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A supercut of Thanksgiving dinners from movies, all of them hopefully much worse than yours this year.
Nov 23, 2016My children have never sat down to a proper Thanksgiving dinner in my household, but we have an annual tradition of restaurant leftovers—capon, mash, gravy and pie—at the kitchen counter, with real silverware and long tapered candles, the day after. I find nothing dearer.
↩︎ New York Times
A puzzle to keep the entire family entertained (and confused) at the table once the coffee's poured: Who owns the fish?
Politics divides families, possibly now more than ever. A survival guide for getting through politically divided meals.
1. Advice for a Trumpland Thanksgiving: "Show up and stuff your face."
You don’t know what’s going to happen, and you don’t know how your family is going to interpret our murky future; people are irrational, but they often can shock you with moments of clarity, remorse, and contrition.
2. Kristi Coulter on how not to get wasted over dinner.
If possible, bring another sober person with you for silent support. Ideally someone you know or have at least met before—you are legally allowed to guilt your spouse or partner into being this person, if only for the day.
3. Skip the dinner and just fix your aunt's computer: Good advice from technology writers on how to handle holiday tech support.
I don’t give Grandma a reason to upgrade her computer. I just arrive at her house with a better model, plug it in, and lie about it. “Guess what, Grammy? Work just bought me a new computer so that means I don’t need this one anymore. Let’s donate your old one to the local school. It’s a tax write-off!”
Nov 18, 2016In Liberia, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the first Thursday in November. Families gather to eat cayenne-spiced roast chicken, mashed cassavas, and green-bean casserole.
↩︎ TMN
Nov 18, 2016"Listen," I said, "I know this is delicate, and I don't want to put you in a difficult position, but would you please ask your mother to stop calling me every 10 minutes? She's complaining about your visit, and I don't know how much longer I can put up with her crying."
↩︎ Slate
We've published a lot of Thanksgiving stories in the last 17 years. Here are five of our favorites.
1. How to kill a turkey, and what it means when you do.
Of all the holidays a non-religious American like myself celebrates, Thanksgiving comes the closest to what one might call meaningful.
2. Our editor Matt Robison called up a random batch of people in other countries and asked them to explain Thanksgiving.
“As a South African, what do I think of American Thanksgiving? Is that where they eat the turkey?”
3. Leslie Harpold, who was with us from the very start and knew her way around a kitchen: How to cook Thanksgiving dinner in two days or less, plus all the other preparations.
No matter how much it may seem like your guests have come to judge your living space, they have really come to see you, and each other, and to get the feedbag on.
4. What is the science behind giving thanks?
We tend to feel more gratitude toward strangers than relatives. It’s unlikely your relationship with your mother will grow stronger as the result of a thank-you note.
Nature is understood to be free from distractions in a way that cities are not, so nature tends to be the space into which writers retreat.
Nov 18, 2016Thanksgiving came and went. There were rolling brownouts when everything went dark and still. I lay in my bed and ate Snickers and drank little bottles of whiskey from the minibar while I watched television programs that seemed as strange and bleak as my new life.
↩︎ The New Yorker
