Dr. Helen has up a post about the nightmare of Thanksgiving in the politically-divided extended family unit.
Stories, advice, exclamations regarding detested dishes are hereby all solicited. Oh, and tips on etiquette, of course.  We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the napkin rings.
but some of us are looking at the napkin rings.
Because, what are napkin rings doing on a formal table setting! It’s just not done.
No, I don’t care for any. Would you have some goat eyeball is cranberry gellee, dear?
We do the napkin rings for holidays. At Christmas mine is Santa. Santa’s mine. You can have the angel or Rudolph.
At Thanksgiving you can have the Turkey or the Pilgrim but I hardly ever go for that one.
I wonder if any of you can recommend a particular brand of trivet.
I put out headbands. I am usally the santa hat/bear ear combo, though once I tried the light up tree.
Le creuset.
You can always distract people with clever napkin rings if they’re dopey enough to suggest doing the going around the table and saying what you’re thankful for thing. Also, wine.
For a trivet, that is.
Trivets come from “antiquing.” Decorah, Iowa is often involved. I don’t really know how this works cause I’m not allowed to go “antiquing.” It’s kind of mysterious really.
They always want to know why I’m not drinking. I hate that.
I’m not so much worried about political discussions as I am personal discussions. “So, Rob, what’s [the librarian] doing these days?”
My brother is a great, hilarious, brilliant guy. This, despite being a prototypical, preening, Chomsky-adoring, knee-jerk Leftist, born-again-New-Yorker. Politics aside, we’re very close. But holidays become battlegrounds precisely because everyone else in our extended family is fairly neutral (and generally disinterested) politically, and a malleable audience raises the stakes. My now-aging parents, for example, are life-long Democrats who have developed healthy, post-9/11 concerns about American security and culture. It has helped nudge them in my direction that they grew up in a time when patriotism was considered a virtue.
And so my brother and I do battle, with the dining room table as our arena. We get into it pretty good, but our sniping doesn’t get overtly personal (for the most part). I’m pretty sure my parents (and my lovable but world-ignorant older sister and her husband) use these Thanksgiving gatherings as their sole source of news and commentary. So I feel it’s my duty to deliver a majority of them to GOP candidates in the next election. And, of course, to brainwash my 3-year-old nephew who, despite my best efforts to date, does not seem to grasp the centrality of private property rights to the essence and preservation of liberty.
Excuse me — I have to go start preparing my talking points for Thursday.
Why are you not drinking and what is the librarian doing these days?
“Now that you put me in mind, lets look her up on the internets after the pie.”
But then the post-prandial napping gets you off the hook.
Gee, thanks.
post-prandial is such a great word
If I stay sober, I can collect all the napkin rings and they are none the wiser.
Nah. Never work. My family’s persistent about things like this. And they know I’ve been talking to her, which is why they’d be asking the question.
I’m hoping the presence of my sister’s in-laws and all the nieces and nephews will provide cover.
If that fails, well, there’s always the drinking option.
I will not be spending Thanksgiving with my parents so I will not have deal with my 87 year old father reiterating that 85% of corporations in America are dishonest and fraudulent.
However I will have to deal with my mother in law’s loud mouthed opinionated, ignorant, coke addled, gambling addicted boyfriend who remains convinced to this day that he played harmonica in Joe Cocker’s band in the sixties.
No, I won’t elaborate.
Sadly I will not be spending time with my family (excepting my wife) this Thanksgiving, but my friends have all promised me that they will drink too much and berate me for my poor political choices and my general suckitude. My friends are the best.
I join my dad, sister and her two kids at a group Thanksgiving dinner hosted by a friend of the family at a local resturant( in a state park, but that’s another story). It only lasts a few hours so I can pretty much just smile and exchange the usual, annual, holiday greetings and escape any serious discussion… The rest of my extended family lives thousands of miles away on the other coast so I never need to worry about them.
Benedick,
Sometimes you can win the day with the old bugs bunny trick.
Sarah, I consider myself something of a Bugs-o-phile, so I am embarrassed to admit that I’m not sure what the Bugs Bunny trick is. Unless you mean dressing up like a girl bunny and somehow using my faux-feminine wiles to trick my brother into shooting himself. ‘Cause, been there done that.
Please to enlighten.
Thanksgiving will be spent with my mother – wearing her “Bush Sucks” lapel pin. My bil is bringing a new gal home. He doesn’t know her politics, but he knows she likes that guy who wrote “A People’s History of the US” (or something like that) so I am obviously concerned.
Woo, Benedick, if that’s not switching sides to win an argument, I don’t know what is.
Bugs did employ the trick on several occasions but “Rabbit Fire” is the best.
Especially if this music played when you pwnd your brother (again), OC style, in this slightly altered clip.
IT”S NEVER BUNNY SEASON!!! (link to youtube)
whew, all I have to deal with is the inexplicable reason that the in-law’s house depresses me.(I suspect it’s because it’s out in the country, sure there are usually tons of cats, but it’s so isolated.) that and being the “not grandchild producing” dil. not a good combination as we learned a couple years ago.
“as in this slightly”, that is
Me, I just keep my whore DIL mouth shut.
I always enjoy the traditional “flinging of the carcass” over the back fence. The neighbor’s dog is always so appreciative, even if the neighbor isn’t. The damn Scrooge.
Maggie, I could loan you one of my kids. We’ve got plenty.
hmmm,nah, they might suspect something, Carin.
Sarah, thanks for the refresher. I can surely defeat my brother in such fashion, though I’d thereafter leave myself open to charges of being dethpicable.
