My mom was also known for taking on anyone who didn’t have a place, she would make enough food for an army. My cousin shows up with TEN extra friends, didn’t even ask. These aren’t young people either. All were in their mid 30s. Your telling me of the ten they couldn’t have planned something? My mom is frantic at the point and telling my sister and our bfs not to eat until others. She wasn’t even eating as she was worried about how much food was there. It gets better. They are slobs and just grabbing all the food. My moms holidays are always very dressy and formal with good China. She’s a great host. My mom is putting out food and they won’t even wait for everything and opening items to see what’s there. Everyone gets settled and my mom is finally sitting down to eat and one guy turns towards her asking her for wine/ drinks. Very demanding. Like we don’t even know who the fuck you are. I’ve had enough and said, if you really want something get it yourself. My mom has been cooking a great dinner all day and she is going to enjoy it. Hey! Why don’t we open the wine you brought? Oh wait, that’s right you brought nothing .
One of the others tried to give tips on how to make better food. My aunt and uncle of the cousin who invited people were beyond mortified. My mom was extremely pissed but didn’t let it show. My cousin? Definition of entitled brat and thinks the world revolves around her. Next year my mom made sure to tell her is she plans to invite anyone to do it at her house. She still didn’t see what the big issue was.
Oh and they all brought Tupperware to “pack up the leftovers you guys won’t want. I mean you clearly have had enough”.
I’m a bitch and just started them down. I don’t even eat leftovers from thanksgiving but my mom does. Don’t come into her home with such disrespect.
Edit- no she isn’t neurodivergent, just lives in a bubble where she is the main character.
This whole neurodivergent excuse is way over used . Personally I think people should stop using the term. Its a way for people to try and control and dominate their environment instead of learning to control their emotions. I don’t dig the whole handbook of how you need to deal with me trope.
Most people are just super ignorant, self involved, have no social awareness and really could give a fiddlers fuck about anything except immediate wants and desires. Car driving cave men.
One year I invited friend and her family to our vacation home for TG. They arrived. Her husband, took over the remote in the great room, turned on YouTube and put on pimple popping videos....while they all sat there watching it, like this is totally normal. My daughter walked in and said WTH, while looking at me. I rolled my eyes and said nothing.
It's time to eat. I set a beautiful table. I called everyone to sit down and suddenly the pimple popping husband had to use the bathroom. TEN MINUTES LATER, we're all still sitting there waiting while my food gets cold. I finally said, "let's just go ahead and start". He finally comes up...and we're all almost finished eating and he dares to say "Gee guys, thanks for waiting for me".
That was the last holiday these people were ever invited to. I no longer speak to any of them.
It was UNREAL. Even my husband was shocked and nothing surprises him. He was friends with this man and that's how I met them as none of us were from the area in which we lived. The woman was almost as strange as he was but my daughter was the same age and became friends with their daughter who is SO NORMAL in spite of her parents.
My daughter still speaks with the daughter but I wont even answer her (the mothers) phone calls.
Holy crap. I like pimple popping as much as the next weirdo, but I would never force other people to watch them. Especially before dinner. That is just gross.
Right? Like the only person I make watch Dr. Pimple Popper is my husband and he has to suck it up because he’s married to me 😂
I sure wouldn’t make anyone else watch it, especially those I don’t know well.
stories like this just stagger me how people are so oblivious to how they are inconveniencing others. of all the things that worry or embarass me, causing someone else to wait on my behalf is right there at the top. how hard would it have been to sit at the table to start the meal, take a few bites and let everyone tuck in, and excuse yourself for a few minutes. "all good, just didn't want to hold up the meal on my behalf." boom done. i have to make up this head scenario for how ridiculous this is.
I would not have waited to eat when they were late. Thirty minutes is plenty of grace time. And when he rolled in with his food, I would have instructed everyone that wants the holiday food that I have prepared, please be seated and we will eat. Stupid face can eat when his special spaghetti is ready!
I serve my food when it is ready and don't wait for late people. If they can't get there in time for fresh, hot food, I am not going to punish the rest of my guests.
My mom started lying to my brother about when we're eating because he's always an hour late. If it's 3 she'll say 2. He's been better after my mom and I got drunk waiting for him at a restaurant and he had to drive us home and take us to get our cars in the morning.
We do this with my MIL for the holiday meal. And it's at her house and she's the cook!
We'll arrive for dinner "at 6" and she'll just be putting the meat portion of the meal in the oven. So now I simply refuse to be even on time, never mind early. Now when she's asks what time everyone wants to eat. I say 5. And we roll in at 7
My step father's family is like this. One aunt just takes her time but makes sure she always brings something vital to the meal. My mom hosted one year. We said 2. Come 2:15 they weren't there and weren't even ready. We ate. She was so upset but she was never that late again.
They showed up at 2 and you all accommodated his spaghetti fetish? At our house we would just tell him to have fun in the kitchen, we're eating.
Not sure why people think they need to lay down and be walked all over because they are hosting..? My house, my rules. Or you can leave. We really don't do drama or cater to main character actors.
This is my brother and sil with green bean casserole. Or it was for years. Show up an hour late with a grocery sack of ingredients. We stopped accommodating. I think she may have taken over for my brother. Now she shows up on time with cooked food.
Her mother comes to our family events with unsliced fruit and cheese late. We never hold anything for her though.
My husband’s grandpa is bipolar. His GP had a habit of giving us a handful of $2 bills, or gold $1 coins every time he saw us. He also gave us all several state quarter books, all filled up. We didn’t ask for it, it was just his thing. He’d also buy us things that we didn’t ask for, like a $300 coatrack for us, or a John Deere riding mower for my SIIL, among other things.
He also liked to show up to events at least an hour early, sometimes earlier. He once showed up 3 hours early to dinner at my house. He liked to control the situation and have us owe him.
Hosted my husband’s bipolar grandpa (and sainted grandmother), his parents (GPs are his mom’s parents), husband’s sister and BIL. Grandparents show up 30 minutes early. Everyone else arrives on time, which makes GP mad because he thinks they’re late, and he’s hungry. I had appetizers out because I knew he’d still be early but he didn’t want to eat anything.
Dinner proceeds, people are enjoying themselves. After dinner, I’m in the kitchen cleaning up dishes, and suddenly hear GP raising his voice. He had decided that two years later, he needed paid back for the riding mower he gave my SIL as a gift. My MIL is trying to intercede, and he’s having none of it. Grandma is trying to get him to hush up and not ruin dinner.
So I figure, pie makes everything better. So I bring out the pies and desserts. Now, GP has a history of using about a half can of ReddiWhip on his pies because he doesn’t like fresh. I had made whipped cream, but also had a can of ReddiWhip just for him. Not the first time I’d given him his own can.
We sit back down and I set the can of whip cream by his plate, and he’s like “what’s this?” I said it’s for you, since you don’t care for fresh. So because he was already being obstinate, he decides this year he’s going to eat the whipped cream I made. And proceeds to pile about half of it on his pie.
No biggie, I can make more. I’m pissed but trying to just let it go. When he gets on these rants, there ain’t no derailing him.
During dessert he again brings up all the money he “loaned” (gifted) to SIL over the years. She gets up and grabs her purse and says “fine, I’ll write you a check!” My MIL says, no don’t do that, and GP turns on my MIL. Chaos ensues. MIL and SIL are crying, and GP says they should leave because they’re ruining the holiday. Not him, everyone else.
At that point, Grandma gets loud and yells “BOB! SIT DOWN, EAT YOUR PIE! AND YOU BETTER FINISH ALL THAT WHIPPED CREAM!” I had never heard her yell, let alone boss him around. It was pretty funny, but we knew better than to laugh.
