I love hearing about other people’s drama (hate experiencing my own). Thanks for the tangent!
Thing 3’s demands are silly. It doesn’t matter that she wants you “all together”. Stick with whomever YOU want to be with (not with Thing 3, it seems)! Just because they’re family doesn’t mean you’re chained together for holidays.
Football has never been part of our Thanksgiving. It’s fine that football and homemade food are Thing 3’s priorities. Your priorities seem to be tasty and plentiful food that you don’t have to cook, and hanging out with people you can relax with. Thing 3 can do her “thing” and you can do yours. Yay, everyone is relaxed and happy!
I predict this will be a delightful holiday if you proceed with your own plans.
We typically host Thanksgiving and H is head chef. He does the turkey, stuffing and sides and he shops. I clean the house, take care of the linens, bake the pies and head up the clean up crew. When we had a lot of friends joining us (where we lived before) they always stepped up and brought apps, sides, flowers, etc and helped with cleaning.
Now it’s just us (Me, H, D, SIL, S and baby GD). Ha nd I do the same, but D and S (who are both great cooks) help with sides. I also get them to help me clean up.
OP: great question ! Something that I too have wondered about. I don’t really believe in magic or tooth fairy types, but I do know that around the holidays when I go out alone for several hours, I come home to an impeccably clean & well ordered home.
Well, we don’t drink, so please don’t bring us wine. While we’d appreciate the thought I would not say that alcohol is welcome here. We’re not prudes about it and don’t have any alcohol problems, but we just stopped drinking almost 10 years ago. Feel a lot better, too. We do know people with alcohol problems on DH’s side. There is not shared alcohol at their Thanksgivings. His mom keeps a little bit of wine around just for herself (and it’s like one glass once or twice a week) but there are others in the family who have had alcohol and substance abuse problems in the past, so yeah, don’t bring us wine.
Same here, we are non drinkers and we don’t have alcohol in the house because, most of the extended family are non drinkers based on how we grew up with an alcoholic father.
We are often invited to Wine & Cheese “events”, during the holidays, which we now politely decline. We used to go because they were neighbors and friends, but people sometimes just don’t understand that we choose not to drink and we are/were often pressured.
The minute I say, “well I’m diabetic”, then I get the sad faces that try to pity me. So, we just avoid those things, but we always get well-intentioned people who bring a wine bottle and we just ask them to enjoy the gift. They eventually find out that we don’t drink.
We loved it one year when a neighbor brought over a case of Smart Water with a big red bow. They remembered!
When we are guests at holidays, I always bring something (either a specific request of the host or something that I know everyone will enjoy and not compete with anything the host is providing).
But most holidays are here. I clean for them, I decorate for them, I cook for them and I clean up after them. Older son, when he’s here, enjoys cooking with me and we make a good pair in the kitchen. I don’t mind the clean up as I get a bit overwhelmed with the hustle and bustle of the holidays and am happy to “hide” in the kitchen for a while when I clean up. Usually a SIL or BIL will pop in and keep me company and I enjoy that.
Husband does all of the gift shopping and wrapping.
For Thanksgiving we pull out all the good linens and tableware, and I make napkin holder doodads that everyone keeps. Best innovation was buying a sleeve of takeout boxes for the leftovers. We have pretty standard fare and I cook much of it ahead of time so I am not in the kitchen alone; I ignore all the magazines about the perfect holiday.
My kids/SO/guest are given something to bring (napkins, water, chips, etc) and my DiL is in charge of dessert and stuffing (they were important parts of Tgiving for her). My father’s family is descended directly from Mayflower passengers so we have a reading about that. My DH’s family were classic Ellis Island immigrants so we have a reading about that. Then we play cards and watch movies.
I cook, the offspring do dishes, DH does the cleaning. Dogs are responsibility of their owners. Breakfast, everyone supplies what they want.
I used to do everything unless we went to my mom’s and then she did everything. Neither of us was good at delegating.
Today the work is more balanced and I am just in charge. I make a list of what we need to do/make and then the kids and H take jobs. I do the bulk of the work, but not all of it. Kids and GFs are eager to pitch in. We had this nice period when we would all drink the leftover wine while we worked, but I think that has passed as I am too tired to drink after a big dinner now.
