Thanksgiving is 100% my favorite holiday. Lots of food, drink, football on TV. No gifts. Just everyone sitting around having a good time. I’ve never had all this politics bullshit people talk about, despite the fact that my family and both my parent’s and in-law’s family’s are different than each other’s. We leave that at the door, eat, talk and have a good time. It’s everything I want a holiday to be.
Close. Mission Beach. Right around the corner from the roller coaster which was a partially burned hulk at the time.
There’s no reason to discuss politics or any other off-putting subject.
In polite society you sit around a table, eat and have dinner chat. Go home scream at the moon, if you must.
If you can’t do that, at least. It’s best to stay home.
If cousin Jimmy-john is a problem, you can’t manage to ignore, stay home.
If you know you’re gonna be uncomfortable and hurt, then angry, stay home.
It’s just not worth it.
All it needed was a crooked real estate developer pretending to be a ghost in order to scare off prospective buyers. 
I was 10 or so when they restored it and I got to ride it on opening day.
To get back to the topic of the thread, for the past few years Thanksgiving has just been me, my mom, and one or two of her neighbors in the subsidized apartment building she lives in, with me doing all the cooking and her supplying the ingredients. This year we’ve decided to go nontraditional - dinner will be lasagna, French onion soup, a green Caprese-inspired salad, garlic bread, an Italian antipasto platter, and ricotta cheesecake.
Since I, my sister, and her oldest son are all December babies, we get together shortly before Christmas for an informal meal and gift exchange which we call “Thanksbirthmas”.
I’ve got nobody, at least not locally, so Thanksgivings and Christmases for me, are just that: for me. Whatever I want to eat, whatever I want to watch on TV, whatever I want to do.
Last Thanksgiving, I spent the day at the local racetrack, playing horses, for example. The track’s restaurant was serving a Thanksgiving dinner, but I went home after racing, and cooked myself a pot of homemade chili. In many ways, I like that sort of thing better than the forced-obligation stuff I had to go through years ago with family.
It is to laugh.
I suppose it’s possible that, somewhere, there are some Trump supporters who engage in polite, respectful conversations with their family members who are not Trump supporters.
Personal experience has shown me that, if such people exists they are the exceptions to the norm. People who like to talk politics – particularly those who are on the the extreme ends of the political spectrum – tend to not be polite or respectful about it: they want to put it in your face. Especially right now, I expect that there is going to be a lot of gloating going on among Trumpers.
In recent years, my parents have cut social ties with a number of their long-time friends; not because those friends are MAGAts and avid Fox News viewers, but because those friends literally wanted to talk about nothing else but politics when they got together with my parents.
Hell, I had to ask my late stepfather-in-law to please stop talking politics at family gatherings like Thanksgiving, and I’m on the same side of the political spectrum as he was. The problem was, he was incredibly eager to complain, at length, about Trump, especially when he was with people other than his wife (who had heard it all already). Even if I didn’t disagree with him, I didn’t want to spend hours listening to him go on and on about it. He did comply with my request, eventually, but he was clearly very unhappy about it; he really wanted to vent his spleen when we all got together.
I don’t disagree, but that’s an ideal, very often not found in reality. Far too many people (and Trump has as usual, been a terrible accelerant) WON’T let those subjects go, even either a public or family setting. And you have the choice of silently ignoring them (the Crazy Uncle Scenario) which may result in hours of mental pain and anguish.
Yes, you’re right, you can choose NOT to attend, but then you’re letting the worst actions of others dictate your own, or potentially (in a family setting) forcing hosts/family to choose sides.
“It’s Crazy Uncle Donald, or Mild-Mannered Me - you can’t have both.”
Again, in any large enough group, there’s likely at least one - and nothing but bad choices.
My extended family is entirely composed of polite liberals who adhere to the rule of no politics at the dinner table, but who also are all 3000 miles away. This year my Thanksgiving will be inviting another family-less couple over for the turkey thing (I happen to really like turkey, and much of the rest of it as well). Adult children are coming over the following day for leftovers and a hike.
I don’t miss loud crowd thanksgiving.
Absolutely NOT looking forward to it. I love my brother and his dysfunctional family but holidays with them feel so…manufactured. So the family aspect isn’t that great - plus we see each other all the time- and I’m really not into food in general so a day devoted to it is lost on me. I do like turkey and ham so in the past, at least, I’ve been able to actually enjoy some food but for whatever reason, they don’t do the traditional dinner. Last year it was ribs.
I’ve been reminding my self “hey, it’s only a day. We’ve missed 30+ Tgivings together; just suck it up”. Then last night, our cousin invited us to a “cousinsgiving”. I think it’s mostly for my benefit, as they don’t typically spend it with my brother, so there’s no way I can not go This year it will be Mexican food. I can’t think of too many thinks I like less. Now I get to sit through two dinners, creatively pushing food around my plate and smiling. I wonder if it’s too late to volunteer at a food kitchen 
I won’t be doing T’Giving this year (again)
For several years, my brother’s MIL Dorothy been hosting it. Our family tradition was to have tex-mex or turkey, then the have the other for Christmas. This worked when Mom could host some years, but Mom got too disabled to cook the whole shebang, and Dorothy got cranky because Thanksgiving wasn’t right without turkey and etc.
So Dorothy hosts, while my SIL does most of the work (they get smoked turkey and ham, and the rest is pretty basic).
The problem is that I just don’t have anything in common with any of these people. It was fine when Bob was alive ,but after he passed I just felt alone. I still went with Mom.