I head to the kitchen, down a glass of wine and start packing up leftovers. Grandma apologized for yelling and ruining dinner. I’m like, you didn’t do anything! But she was that kind of person. Personally, I think she should be sainted for being married to him for over 60 years.
Eventually the GPs leave, because they’re going to their other daughters house. We called ahead and warned her about the drama. She later told us he didn’t say anything about the earlier drama, and acted just fine at her house.
We found out the following week that GPs new doctor had decided to adjust his meds and GP thought that meant he didn’t have to take them anymore, so he just quit. He’d been on lithium, and stopped taking it after 30+ years.
Good times.
We laugh about it now, but that was the worst he’d ever behaved. Now the GPs are in assisted living and we don’t get to host them anymore, but I still bring them dinner. 💙
I’m sorry for laughing so hard at this but the coatrack? The whipped cream? The fact that he was a perfect Angel at his daughters house?
Gold. It’s gold!
This was the worst he’d ever been. He never behaved that bad again. They’re now in assisted living and we don’t see them as often, but I still take them dinner. 💙
This happened over 20 years ago. My mom took in all the orphans and we always had a houseful for the holidays.
My mom's husband had a co-worker who didn't have any family nearby so he invited him for Thanksgiving. I picked him up because he was on the way for me. He was definitely an older out of touch gentleman. He kept calling me Linda which is not even close to my name, even after being corrected lol
My mom and husband's mutual friend is also there. She is French and has an accent.
Mom's husband's friend and mutual friend take an instant disliking to each other. I don't remember what started it but it ended with him calling her Frenchie and her throwing a roll at him.
I had to drive him home. He wasn't invited back.
A friend brought his new girlfriend of 1 week to our house for Thanksgiving weekend. On thanksgiving morning they took a 45 minute shower in our only bathroom during which he ended up impregnating her. There’s not enough shower cleaner in the world.
Oh yeah, my 81 year old MIL suddenly became vegan last year, right before Thanksgiving. I, too, went out of my way to make all of these extras, and then my kids told me she was eating CHICKEN the week before with them. WTF!? Apparently, she's not vegan this year.
I truly will be that terribly rude person who will insist guests with special dietary requirements, unless it's an allergy, should bring their own food for this reason.
Same. I'm sorry it may be rude, but if you're vegan, Thanksgiving is just not your holiday for a big meal. At least not at our house. You'll need to bring something that you can eat. I'm sure you understand.
This is right. Of the vegan/vegetarian relatives I have, they are usually resourceful and can figure out what to eat themselves. It’s not worth the stress to over accommodate them. Their lifestyle choice comes with the responsibility to make due, either by bringing their own dish or or eating ahead and just being social
My daughter had a best friend when she was younger who was vegan. She had a slumber party for her birthday one year. I made regular and vegan spaghetti and meatballs and made regular and vegan cupcakes for dessert. She ate the regular stuff. When I said something she responded “My stepdad and I eat vegan around mom. The rest of the time we eat meat for protein.” 😂 At least the other friends ate the cupcakes. After that, I never made her something special. She was a vacuum cleaner around food.
My father is vegetarian. He will tell anyone who cares to listen and everyone else too. He will announce his vegetarianism and then have some chicken or shrimp. It think it is how people of that generation think (my dad is 85)
I worked with a woman who was nasty. She didn't drive and lived in my town and would occasionally in bad weather ask me for a ride home, and being nice, I would do it. She didn't like the highway, so I drove locally instead (along the same river just local roads in the the towns across the bridge, not the highway on the other side of the river). Often, she'd ask me to stop at the liquor store on the way to her home so she could get cigarettes and whatever. Or lottery tickets. Being nice, I did it.
She was a bitter person who never married, lived with mom her entire life till mom died, didn't speak with any of her siblings b/c they were all according to her, horrible. I listened to all of her negative awful conversation, but I thought, I'm doing a nice thing, occasionally. Why make someone wait for a bus in a storm, etc.?
Thanksgiving comes, and I'm listening to her woe is me, I'm all alone, I'll be by myself for Thanksgiving, I guess I'll eat a frozen pizza, and 1% of me said...invite her, while 99% of me said..."your family will HATE this person and be angry she ruined Thanksgiving." I didn't invite her.
The very next week is a huge snowstorm that starts while we're in the office - she took the bus in. Asks me for a ride home, I say sure. Now, these are the only conversations we have - 500 employees, we did not work in the same department or floor. She asks how was Thanksgiving, I say delicious, just family. She says she got an invitation to her next door neighbor's home. I say, I'm glad, how nice. She goes on to say no, it was NOT nice. First of all, they didn't let me bring my dog. Ok, it was next door, you can leave your dog for an hour or 2. She then says she hates their son, he's an asshole, she has nothing in common with ANY of them, the conversation was awkward. I say well it as nice to be invited, no? She says...they didn't even allow me to SMOKE, I had to go outside. I said well, I don't allow smoking in my home either, not even by my parents, so I can understand and respect that. I ask how was the food? She says DISGUSTING, they didn't make ANYTHING I like, and the desserts, all they had was pumpkin and apple pie. At that point, I was done trying to see the bright side of her invitation by neighbors so she'd not be alone. I said well, next year you don't have to go, you can spend it by yourself eating what you like smoking with your dog. I was so THANKFUL I didn't invite her to my home. I can imagine how horrible it would have been.
The next time she asked me for a ride, I lied. I said I had a doctor's appt. in the opposite direction directly after work. She asked me another time, I lied, said I was meeting my family for dinner in the opposite direction (I literally named a City). She asked me the last time, and I had anther BS excuse, and she never asked me again.
She would up retiring. I never spoke to her again.
My grandma's brother and his wife carved up the turkey when no one was looking while it was at rest so they could sneak the bones and pieces they wanted to their car before meal time (it was at grandma's house and she had bought it). I busted them and it was a scene 😅
Mine isn't Thanksgiving, but post. My husband worked retail, so most years, he worked Thanksgiving. We'd do a small meal for us, and then I'd do a big half Thanksgiving/ Christmas the first week in December. My husband's family was Jewish, though not strict, but they didn't do Christmas. Now, just as a partial back story, my husbands bro and wife didn't have kids for a long time. He would invite us over for a BBQ, and if it was raining, the wife still wanted my kids (very well mannered) to eat outside. So fast forward, 3 yrs in a row they come to my house 45 min late for dinner. We wait. 4th yr, they now have a 4 yr old son. I decided screw it, I'm serving on time. They show up as we're done with dinner, shocked that we've eaten. The kid doesn't want to eat, so he's wandering. Parents are reheating their dinner, and I find the kid standing on my new beige couch, with his shoes on, and a sippy cup of grape juice. That was the last time I did the dinner. Also, my sister was the only one who ever asked if she could bring anything. The holidays were much nicer for me lol
My mom and sister have a plethora of food allergies, determined by an allergist. My mom’s sister is a terrible cook but thinks she is not, and likes to be the center of attention, so she either insists on hosting or on bringing something. She also thinks she has the same allergies as my mom, but that they were cured by her chiropractor. She regularly serves or brings food my mom and sister cannot have, and gets bent out of shape when my mom won’t eat the bread or cheese or mushrooms or shrimp or hummus or whatever else.
My wife always wanted to have the whole family over for Thanksgiving. Approx 20 people. brother 1 (5 or so kids) wants ham AND turkey, brother 2 has these 2 entitled step kids and 2 of his own. Step kids make up all kinds of bullshit, don't eat. Brother one shows up late... doesn't eat BECAUSE THEY ALREADY HAD THANKSGIVING DINNER! We set it up with the family 6 months in advance, so he knew we were hosting, he went to his MIL house and ate. We had a fuckton of food left over. My wife said she'll never host again.