I’m now on my third year hosting thanksgiving. It’s the biggest gathering of my husband’s side plus my kids and their families. Prior my mother-in-law always hosted. I’m doing the turkey and stuffing and letting everyone else bring everything else. Though they all say they want to help it mainly still falls on me as just getting all the tables, plates and decorations is on the host. Same with putting it all away. Two of mine married into families where it’s just one parent and that parent now comes to us for the Thanksgiving holiday.
If it’s a smaller group I usually do everything. My oldest is great at cleaning up. My youngest is great at helping to get ready. I think all of mine know to help when they are a guest. Even with help the hosting party has a lot of work.
No worries. Nine times out of ten, I know my hosts well enough to know the proper item to bring. If not alcohol, then I’ve found some really cute hostess gifts at my local Anthropologie Several people in my family have food allergy issues but I would graciously accept any food gift from a dinner guest who didn’t know better and then discreetly set it aside if it included ingredients that would trigger an allergic reaction.
Update: Thing 3 just texted us, begging us to come Wednesday night for Thanksgiving dinner. No, she won’t change her football tradition.
I told her that we had a deposit and reservation at the Country Inn and that is STILL the plan and has been the plan.
The rest of the family indicated that they would not be comfortable at the SIL’s home.
Thing 3 is scrambling to put on a dinner on Wednesday. I told her that I couldn’t help. “Why NOT???”
“I don’t have a kitchen, remember???”
“Oh!!!”
One day, a beloved family friend was over at our house for dinner and after the meal, bounced up from the table and exclaimed cheerfully, “Now I am ready to help out by washing all of your dishes and putting them away in the wrong places!”
Thank you for the update! The drama plot thickens, and you get to just opt out. You are vindicated! Please report back on your enjoyable dinner at the Country Inn.
I think what I miss most from the olden days are the ‘practice pies.’ My grandmother (paternal) was the baker and after she died my mother had to take over. She was always worried she’d screw up the pies so made a few ‘practice pies’ the weekend before thanksgiving to make sure she remembered how to do the crusts. She’d use the pie crusts that came like sticks of butter and you had to add butter or flour or something and roll them out. Pillsbury decided even that was too hard for twice a year bakers and invented the pie crust you just fold open.
Damn. Then we only got pie on Thanksgiving. But for breakfast.
In a normal year, if we host, I do 90% of the shopping and ShawWife does the rest. ShawWife is an excellent cook and ShawD is probably better. The two of them would collaborate, but ShawWife would probably do 75%. I would do 90% of the cleanup with help from all. ShawSon and his wife would be coming in from the West Coast. He can cook but not in bulk. She can boil water. They would help clean. but I’m in charge. Guests likely hlep We have a cleaning lady who would probably come the day after to handle the general mess.
When ShawD and ShawSon lived together on the West Coast, we had Thanksgiving there. ShawD did 75% of the cooking with help from ShawWife and shopping by ShawSon and me. Cleanup by the group.
This year, I’m currently on a plane flying home for London. ShawWife is in Toronto prepping for a party for her mother’s 92nd birthday. I am going to our friends’ house for Thanksgiving this evening and will be cooking Brussel sprouts with a gochujang/honey sauce that we had at a restaurant in DC last month and that ShawWife and I have experiemented with because it was so good. ShawD will be going to another family friend’s with what seems to be her new partner (relationship developing). We have not met. ShawSon and DIL will stay at our house (for some reason, they’d prefer to not to celebrate with non-family members). Then we’ll all fly up to MIL’s family farm for her birthday party.
Well, I’m back to say that I had asked (adult) D to provide a shopping list for me to get what she needs/wants for tonight’s dinner since I have more free time than she does. Nothing came, so I didn’t worry about it. We always have tofu and fresh veggies we can put something together, it’s not that big of a deal. Last night she texted that she’d gotten everything needed including a vegan pie from a favorite vegan chef we all love and she’ll be coming down to us in the morning - it’s a perfect example of they really become more conscientious as they get older! Whoo hoo! All I need to do is…wait!
Wow! What a great Thanksgiving this is shaping up to be.
My kids did all the meal planning and shopping, and are in the midst of doing all the cooking… while my mom, sister, and I are just hanging out chatting and enjoying our whiskey sours…
I love having teenagers
Hope everyone else is enjoying their day like we are!
I posted above that I do most everything but DH did ALL the dishes/clean up tonight. I put the leftovers in Tupperware and broke down the leftover Turkey. So he really did a lot!
Several people in my family have food allergy issues but I would graciously accept any food gift from a dinner guest who didn’t know better and then discreetly set it aside if it included ingredients that would trigger an allergic reaction.