Given that my in-laws are getting to the point they don’t like to drive more than a few miles, we did the pre-Thanksgiving dinner with them last weekend then we’ll be off to my parents on Thurs. (I have the whole clan on Christmas)
It actually went pretty good…last year (where in-laws and parents were in the same room) the fireworks could have been spectacular as MIL decided to annouce how wonderful, powerful and important The Goricle and his “Inconvenient Truth” and questioned why we all hadn’t seen it and dropped to our knees in rebirth in The Revealed Truth(tm) … I’ve gotten used to the moonbattiness slipping out of MIL and usually just mumble in her general direction and distract her, and for a few bad moments glanced over to see the stricken looks and pursed lips on my parents. Luckily they realized that any quip would just encourage her and they just followed my lead “Oh aren’t the yams particularly yummy this year?”
I enjoy political debates with people who are interested in facts and respect differences in policy approaches… but I don’t argue faith and the contemporary American Left is as much about faith as any Islamist refusing to break bread with the kaffir.
I hope the yams were locally grown.
Seems as good a time as any to wish you all a happy Thanksgiving.
Or as happy as your crazed and divisive families will allow, anyway. :)
Make good food, eat good food. Myself, I plan to derail any idiot political discussions with screamed quotations from 300. I have to cook my own food anyway (food intolerance), so I’m always a bit of a food loner. Hopefully there’ll be some good family moments this year, even though we’re so spread out these days.
Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving!
I see all of this DIL, MIL, FIL, and I wonder if there is a new term replacing MILF.
Merovign – Whenever our political discussions get a little too heated, I yell out “The streets shall flow with the blood of the non-believers”, and that tends to bring things back into the proper perspective.
Do none of you compete to see who can pile the most food on the plate on the first trip?
Who are you and what have you done with America?
Al:
I retired the trophy in my family.
I always let everyone else go first, and tell them to take what they want. Then, going last, as everyone has had a chance to be served, I take an Oliver Willis sized plate, and proceed to stuff myself ’til the turkey coma kicks in. Then, leftovers. And, Kyoto.
Gravy spills immediately eliminate any offending competitor.
Look at me…telling you something you already know.
Hmmm. Does the decreased CO2 from the turkey comas offset the the turkey generated methane?
THESE ARE THE THINGS THAT KYOTO DOESN’T ADDRESS!!!!
Turkey generates a relatively benign level of methane. Taco Bell, in comparison, is the equivalent of using mainlining pollution.
alpuccino – a good gravy can be eaten by itself, either in a bowl, or in a cup. It is not a condiment.
I’m hoping the presence of my sister’s in-laws and all the nieces and nephews will provide cover.
Work this. I weasel out of Thanksgiving by claiming I have to work on Friday (it’s an 8-hour drive), but I’ve already co-ordinated with my sisters to arrive after the first grandchild arrives and leave while there is still a grandchild present. Two years ago I stayed an extra day past the babies, and my mother yelled at me for being old and alone and unlovable (what’s that supposed to do?). Last year I used the babies as human shields–no yelling.
JD, we used to eat bread and gravy as a meal. Ah, the simple times. Bread and gravy for dinner, a ride in the Bentley out to the stables to throw rotten apples at the hired hands. Sunrise…sunset……sunrise…sunset, swiftly fly the
You asked for tips, didn’t you Dan?
A solid berm of stuffing lined on the inside with a tightly packed portion of green bean casserole will be impervious to even the hottest of gravies and will support a record breaking first-plate-haul. Remember: set your drumbstick on end in the middle and pile all spoonables up and around.
If I started the day off with whiskey sours, I always found the turkey neck out the front of the pants was a crowd pleaser, or at least it cleared out the room.
I always found the turkey neck out the front of the pants was a crowd pleaser, or at least it cleared out the room.
was that before or after it was cooked and stripped of meat for the giblet gravey?
Darleen – raw and nasty of course.
daleyrocks – Is that you, Aunt Louise?!
Since the last time I chuckled it was apparently inappropriate, I am doing my best to restrain my laughter, but dammit, daleyrocks, that was hysterical. You should get together with alpuccino and do a slapstick routine.
Sarah – Is Aunt Louise a crossdresser?
The holidays are usually very pleasant for my family. Everybody gets along just fine. And, in the rare instances where there is a breach in the peace, I simply tell them to shut their cockholsters or I’ll put my ham-sized fist through their teeth and snap their neck at the back of their throat.
Oh, and could you pass the yams?
I ain’t slappin’ nobody’s stick.
Our Thanksgiving dinner is usually quite fun. My daughter is the only grandchild, so she gets to set the bar for acceptable behavior at the table. Since she is just recently 6, that gives me and my brothers plenty of room for misbehavior. Then, the women go rent movies, while the boys go ride their Harleys for a while. This year, we get to end the day watching the Colts win.
I knew that was coming, and still laughed, al.
Depending on the quantity and strength of the whiskey sours, the flapping turkey neck syphylitic cock trick might only be the start of the day’s entertainment. There are some amazing things you can do to a bird and seasonal vegetables if only you set your mind to it and lower your inhibitions. Of course it helps to plead some mysterious gastrointestinal or other ailment immediately afterward to avoid the blowback.
If your goal is to avoid having the in-laws and their extended family to your house for Thanksgiving. I recommend you consider a stategy along these lines. The short-term embarrassment may be worth the peace of mind since they aren’t your favorite people anyway.
There’s also the old standby of forgetting to defrost the turkey.
My brother in law forgot to defrost the turkey once. He just went ahead and deep fried it, and then carved off the meat that was actually cooked, and then blamed the lack of quantity on his wife picking out a bad turkey. Lucky bastard hasn’t had to host a family dinner in 3 years.
Wow.