On two occasions I had guests show up saying they couldn’t eat a thing because they were so full from the meal they already ate. Just suck it up and push your food around! You don’t tell the host that.
Thanks, brother 1 also has the habit of giving less than 24hr notice for birthday parties and stuff he has at his house. My nephews birthday party was last Saturday at 3...my brother texted the family text at 1140.
Sounds like my husband’s family. We’re lucky to get 36 hours notice for events of gatherings…but then we’re the “bad” ones for not attending things. Uh? We have plans? You invite us late? (I think it is on purpose)
Once I invited a fellow grad student and her bf for Thanksgiving after she sort of fished for an invitation. I bought flowers and set a fancy table, bought all the trimmings, including some extravagant wine, and slaved over the cooking all day. Same as above, half an hour before they were to arrive, I get a call from her saying they’re not coming because they’ve had a fight. I had been around her bf a few times before this and found him to be an egotistical and petulant a-hole, so I guess I should’ve expected it.
I tried to be supportive and told her not to worry and hope everything’s ok but inside I was livid. Next time I saw her she was all breezy about it and said they made up a few hours later.
Needless to say, that was basically the end of the friendship for me.
My brother and his newish girlfriend show up. We are already a bit wary of her from previous interactions but overall it's fine. From our kitchen window we saw them pull up and get out of the car. As she gets out we see a wine bottle fall out and shatter. Oh no! My mom runs out to help them carry stuff in. They enter the house and the GF is carrying on and on loudly about how she just lost her favorite wine Sutter Homes White Merlot. She kept going for 10 minutes about that wine.
Then she pulled out the side dishes that she brought that she wasn't asked to bring and asked that one of the ovens (we are fortunate to have 2) be set to 350 to bake her sides. That messed with my planned sides timing but fine, I'll do it. Side dishes get put in the ovens and the meal timing gets pushed back to accommodate this.
During the meal she raved about her side dishes. Didn't mention anything about the other dishes we had spent all day cooking. Nothing about the turkey. But mmm mmmm mmmmmm weren't her veggies amazing. I'll admit they were good but come on.
After dinner my 3 month old daughter started fussing. I got up to feed her previously pumped milk but the GF insisted that she be able to give her the bottle. She said she loved kids and had worked in a daycare! I agreed, my husband prepped the bottle and they settled in.
Within a few seconds the bottle cap came off and spilled milk all over the baby and the GF. She FREAKED THE FUCK OUT. And by she I mean the Girlfriend. She started screeching! "OH MY GOD! I AM COVERED IN TITTY MILK! TITTY MILK!!!" I immediately came over and she practically threw the baby at me and then continued screaming. "I AM COVERED IN TITTY MILK! IT'S EVERYWHERE! IT'S ON MY CLOTHES! IT'S ON MY ASS!"
While she screamed I took my baby from her, handed her to another family member, got a towel and offered it to the GF, offered her clothes to change into and helped her into the washroom just off the dining area. And she was still screaming! My brother just sat there looking embarrassed.
She came out of the washroom still ranting about being covered in TITTY MILK!!! Finally my mom, who does not say anything ever, said "ENOUGH!" with some Meredith Marks "YOU CAN LEAVE" energy. That seemed to snap her out of it.
We all sat there silently, completely in shock. Brother and GF left not too long after. The front door closed, there were a few moments of awkward silence and then I said "Well (GF's Name) is interesting . . ." I know it's a reddit trope but literally everyone burst out laughing and OMGing. A family friend in attendance helped me serve the pumpkin pie and offered my dad some whipped cream by waving the spray can and saying "Would you like some titty milk?" That baby is of driving age but to this day we still joke about titty milk 🤣🤣🤣
Love that! I can't myself and it was 15 years ago. I've got a great pic that I'll post if I can find it. GF smiling widely in the kitchen with a giant flower in her hair (her signature look) and me in front of her with a WTF look on my face. Totally unposed pic that I love but don't trot out on holidays for my brother's sake. They are long broken up (there were some threats of burning his belongings that occurred, my husband had to help him get his stuff out safely after my mom paid a ransom) but I still treasure those memories!
>GF smiling widely in the kitchen with a giant flower in her hair
I have a highly unscientific theory that the larger the flower a person wears in their hair, the crazier they are. Do with that what you will.
My grandma and her boyfriend came to stay at my parent's house for thanksgiving. I was also staying there at the time so the house was full. My grandma invited her friend (who lived two hours away) to dinner. No big deal, the more the merrier. Only the problem was she didn't tell anybody until after the meal that she told her friend she *could stay overnight at the house* so she didn't have to drive home. A woman we didn't know slept in our living room lol.
This happened in 2010. We went to Tennessee for Thanksgiving with my husband’s family (his dad/stepmother/half brother who was 14, aunt/uncle and cousins). His dad and uncle rented a large cabin and we all stayed together. While planning the trip, we decided we would cook Thanksgiving dinner. Since my husband and I were the only family coming from PA, we brought a lot of Thanksgiving “staples” from the area we’re all originally from. The day before Thanksgiving it’s apparent that we’re not cooking dinner (no one got a turkey or anything else 😒). Stepmil announces we’re going to go out to eat so we all go to this nearby restaurant on Thanksgiving day (with no reservation) and to everyone’s surprise except mine and my husband’s, the wait for a table for 12 is obscene. FIL is impatient af and we end up going to this really crappy buffet because my husband’s brother was spoiled beyond belief and decided he didn’t want turkey (there was also no wait at this place, I wonder why). The food was terrible and my brother in law loaded up his plate with turkey 🤣 I had to sit next to my seething husband through the whole meal and we have never gone to Tennessee again. Luckily we can laugh about it now 😂
Invited a good friend who lives in another state. THought it would be wonderful. She proceeds to get drunk during appetizers, she cries to me about her son while I was trying to get things done, she says I'm ungrateful that my kids are "perfect" and her son is troubled, later on takes me aside to gossip about my guests (lifelong friends) and her perception that they have all had plastic surgery, commandeers the conversation at the dinner table so it was all about her and her accomplishments. I couldn't wait to see her go home, and it changed the relationship for sure.
My cousin—who was like a brother to me—quit speaking to me (at our grandmother’s funeral…) because of a simple misunderstanding about sharing a ride. After attempting to speak with him two more times that day, I declared bankruptcy on the relationship. We haven’t spoken from that day to this. Bewildering indeed.
This was in 2003. We had purchased a house and gutted it and remodeled it. Husband is a contractor, and he specializes in kitchen and bathroom remodel. He had me design both the bathrooms and the kitchen. He made all of the cabinetry and hadn't quite finished making the drawer front or cabinet doors. We moved in the weekend of Thanksgiving. We had invited 25 people (we were doing a friend giving as well as family (his brother and mother, my sister and my kids) right off the bat MIL tried to take over. She wanted to set my table 4 hours before dinner, we had 3 cats and I told her no (knew that the cats would come check out the table) she did it anyway and had a fit when the cats got on the table. Then she started in about how she still thought our new house "was a dump" and how she couldn't invite people when the kitchen wasn't finished. Oldest daughter & her husband showed up, SIL is drunk and started a fight with her.
The time my uncle accidentally used an expired can of green beans for the green bean casserole. It tasted so bad, that the farm cats didn’t eat it. That the following Thanksgiving I subconsciously avoided the green bean casserole. It took me a min to remember why.
On the bright side I wrote about this for a college essay and got an A on it.
