# Americans: who skips Thanksgiving? and why? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 20, 2012, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-who-skips-thanksgiving-and-why/641567 "2012-11-20T01:14:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![phall0106](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/phall0106/32/5934_2.png) [@phall0106](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phall0106)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-who-skips-thanksgiving-and-why/641567/41 "2012-11-22T12:39:01Z")
Today my mom and I are taking a day trip to DC to spend some time at the Museum of American History. (Oddly enough, I want to see the Food exhibit and Julia Child’s kitchen.) Usually Hallgirl1 works (she’s a pharmacy tech and gets paid time and half for a very slow day at work), and Hallboy spends the day with friends at their house (like he’s done for years). We will all get together on Saturday for turkey, etc. With exception to my trip to DC, this is how we’ve done it for years. ---
**Author:** ![saje](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saje/32/3631_2.png) [@saje](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saje)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-who-skips-thanksgiving-and-why/641567/42 "2012-11-22T13:27:21Z")
> [@listedmia](#): > > This year, my birthday is falling on Thanksgiving! Which means it’s today! Woohoo! > Anyways, I don’t have family in this state, so we are going to the racetrack to bet on horses and eat their free buffet, and then hopping back and forth between a few friends’ open houses. Maybe stopping by the bar or wandering around the French Quarter, too. Hey, Happy Birthday! Mine’s on Saturday 😃 ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-who-skips-thanksgiving-and-why/641567/43 "2012-11-22T13:41:08Z")
I’m glad our family and friends of family have finally toned things down. Not that Thanksgivings of yesteryear were terrible for us, it was just that way to much of deal was made about making it a massive production. Now, we don’t cook a gazillion things. We don’t need a 200 lb turkey and a 50 pound ham., a dozen pies, and 3 dozen sides. If we all can’t get together on thanksgiving we have it on a another day or more than one day if need be. We make some food, relax, and enjoy each other company. A funny story. Back in the day when it WAS a big production my Dad decided to have it at our house. At the time Dad and I were bacheloring it there. We really worked hard to clean up the place and get things rearranged so a bunch of people could eat in a too small of a house. At one poine my dad commmented that “man, this is a lot of work, but at least we should have leftovers for a month”. Which is true, because every previous Thankgiving at held at Uncle Bobs you almost seemed to end up leaving with more food than you brought. We had thanksgiving. Not only were no leftovers left, we didn’t even have leftovers from the stuff we had made at home. For the first time in American History, somebody had to make the very next meal after Thanksgiving without using any Thanksgiving leftovers. ---
**Author:** ![Rushgeekgirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rushgeekgirl/32/3715_2.png) [@Rushgeekgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rushgeekgirl)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-who-skips-thanksgiving-and-why/641567/44 "2012-11-22T18:26:58Z")
I would skip it all but my brother invites me to his house every year. If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t bother cooking anything special, but I might make a dessert. Then again I do that all the time. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Seanette](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/seanette/32/9139_2.png) [@Seanette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seanette)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-who-skips-thanksgiving-and-why/641567/45 "2012-11-22T18:37:38Z")
> [@Audrey\_Levins](#): > > 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. DH and I have similar plans today (whenever he wakes up). No relatives within several hundred miles and it’s just the two of us, plus pets. Throw in that I’d have to do two main dishes (I’d insist on turkey, which he doesn’t care for), and it’s just not worth it to us. We have yet to decide where we’re going out to. Leading candidates include checking out the Hobbit menu at Denny’s in walking distance, a relatively nearby Chinese buffet we like, or a dim sum place we really like (in a part of town that tends toward parking problems). ---
**Author:** ![Seanette](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/seanette/32/9139_2.png) [@Seanette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seanette)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-who-skips-thanksgiving-and-why/641567/46 "2012-11-22T18:42:19Z")
> [@listedmia](#): > > This year, my birthday is falling on Thanksgiving! Which means it’s today! Woohoo! > Anyways, I don’t have family in this state, so we are going to the racetrack to bet on horses and eat their free buffet, and then hopping back and forth between a few friends’ open houses. Maybe stopping by the bar or wandering around the French Quarter, too. Happy birthday, and I hope your horses are winners. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![nion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c5a1d2/32.png) [@nion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nion)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-who-skips-thanksgiving-and-why/641567/47 "2012-11-23T06:55:16Z")
What’s left of my family is half a country away. Depression kept me away from Thanksgiving with my wife’s family one year, a huge fight and major bad mojo kept me away the next year. Now, especially with my fucked up relationship status ongoing, I just refuse to go. Ditto for Christmas. I usually indulge in things I couldn’t do around the kids. Today I played Grand Theft Auto IV for like three hours straight. I still have something special for dinner. It’s usually something I don’t often get to have. This year it was a New York strip steak with some chicken rice a roni. Sad as it is, I enjoy the solitude. Says a lot about my living conditions, really… ---
**Author:** ![LouisB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dfb087/32.png) [@LouisB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LouisB)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-who-skips-thanksgiving-and-why/641567/48 "2012-11-23T13:54:57Z")
I had a BIG Thanksgiving: I had two double steak burgers, an order of onion rings and a vanilla milk shake. ---
**Author:** ![Blaster\_Master](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cab0a1/32.png) [@Blaster\_Master](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blaster_Master)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-who-skips-thanksgiving-and-why/641567/49 "2012-11-23T14:16:36Z")
I don’t celebrate a lot of holidays most Americans do, like Christmas and Halloween, but I do nominally celebrate Thanksgiving in that if family is having dinner, I will attend. The main reasons I don’t celebrate the other holidays is for religious and philosophical reasons not really relevant to this thread, but they don’t apply to Thanksgiving since it is a fairly modern secular tradition. That’s not to say that there aren’t other parts of it that I dislike, particularly the obligation of spending time with family and cooking and all of that. I generally enjoy those sorts of things but I’m just not much a fan of obligation to do things that I think we should be doing on our own. That is, if I’m giving thanks because I’m supposed to, I don’t feel like it means as much as doing it because I want to; similarly, spending time with family. Of course, there aren’t that many other times of year when it’s easy to get the family together, so it’s usually a concession that is worth making. I don’t see why skipping it would be that big of a deal. If you don’t have friends or family that are doing it and want you to attend, why go through the hassle of cooking so much food just for yourself? If not for family having dinner yesterday, I’d have just stayed home and ordered in. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-who-skips-thanksgiving-and-why/641567/50 "2012-11-23T14:27:20Z")
My wife and I don’t have close family nearby and neither of us are particularly sentimental about holidays. So for Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays, etc. we’ll usually go out for supper and that’s about it. I think we cooked a turkey once and we cooked a stuffed turkey breast once, but that’s it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-who-skips-thanksgiving-and-why/641567.md?page=2)