Now that Mom has passed, I’ve stopped going. I don’t see the point of spending an uncomfortable 2-3 hours with people I really can’t be myself with.
The irony of all this is that I love turkey and all the trimmings. While my brother would happily never eat any of it again. My SIL is a sweetheart and brings me a turkey leg and some leftovers.
Now that’s my idea of meal prep! As some may have gathered from some of my posts in the “What’s for dinner tonight?” thread, I’m a big consumer of prepared foods – not junk food, just prepared mains and sides from places that know how to make them. Also, as in my example of the boneless turkey breast, it doesn’t have to mean “ready to eat”, it just has to mean “can be prepared and served with minimal hassle”.
The key to eating well with prepared foods is to know where to get the good ones, and who makes the best versions of whatever. 
The men in my family when everyone got together never really had football on TV, We ate together, the cousins played around and the grownups had a card game. My dad, uncle and grandfather also played bloodthirsty games of ping pong. I like turkey and the familiar dishes we bring. Reminds me of when I was a kid. Now there is just one person from the generation about me. When my aunt passes I’ll be the oldest grownup. 
I gave up on Thanksgiving after I had a few bad Thanksgivings in a row. One year I was miserably sick for the whole long weekend and through the beginning of the next week. I couldn’t sleep because my sinuses hurt so much and it hurt more when I laid down, and I couldn’t find anything that would help.
I do like Thanksgiving food, but I feel sick if I eat too much, so eating a lot isn’t fun for me. I am very into pumpkin desserts this year, so I’ll probably do more dessert than anything else. I tried to get some cranberry butter, but alas, there was none, so I don’t know if it’s just not out yet or if it’s not happening this year. I would love some cranberry butter and tiny rolls.
That’s terribly sad and I offer virtual hugs across the cyber-verse.
Cranberry butter sounds amazing!
*goes down a recipe rabbit hole…
Mother died last year, which simplifies my holiday plans as she insisted on some sort of ad hoc Thanksgiving gathering even if just the two of us. Meanwhile my father and step-mother are dithering as usual, unsure of what they’re doing and where. They’ll decide a day or two before TG and ask me about my availability at the last minute, I’m sure . Despite my ample warnings that I can not make last minute work adjustments a few days before a major holiday, this happens most years.
Given those facts and that as usual I’m scheduled to work (at a very high holiday wage rate) and nobody has given me any advance notice on their plans, I opted to once again spring for a catered Thanksgiving. I like the food (and leftovers) and just don’t have time to do a full spread myself in the middle of the week. Get it delivered Tuesday, with enough leftovers designed to take me through Thursday. If my folks/siblings decide they want to do a familial something on my long weekend, awesome. Otherwise I’ve secured a comfortably hermitic holiday for myself with all the fixings.
We’re all copacetic and on the same general political wavelength, so family gatherings are always low-key and pleasant. But, bless them, none of them can organize their way in advance out of a wet paper bag.
I invite people to come at five, and we eat at dinner time. No one in my family drinks enough to matter, and i don’t think any of them drink before they arrive.
But we may move Thanksgiving to Friday or Saturday this year, to accommodate other branches of the family.
When Trump was elected the first time, i decreed that there would be no talk about politics at the table. My BIL wanted to complain about Trump, my brother despised Hilary Clinton, and i just didn’t want to listen to it. They were a little unhappy with my demand, but they all abided by it, and we had a peaceful Thanksgiving.
Dunno what’s going to happen this year. There’s no obvious conflict, so I’m not going to censor the conversation. (Brother despised the Clintons, but doesn’t like Trump, either.)
This year we’re going across country to my wife’s family for the holiday. They immigrated to the US and so don’t have any strong affinity for Pilgrims but enough time has passed and marriage to us white folks that now they have a dinner for it. Alas, they tend to do ham rather than turkey but so it goes. It’s a nice time and the one conservative family member (brother in law) doesn’t go overboard and is easy enough to distract into talking about something else. He’s more pro-corporate technocrat than worried about social issues or “corrupt Demon-rats in the swamp” nonsense.
At home, since my wife doesn’t have any Thanksgiving nostalgia and would happily eat a pizza that day if it meant less work on her day off, the task of preparing the Thanksgiving meal falls upon me. But I actually enjoy it and make a traditional spread and invite my mother over to share. Or my mother hosts and asks me to make a turkey. Again, we have one conservative (again, a brother-in-law) but my sister doesn’t put up with listening to that on the holiday and he’s outnumbered anyway and fairly new to the family so is smart enough to not piss everyone off.
I like the holiday. As noted, it’s really just eatin’ and hanging out with people. Obviously we don’t need a holiday to have “permission” to come together as family or friends but having a set calendar day for it, time off work, sales on food and a general holiday atmosphere definitely makes it go easier than “Everyone come to my house for a turkey feast on March 9th”.
I love Wegmans and use Thanksgiving and other special occasions as an excuse to buy prepared stuff from them. This year I ordered in advice and will pick my items up curbside, though, because I know if I go inside I’ll buy things I don’t really need!
Thanksgiving has lost a lot for me over the years. It used to be that half of us would go play golf because you can get on the best golf courses Thanksgiving morning The other half would sit around and socialize while drinking white wine in the sun. Haven’t done that for decades.
After that, we always sent my son to his grandmother’s for Thanksgiving because he loved the food and family. That faded away and now that part of the family is fractured, out-of-state, or passed away.
ETA: If we didn’t have my granddaughter to spend time with, I would probably spend Thanksgiving serving dinner at a shelter.