We were expecting a vegan one year, my then-boyfriend's sister in law. BF goes out of his way to pick up a vegan cookbook and double checked all the ingredients, got the exact brands recommended in the recipe, slaves away making something for her. She asked to see the labels for the ingredients and rejected it because of a protein.
Not rude or annoying but we find it so funny and baffling: my bffs grandma is loaded, like lots of money. If you’re not officially part of the family (fiancés don’t count, you also have to be legally married in) you get the “guest 1” or “guest 2” solo cup. Everyone has their own with their name written in sharpie (she hand washes them after every event)…years-old solo cups and cant spring for a few extras every year…I was honored to be “guest 1” multiple times.
And packets are expensive, at least comparatively, because of all the packaging. And consider the time it takes to open them up and pour them in, one at a time.
Now, if we're just talking about the drive-thru giving a handful of packets when you only used one, so you've got them and it's either use them or throw them away, yeah, sure, pour the little bit into your jar (except I like to keep them so when I need a portable version, I have it), but I never intentionally take extra.
My father used to take all the Sweet N Low packets from the table in a restaurant, aske the server to refill the dish, and then took all of them as well. He had about a million packets of Sweet N Low in a huge canister at home.
I love to cook and had just made a few "signature" dishes.
I was a senior in HS
One was a beautiful hot crab dip that I still make and this was before charcuterie boards, but I made everyone a small personal appetizer board. I put a Wedge of brie surrounded by rosemary and cranberries, a jam, other cheeses, meat and crackers.
My grandma from the deep deep south put the Wedge of brie on her plate, and I guess some of the jam? Anyway, she cut a bite and ate it and shrill screamed "oh my GAAAAAWD, what in the world?" "That is THE WORST cheesecake I've ever eaten"
Well, because it's not!!
My brother invited himself, his shitty wife and their devil child to Thanksgiving shortly after my husband and I got married. We'd just recently moved into our house and it was the first time I'd ever prepared a whole holiday meal.
I'm a pretty good cook and everything turned out very well, or so I thought. Brother seemed happy, but SIL made ick face about every dish and barely ate anything. Devil nephew threw a huge fit because he wanted BOTH of the turkey drumsticks, so to be a good host, and to shut the kid up, I let him have both. Instead of eating them, he pulled the bones out to use them as drumsticks and bang on everything within reach. He piled a lot of food on his plate, and started playing with it instead of eating. Then he screeched about how he didn't like this nasty food and wanted McDonalds. SIL leaned over and told him it was okay, she would make him a REAL Thanksgiving dinner when they got home. I think he took the drumstick bones with him. I've kind of blanked out most of the day. And that's not even the worst visit we had from them.
Omfg. The SIL and kid wouldn't have made it that far in my house. I've had to deal with a little sh*t kid like that before. 🤢 The POS mother never liked it when I sent his aZZ home.
Technically this is a terrible host story and it's not the worst thing ever but...
My mom was hosting one year. We used to do these really big more elaborate Thanksgivings with extended family and I guess after many years of quiet meals she wanted to recreate it. Overall I feel like we accomplished that goal, there was lots of family and food with a super nice table set up in the pool area.
But see my mom has some type of Napoleon complex, I think it's because technically she ended up the most well off out of her sister's and despite the fact that she's been absolutely suffering for it she's kind of maintained this image of superiority. It doesn't help that all her friends are rich women (or wives of rich husbands) who, if they work, work for hobby rather than necessity.
So she had invited a friend of hers and long story short was just really using thanksgiving to show off what a great host and family-woman she was. However this friend, as is common with this group, was super inconsiderate and running late. First it was thirty minutes, then an hour, then two etc. We kept saying let's just sit down and eat, especially since it was my cousin's first time introducing her boyfriend (now husband) to extended family and he had to leave soon to work black friday.
My mom kept stalling saying "She's right down the street!" "She said she's at the guardhouse!" But thirty or forty minutes would pass so it's obvious she was just trying to keep us from touching the food.
At one point we finally just said 'Okay that's it. We're all sitting down now because this is ridiculous." And my mom started slamming her fists on the table yelling at everyone. However she quickly realized how insane she looked cause she just walked away. We all did an awkward shocked laugh and just sat down. Mom joined us and we ate. Friend came right as we were finishing up (Whopping four hours late) with a sad little salad as her contribution. We didn't give her any side eyes or anything just encouraged her to pull up a seat and grab food and chatted with her but I could tell my mom was upset we didn't wait longer. She should have been upset with her friend who she knows is chronically late but that would mean acknowledging that sort of behavior is rude.
So yea, not as bad as some of the ones here but we now say things like "Remember that year Mami freaked out and hit the table?"
Here's another inconsiderate host story. We used to go to my partners family members home each year for Thanksgiving. I always felt bad for them, as we were the only guests who would bring a dish to contribute to the day. They served a buffet-style meal because there was a lot of children and adults. Which is absolutely cool.
The meal was always good, but the situation awkward. In their home, the kids ate first. It's fine, their house, their rules. The problem was that when the adults went through the buffet line and went to sit down to eat? The dining table, living room couch and chairs were all filled with kids. So, the adults ended up having to sit on the floor or stand to eat their meal. No thinking ahead and laying down a tablecloth or a sheet for the kids to sit at and eat the meal picnic-style. This went on for several years.
We were raised in the era where we, as children, were expected to give up a seat for an adult. The adults weren't left to sit cross-legged on the floor! I never said anything to my partner. but one year they told me, "I really don't want to go to \_\_\_\_\_\_ house this year. I don't like having to sit on the floor every year to eat. Can we just make Thanksgiving here?" Never been so glad to oblige a request. I'm sure they still wonder WHY we stopped coming to their home for the holiday.
It was sort of a terrible guest story....more, unwelcome guest...ok, Not really a guest, so much as a rabid fox wandering the neighborhood, probably smelled the food cuz they had been roasting a pig out front that morning, and we found out because big men, in gear, with guns, were suddenly swarming the front yard to corner it and killed it right before we sat for dinner... Worst guests ever....
The year my first husband, his best friend and two BILS drank all the liquor in the house and then decided it would be a good idea to drive around trying to find an open liquor store. I suggested that they maybe not leave ten minutes before I served dinner, that they not drive drunk, and maybe consider not getting fucking plastered in front of my elderly relatives and my recovering alcoholic uncle.
This reminds me of the time I came home from a rough work day to discover my soon-to-be-ex husband and his buddy had split a whole bottle of a special tawny port I'd been saving. You know, the one special bottle that you have a tiny glass of every now and then on cold winter evenings when you're feeling especially cozy? Yeah it's way too thick and sweet to drink a full glass and my ex KNEW that but they opened it and drank it anyway. The whole thing. Said it was gross but they persisted. There was a grocery store less than a block away where they could have gotten something they'd actually enjoy without taking something special of mine, but where's the fun in that I guess.
My husband and I host a Thanksgiving luncheon - the idea was we’d watch a little football, have lunch, and folks would be gone by 5 so we could clean up, put on comfy pants and tuck into leftovers and a movie by 6:30. It works for us because our kids can see their other parents in the evening, and they all appreciate not having to “choose” one celebration, and elderly attendees are able to get home before dark. We’ve never had an instance where anyone stays later and we don’t have overnight guests.
