and Easter that followed.
Then, relations between my husband and his brother and sister just didn’t get much better - he and his sister are fine, but not the brother. So rather than drive all the way to her house (it’s not THAT far, we just don’t feel like spending the gas money and the time and then spending the afternoon listening to kvetching) we did our own thing.
My step son is in Minnesota, my son is under the water somewhere, my brother and his family, while they live fairly near us, do other stuff (we aren’t all that close with his family) so it’s just us - and we prefer it. So that’s Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and pretty much every other holiday.
We get fast food and go to the bar - $3 u call it on drinks - and watch football with our friends. No family arguments, no bad feelings, no bitching and moaning about the past, no spending hours and dollars we don’t have making food that will ulitmately get pitched because no one can eat THAT many leftovers, and best of all, we get peace.
So the moral of the story is - Holidays - Just Say NO.
When our son was 4, we were living in Chicago away from both of our families. At the time, you couldn’t buy (or at least we’d never heard of getting) a turkey breast. The thought of having a turkey and all the leftovers for days/weeks was daunting. So we go take-out Chinese.
The next Monday our son came home from school and asked in an indignant voice, “When are we going to do stuff like NORMAL people.” Apparently he was the only one in his kindergarten class who had not had turkey.
The next year we had a big Thanksgiving treating all the foreign PhD students to a traditional feast. For many it was their first ever. I recall that one Australian student called the morning of Thanksgiving and regretfully declined finally telling me after a few questions that the reason was they couldn’t find a babysitter. I told them of course they couldn’t find a sitter – all potential sitters were with their own families and they all were to come. It had never occurred to me to specifically invite children. It would was “obvious” to me and I assume almost any American, that a Thanksgiving invitation was a whole-family invitation.