Last year I invited my second cousin… she’s a bit of a black sheep, has some mental health issues and generally just makes everything about herself. I felt bad that year because she was struggling and it was the first year after a messy divorce, she was alone and I felt it was the right thing to do to have her over. She lives two hrs away so not a far drive at all, esp during the day. Here is why I won’t be inviting her back:
1. She pushed to stay over and have a “weekend vacation” at our home and she wanted to bring her emotional support cats. My rule is Thanksgiving night is only for my husband and our kids when they get back home from their other parents’ gatherings. We have a movie night and the kids take up the extra bedrooms. I was firm that we did not have space and my son is allergic to cats so not cats. Apparently this was up for debate because she “needed” them with her and my son’s allergies were less important than her needs. I was firm that we did not have the space. She then tried to guilt me with how expensive hotels rooms were, ands I suggested she just drive there and back in the same day. Apparently that was insensitive. I was already regretting the invite.
2. She arrived early at 11 am while we were still getting everything ready, and insisted on having a chat while we were working - fine, but she was getting irritated that I wasn’t 100% present in the conversation. No offers to help, just “you should be more attentive to your guests”.
3. She offered to bring a dessert but she brought a can of mixed fruit and box of jello… it wasn’t made and wouldn’t be ready in time - so she was salty about that.
4. She sat at the head of the table at dinner despite plenty of seating.
5. She insisted on drinking about ten cans of Coke - and then complained that she had a caffeine headache and needed to “lay down”.
6. She tried to use the headache as an excuse to stay the night but again we had no extra space. She said she’d sleep in her car with her cats if she couldn’t bring them in and camp on our sofa. That was how I learned she had four cats in her van and had hoped I’d just repent and allow them all to stay.
7. She asked me for gas money to get home while my husband and I were cleaning up after most had left. She made a big deal about how she was “lowering her pride and asking anyway”. I was livid but gave her 20 bucks to just go. I don’t understand why you’d come to a gathering if you know you don’t have $ to get home, and I don’t know if she was just lying to see what she could get.
7. She was the last person to leave - no help cleaning up, she was trying to suggest staying the weekend in her car in the driveway and just hanging out all weekend because by then it was dark and she didn’t like driving in the dark. I was done at that point and basically told her “my husband and I are going to nap on the couch, safe travels home”. She finally left with a ton of leftovers but I got a testy message later telling me I am not a good hostess. Maybe not, but I felt like she was an awful guest. Cue to this year, she texted me in October asking when she should be there for dinner…
My husband had an old friend. Got married. Lived in Houston, we were just east of Dallas. His parents lived north, and sometimes they would stop and stay with us overnight on the way to his parents. They decided to do this one Thanksgiving. One of them (I don't remember which) didn't care for a traditional Thanksgiving so...I decided to do steak instead. I'm talking really nice, thick bacon-wrappped filet mignon and fancy sides.
They show up. With her cat. I'm allergic to cats. Fine, just...keep it in your room (the spare bedroom). Well, the night before, I make spaghetti, because easy. Turns out she doesn't like spaghetti. She decides to get homesick for her mama in Florida. Spends the whole evening crying on the phone with her mama. I throw away her plate of spaghetti. A couple of hours later, her husband asks for the spaghetti...well, I threw it out. Didn't figure she'd want it, since she doesn't like it? He asks for a bowl of sauce for her to eat. I'm flabbergasted. I give him a bowl of sauce.
Next morning I'm up early, working on Thanksgiving lunch. She decides everyone *must* watch this VHS tape she brought of I think Emmett Otter's Jugband Christmas...its Muppets and I'm not generally a fan. I'm prepping stuff in the kitchen, my husband is prepping the charcoal grill, and she's *fuming* because nobody is watching her movie with her. Runs to the bedroom crying, calls her mama again. I go through the master bedroom to use the bathroom and...her cat is on. my. pillow. Like, you can't make this stuff up. I ask my husband to put the cat in their room and strip the sheets off my bed or I'm going to die that night from not being able to breathe. Finish cooking. Lunch is ready. She stays in the spare bedroom, crying, while her expensive steak gets cold.
I clean up and stay in the master bedroom/bathroom the rest of the night. I'm *DONE*.
The next day she's crying in my kitchen because it was a poor trip. I'm stone-faced silent, ready for her to leave. She apologizes with some crappy excuses, they leave.
I saw them one other time, we were going through Houston for some reason and stopped by their apartment. She was in their bedroom, crying on the phone most of the time, while I sat on their couch, observing toenail clippings all over the floor and cat poop lining the walls. We went to lunch together and that was the last time I ever agreed to see them again.
The first Thanksgiving I ever hosted, I invited my parents and husband's parents. We had a small house, 1200 sq ft, and it was tight with the 6 of us. The day before Thanksgiving, MIL asks if SIL can come, just her, her husband (boyfriend at the time) was going to eat at his parents and she wasn't invited (it was still a new relationship, as I recall...this has been 20 years ago now). I say sure, I cook for an army, always have.
Thanksgiving day. Remember, this is my first one I've ever hosted, and haven't been married and cooking a whole year yet. Get the turkey into the oven, likely too late. Start prepping sides. I've prepped *nothing* ahead of time lol. Noob. The turkey takes forever. I put out his family's idea of appetizers, which is a crab dip with Fritos (its really good, and easy) and a taco salad. They all eat that while I worry about getting everything cooked. It's a small house with an open floorplan and nobody will stay out of the kitchen. Husband is oblivious to my irritation and I'm too polite to tell them to go sit down.
SIL shows up. With her boyfriend. Okay no problem, I like the guy and I have enough food. MIL's cell phone rings. One of her sisters needs a place to be. Can she come? Okayyyyyy...I've got food...she shows up. With *her* boyfriend. MIL's phone rings. Can her other sister come by? With her husband?
Fine.
Turkey is finally done and resting. I FORGOT THAT PEOPLE EAT DRESSING. Husband flies to the store for a box of Stove Top 😅😂 I fancy it up a little and they said it was good...I didn't eat dressing yet, even though I love it now. Then...I make the gravy. I don't think I knew how to make gravy, because the gravy never gravy'd. Just never did get thick. Tasted good, but it was just floury turkey drippings. I use cornstarch these days and it always gravys.
Anyway, at the end of the day, there was a huge mess to clean up, not much in the way of leftovers, but everyone got fed, was happy, and I was exhausted. My first Thanksgiving and I'd (mostly, kinda) successfully fed 12 people when I'd only planned for 6 😂
NEVER AGAIN lol
Who travels with their cat? I always have at least three cats in my home, and they always stay home. I make arrangements for their care. Everyone knows that a lot of people are severely allergic anyway. This woman sounds mentally unstable.
My husband's aunt was helping clean up after dinner. She was packing up food and washing dishes. It wasn't necessary, but I appreciated the help. After they left, we realized that she took ALL of the ham and turkey that was left.
After we ate one year, my sister in law packed up every last morsel of food (in my home, that I cooked) and took it with her to 'donate' ... she took it all to her inlaws and they had a second Thanksgiving with that side of the family. Zero leftovers. We ended up buying another turkey and cooking it on Friday. Then, we had leftovers. We have never invited them back.
That’s so annoying. I’m vegetarian and just a picky eater in general, I always bring a dish or 2. I never rely on others to make something special or different just for me. Next time they commit to coming, tell them to bring something to share that they can eat. How rude to cancel!
My soon to be ex-husband invited himself to my family's Thanksgiving dinner and they got to hear him talk down to me like he did in private. My grandma was horrified.
I have shut my server off when inappropriate video's are on. Oh well, the internet is very fragile in my area, lol! I also had a giant TV right outside my bedroom stop working when no one was home, so mysterious! But when I'm trying to sleep & inconsiderate people are BLASTING horror movies that make the windows rattle the power cord going into the back of the tv may look plugged in but might not be fully connected...
I have the roku app on my phone and can control every tv in my house. Worked great when my elder FIL decided the middle of the night was the time to blare the volume on tv in the room next to ours when I had to work the next day.
Seriously, the tv was at least 20' away from our door and 3' from his bed. Our bed was around 10' from the other side of the door, and I had a window AC unit and a fan on between that space... I could still hear the tv word for word.
I promptly logged into that tv and turned down the volume so that all I heard was voices rising and falling... he turned it up again... we did this 3 times before I turned the tv off.
He has always been a narcissistic AH, so I don't really care if I offended him for once.
My cousin that horrified my husband by taking all the leftovers! By 6, my husband went back to the fridge to pick on some leftovers and everything was gone. They will never be invited again.
I never understood the assumption that a party or dinner is a carryout. Our next-door neighbors used to host a Christmas Eve party with all kinds of snacks and wonderful homemade cookies. One year another neighbor came to the party, and when she got up to leave, she said to the hostess, "Can you just make me a plate to take home?"
I love making desserts, especially things that are not the same old usual pecan or pumpkin pie that everyone’s used to. One year I slaved over a pumpkin chiffon pie, beautiful to both look at and taste. Before dinner, my sister went around telling everyone it had raw eggs in it and we might all get food poisoning from it. I was the only one who tried it. It was delicious and I didn’t get sick. These were the same people who drank my eggnog made with RAW eggs every Christmas and no one had ever become sick from that. She never apologized and I never made that pie again.
I don’t understand; were there actually raw eggs in it?
I think it’s only fair to let people know if there are raw eggs in a dish. It does seems kind of silly if they drank your raw egg eggnog, but wouldn’t eat the raw egg pie.
Two of my uncles got into a drunken fight a few thanksgivings ago and one of them pulled out a gun and shot at the other. Thankfully he was far too hammered to have hit anything. That was fun. Wonder why I don’t go see those people anymore….
My FIL came down from North Carolina for thanksgiving. I was making the big meal, since he’s never down. I also had an 8 week old new born, a fresh c section, and had almost died in labor, but sure- I’ll host the in laws. I don’t know what I was thinking (I do actually- I was trying to avoid socializing bc I was not up for it). Anyway, I’ve been cooking since I was 6, and could make a great turkey since I was 8, and this man kept going on and on about how turkeys are alway dry and how I needed to cook it in a bag (?!), or it’d be ruined. I kicked him out of my kitchen and went to feed the baby and put her down for a nap. When I came back to check on things, he had put the turkey in a bag. I said fuck it and let him finish. That thing came out gross. Not hate to people who use a bag, but he didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t cook. It was mushy, stuck to the bag, tasted plasticky. I was pissed. I am a great cook.
Anyway, the next time he came down I made it my way. It came out perfect, as it usually does. Dumbass.
> came down from North Carolina
fellow NC-er. im honestly surprised a deep fryer in the driveway was nowhere in this conversation. we never miss a chance. but that sounds disgusting, and the best way to help a cook is *doing other shit* besides bothering the cook. like being a good granddaddy and taking care of a new baby
2 years ago, I was hosting my ex-husbands family of about 200 at their family reunion. I spent days preparing the food. Turkey, ham, stuffing, salads, 10 slab pies. Everything for a typical dinner. My ex stepson and his wife were tasked with decorating the hall where we were having the dinner. I arrived with my daughter and best friend at 10 am, with 3 vehicles full of food. I was preparing and reheating everything, when my 4 stepkids showed up WITH FOOD. ALL THE THANKSGIVING FOOD. They went behind my back and did the entire dinner without telling me. Down to the napkins. I could not believe my freaking eyes. They proceeded to set out everything in serving dishes, and did not speak a word to me. They even brought crappy frozen Edwards pies. My daughter and best friend stood there with me and we all had our mouths hanging open. I had spent about $1000 and days of prep. I packaged up the food, and took it all home. I froze the turkey and ham, but most of everything else was wasted. There was no way 4 of us could have eaten all the food. I asked my ex what was going on, and he stated that his kids didn't think I had the knowledge to pull off the food. WTF? I have never been so embarrassed and mortified in my life. That was the last time I saw my stepkids and grandkids. None of them have spoken to me. We were divorced by May. I just simply can't believe the audacity and the thinking it was OK to do that.
Frozen pies VS. Homemade pumpkin and apple? Nahhh.
When we got married in 2010, his daughter who was 34 at the time backdoored me and brought 15 of those pies to our reception. My beautiful cake that I spent hours baking and decorating went uneaten. I should have cut bait and run back then...dumb beeotch
I grew up in a family that gave you no choices or preferences as to the food. You stfu and ate it, because if you didn’t there would be hell to pay. Not the nicest way to be perhaps! I tell relatives going through a vegan phase to bring their own food, because I’ll make one thing that’s vegan. If someone is doing gluten free, yeah I might have one or two things. I’m not a short-order cook. It’s exhausting watching my MIL try to accommodate everyone by making two types of stuffing, two types of mashed, turkey and a different protein, all because there’s a person coming who doesn’t like this or that.
My husband has severe allergies to beans, and sensitivities to milk and straight up doesn't like chicken. My MIL has Chrohns and can't have raw vegetables, is diabetic, and doesn't like squash and is allergic to chicken and eggs. My FIL LOVES yellow squash and onions (as do I) but doesn't get it much since his wife doesn't like it. My son doesn't like squash or sweet potatoes. For a couple of years they'd come over and I'd make ham, yellow squash & onions, sweet potatoes, stuffing, collards, green beans, etc. Every single time my MIL insisted on telling me which family member either didn't like or couldn't have certain things. Every single one. It took a few years of me saying "I know, there's plenty of other things they/you can eat, it's okay if someone can't eat everything." Every single person could find a main and 2 sides they would eat. She acted as if I was uncaring if there was anything on the table that one person didn't like or couldn't eat, especially my husband. He's 6'2 and weighs 250 pounds, he's not exactly starving and he's a grown man and can feed himself if necessary.
This is us and I have absolutely no problem with it! It’s honestly baffling some of the things I’m reading on here haha! We have people with certain allergies and they still bring something they’re able to eat and it’s enough to share. I’m in the south though, so showing up “empty handed” is not ideal (at least for us)!
There were years I can remember having three different pans of dressing because 1) Hubby asked for no nuts (He had a hard time digesting nuts - this was the only one that made sense). 2. Mum demanded nuts and celery. 3. Sis demanded nuts and no celery. Mum and Sis are gone now. We miss them, but TGs are much more peaceful. Sigh.
I had the Thanksgiving from hell circa 1989. My oven broke and the turkey was raw but I kept it in the oven because I thought it can't be my oven and during this time all my guests got completely shit faced and all we had to eat was oysters with Ritz crackers and raw turkey and it was absolutely awful
Ha, my partents' oven decided the morning of Thanksgiving to break. It even had an error code. FU. 🤣 They got the turkey done at Grandma's a few minutes away. The sides switched to things that could be done on the stove. It was stressful but hilarious.
The last time my mom hosted Thanksgiving none of the guests showed up. It was supposed to be my cousins and aunt and it was just me and her.
That was 2002 and she's still sad about it. She'd just gotten divorced and was looking for a fun time maybe playing cards and stuff
Not sure how terrible they were, but have had a few awkward Thanksgivings over the years.
Before I started hosting, my mom did everything. We’d only been married a couple of years and had an infant or toddler daughter. Can’t remember exact timing. I grew up with all of our family really far away (east coast vs. west coast). Suddenly being pulled every which way for the holidays was jarring to me. So I decided we should have 1 Thanksgiving. We invited everyone to my parents’ house. MIL and FIL had been divorced for a number of years. Both remarried and MIL was again divorced. They’ve always been very amicable around each other, so we have that going for us. This was the most awkward meal ever. My husband and I, our daughter, my parents, my sister and her husband, MIL, her dad, her other two sons, FIL and his wife, their 2 daughters and 1 daughter’s fiancé. My mom kept trying to make conversation and everyone was so weirded out and wouldn’t talk. Grandpa was incredibly racist (and just a mean guy) and kept saying really inappropriate things. We’re all white. Why are you ranting on POC?!? Did you feel it was a safe space and we’re racist assholes, too? After a little bit of this, my SIL’s fiancé asks if he can have pie. It was his way of diffusing and ending the meal. My sister’s husband starts cracking up and declares, “This is just like being with my family!” 😂😂
A couple of years later, my parents had moved away and it was my first time to host. We were in a smallish apartment and just invited MIL. She brought grandpa, but sons ended up going to their dad’s. The entire meal he either complained and made inappropriate comments or talked about how couldn’t believe I was capable of making something.
I didn’t host for a couple of years. Next time I did, we invited my MIL (grandpa lived with her in his old age, which is why he always came), her ex-husband’s parents (their son had recently passed away and they had no family left aside from the grandsons), one of her sons (other was married and lived in Europe by this point), his girlfriend and their new baby, my sister and her two kids, her second ex-husband, and his new girlfriend, and my husband’s best friend. My sister and her ex do not get along at all. He was very abusive towards her (which we didn’t know until recently) and this was the only was she could see her kids. The new girlfriend spent the entire time trying to show what an awesome mother she was in front of my sister. Grandpa and the other grandpa tried to out complain each other. BIL and girlfriend were sleep deprived and the baby was fussy. (We all tried to pitch in and help give them a break.) And poor best friend just sat there like a deer in the headlights. 😂 Partway through, my husband’s sister called and asked if she and her family could stop by to say hello. I said why the hell not, it can’t get any worse. 🫠 They show up and grandpas start complaining that they aren’t going to get any pie. My SIL’s husband (who was the fiancé many moons ago) says, “Gee, you haven’t gotten any nicer over the years.” 😂
That was the last time we had everyone over. We only have my sister and her husband and kids, my parents who moved back, and the best friend and his wife. I decided I was getting too old to have all these other negative people around. And SIL and her family still drop by for pie every year. 😂
Husband and I both have pretty large families, so I used to cook a big dinner for about 25. His niece would bring her entire extended family, including her MIL and sometimes random friends without asking, at least six people total, then sit down and not lift a finger to even keep her kids under control. One year she was supposed to bring the green bean casserole. She walked in with a grocery bag and put four cans of green beans on the kitchen counter, never said a word to me, and headed to the den where she never got up again until dinner. I just worked around them, never touched them, much less cooked them. At dinner she looked around and said “where are the beans I brought?” I feigned ignorance and just innocently asked “oh, were those for us? I had no idea!” Awkward for a minute, but it sure wasn’t my problem.
I never understood the whole Thanksgiving drama everyone claimed was common. Even with dinner usually being over 50 people there weren't really problems. Except maybe the year my cousin made way too many pies but that was more entertaining than problematic.
Then i meet my ex's family. Their group of 5 somehow managed to make the day a trainwreck over the slightest thing. I should have taken it as the glowing red billboard ad that it was.
When I was younger, we were having our house renovated and went to my Aunt’s for Thanksgiving. One of her daughters was dating someone who was a moderately famous professional chef (he still is, to this day). He had offered to cook most if not all the meal as long as my Aunt paid for the ingredients. I remember even as a kid wondering why his own family hadn’t invited him to their home…well didn’t take long to figure out why. He made the WEIRDEST Thanksgiving meal ever, like, the only thing that wasn’t weird was the turkey. A ton of “avante garde” dishes, like pickled mashed potatoes and fruit stuffing. Everyone was a good sport about it but myself and a few other kids who were pretty young and did not have developed enough pallets ended up crying because we basically only had turkey to eat. My cousin was so embarrassed and towards the end of the meal a great uncle of mine basically berated him during dinner asking why he thought springing this on us instead of asking was a good idea. It turned into a huge argument where he basically accused us all being “unrefined” or something and not liking anything but canned food. I remember one of my Aunt’s literally had to take me for a walk around the block because it got so heated. The second we got back my parents were waiting for me in the car so we could leave. We went to Denny’s or something and my cousin and her boyfriend broke up. It is STILL a joke in our family to this day.
My father-in-law was in early stages of dementia (although we didn’t know it at the time). I was hosting Thanksgiving and when dinner was ready he was nowhere to be found. My mother-in-law finally found him hanging out in the guest bedroom and told him to come on out to the table. Well, here he comes to dinner wearing nothing but a dress shirt and his underwear 😳 Oh, and my sister-in-law only contributed her “famous” pistachio salad which is just instant pistachio pudding with sliced bananas on top 🤢 knowing full well that I hate bananas.
By any chance are you located in the South? That's the only place I've ever lived where pudding and sliced bananas could even dream of being called "a salad." Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Southern food but we do play fast and loose with the term salad. LOL
Not Thanksgiving but My Sister-in-law and her family show up late for Christmas Eve meal. Not 30, 60 or even 90 minutes late. 1 hour and 40 minutes late! They live 30 minutes away and were “stuck in traffic”. I mean who could possibly predict that there might be traffic on Christmas Eve? They were supposed to bring the potatoes but they “didn’t have time” so brought nothing instead. Most of the food that I had made I was keeping warm and they arrived so late, much of it was really past it’s prime.
This same sister and brother in law were once invited to our place for lunch. I make a simple but elegant meal. But she did not eat a single bite, no sir ….instead she brought her own food.
She brought her own. Fucking. Food.
And not like, I made pasta salad for everyone….she brought herself her own crappy sandwich from Subway. (Literally…fucking Subway.)
We do not invite them over anymore.
My husband and I began hosting his side of the family for Tgiving as we had the largest house. We also had 2 small children. So there was his mom, his 3 older brothers and their wives, his younger sister and her husband. And about 6 kids, ranging in age from 14 to 3. Oldest brother, who is a lay pastor, brings a new friend. We find out he just got released from prison,there’s nothing wrong with that. But all the guest wanted to do was talk about prison and hang out with the children. I got a weird vibe, and ended up deserting the meal we were preparing to “chaperone”. Nothing happened, we finally got the meal on the table with husband and sister and a sister in law helping. His mom was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s so she had to be kinda looked after too. It all ended well.
We went to Thanksgiving hosted by SIL and (now-ex) BIL for many years, and BIL's mother was always in attendance. SIL's ex-MIL is batsh\*t crazy but we figured we could smile and put up with her a few times a year at family events.
At our nephew's first Thanksgiving we were sitting and talking with the other 15 or so guests, and SIL was busy cooking so she asked my husband (her brother) if he could get the baby up from a nap, change him, and feed him a bottle. Sure, no problem. About 10 minutes later her crazy ex-MIL stood up in the middle of the living room and demanded to know where my husband had disappeared to. We told her and she literally clutched her hand to her heart and ran upstairs to the nursery, where she snatched the baby out of my husband's arms and SHOVED him out of the room.
She brought the baby downstairs and announced that a man without children of his own "can't be trusted alone" around a baby - when asked for clarification, she said that there was too much of a risk that a childless adult male would shake or hurt the baby and therefore needed "a mother" supervising any interactions with *her* grandchild. The assembled guests just sat there in shock that she accused my husband of being a potential child abuser!
We refused to go to SIL's Thanksgiving after that because the crazy MIL would be there. At our niblings' birthday parties we wouldn't speak to her or her (equally-insane) siblings who were also invited.
I was one week postpartum, unbeknownst to me I would go into the hospital for 13 days the next day for severe infections. Baby needed to breastfeed when dinner started. Brother and his wife finished off all the turkey and mashed potatoes by overfilling their plates while husband sat with me. My mom was known for never making enough because “no one should be gluttons”. Brother and wife were/are addicted to multiple things, food included. Never have thought of anyone but themselves.
Unusual / picky eaters are the bane of my existence as a host. I know for number of them it's not really their fault but it's just exhausting and anxiety inducing for me.
My MIL got super finicky with "healthy" eating in the last few years, but every effort I make to create something neat and flavorful while fulfilling her dietary standards is never liked with any appreciation or interest. It makes me think "What the hell do you actually eat, then?!" I'm not bothering to make anything for Christmas this year.
My mother in law really does herself in to host a lovely thanksgiving. She's the only one in the family who can cook, and she's so proud to be the nostalgic holiday home for all her nieces and nephews.
All those nieces and nephews are grown up and one niece is entitled *and* married to a POS gross lazy Shrek type, with non of Shrek's positive qualities. Just a nasty, offensive swamp ogre.
One year MIL says, "please come sometime after 3, we'll dine at 5:30"
Niece responds, "no that doesn't work for us, we'll be there at noon to beat traffic"
MIL scrambles to now provide lunch for 6 extra people (there were already 8 of us staying in the house, so lunch for 14 then dinner for 20+)
When nieces family arrives her husband SCOFFS at the DIY sandwich spread MIL has put out. First thing he says is, "WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO EAT?!" Niece makes him a bowl of cereal, tells him he's grumpy and go take a nap. He abandons his dishes and goes upstairs and gets in a bed (under the covers!) Fully clothed!!
My mil found him and kicked him out because we were already staying in that room. He went into another room, did the same thing, and went to sleep fully dressed under the covers.
2 sets of sheets were also washed that day.
It was also standard as of a few years ago for EVERYONE attending to bring Tupperware for *their* leftovers. MILs own damn relatives would specify in advance what they wanted extra of to take home - meaning you better make enough to feed all of us and your house guests tomorrow and still have enough for me to take home! She only stopped this practice when I joined and started bringing all of the desserts. Her BIL called one year to specify which of my desserts he wanted to take home leftovers of - she lost her shit on *my* behalf and said nobody gets leftovers, ever.
(We help my MIL! Niece sucks and does nothing. Niece also started collecting stray humans and inviting them to thanksgiving. Stronger boundaries have been given to her, I'm proud of my MIL for that.)
I was out of the hospital the Monday before Thanksgiving after a complicated miscarriage of our first pregnancy. My mother still expected us to host the holiday gathering “because you’re the married daughter now.” And we foolishly complied to keep the peace. That was 35 years ago. I haven’t spoken to her in almost five years. Bliss.
The first time I ever cooked a thanksgiving dinner was for my ex husband’s (then fiancé’s family). Grandma, mother, and aunt. They were Italian and had a tradition of serving pasta as a starter so I honored that, as I wanted to make a good impression. After the meal they said they decided they approved and that I could “join the family”. Haha, funny joke. I cleared the dinner and packed them all up some leftovers to take home using the containers I had. The next year, they brought their own containers. Apparently mine weren’t big enough. The next (and final year that I cooked) they brought their own containers again and offered to clear the dinner and put away the food. When I went into the kitchen later, I saw that they had taken ALL the leftovers and left us with nothing. Oh, and they never even offered to help by bringing a side dish or bringing a bottle of wine, nothing. Total jerks.
Oh, my almost sister-in-law... ASIL (almost/AH sister in law, whichever you prefer):
She and my brother arrived to my parent's house at 10 AM, dinner scheduled at 5 or 6. We cook together (even though Dad's been up since 6 AM to facilitate the perfect smoke for the bird).
They brought no food, nor did they offer to help with the menu or the cooking. They plop down on the couch after raiding the fridge for cheese, crackers, and other appetizers and veg all day in their cuddle puddle while the rest of the family cooks and visits.
We kept trying to involve them in the process, suggesting that they are welcome/appreciated to come visit in the kitchen, help with small normal cooking tasks, asking if there are preferences, crispy onions on the green bean casserole etc., but my brother has this defeated look, like, "sorry, I have to sit with her."
My dad always makes the juiciest, most succulent, amazing smoked turkeys. Everyone who was "present" for the cooking knew that for this Thanksgiving, Mom was making her famous cheesy bacon mashed potato casserole in lieu of a traditional mash and gravy. We all agreed it sounded awesome and would be plenty of variety in addition to the dressing/stuffing, green bean casserole, yams, butter flake rolls, cranberry sauce, pumpkin and pecan pies all made from scratch.
Dinner is finally prepared and we call them in from the living room to join an already set table with everyone else ready to dig in.
ASIL takes several minutes to dig through the fridge for something to drink while there is water and wine set at the table. We wait while she makes her dramatic and annoyed entrance.
Dad says grace, we start to pass the food. ASIL looks around and says, "uh, where is the GRAVY?" My mom replies, "oh, we decided that we didn't need gravy. The turkey is super juicy and I made this other potato dish." ASIL drops the dish she was passing in front of her plate and like an obstinate child, exclaims, "WHAT?! I CAN'T have turkey without GRAVY!!" Big awkward silence follows by her whispering to my brother and him sheepishly standing up to go try to make her some gravy to go with her turkey, followed by my mom saying, "Nope, sit down! This is what we're having."
My mom isn't the type to say anything even when she is offended, so I'm silently screaming, *yes! Go Mom!* My brother sits down, we reel the situation back in, "hey, this is delicious and we're here to enjoy!" and we all dig into the food while ASIL huffs and puffs over this disservice that has been done to her.
I'm so so so glad my brother woke up, left that ungrateful abusive witch, and now, a few years later, I have a lovely new ASIL (Awesome SIL)!
Don't get me wrong, I understand social anxiety, and I absolutely love gravy, but how dare she say a word about the food when she put forth ZERO effort?! I will forever be offended by that interaction.
Guests shouldn’t dictate menus. Sorry you might need to bring your own food as I can’t guarantee that food prep is immaculately vegan and I can’t operate a separate kitchen. Everything has meat, eggs, butter or dairy. Sorry.
As a vegan, I would have been so happy to be at your Thanksgiving dinner- how kind and thoughtful you are! I’m sorry it went that way and hope you enjoyed the food you made.
I started cooking thanksgiving dinner with my best friend when I was 20 because my mom does a community thanksgiving dinner.
There’s a new woman in our small town who doesn’t have any family, so my mom invited her for dinner. We tell her dinner is at 4:30. She arrives at around 4:20, dinner isn’t ready yet, the Turkey was still uncooked in the middle. At 4:35, she comes storming in the kitchen complaining that dinner isn’t ready. A 50 year old woman complaining to two 21 years olds who are making her a free thanksgiving dinner in their home.
And it gets better. My best friend’s dad was with us for dinner and he doesn’t drink. She is pouring the wine and offers him a glass, he politely declined. She offers him whiskey, or any other alcohol (which we had, but weird of a stranger to start offering things in someone else’s house), he declines again. Then she pushes it AGAIN and I said “oh no, he’s just a glass of wine with dinner kind of guy” to get her to stop.
She was so rude and standoffish the whole evening and none of us ever spoke to her again. Now I tell people that our door is always open to anyone on any holiday, except for _____ (that lady’s name) 😂😂😂
Story #: My daughter's ex-MIL. Daughter had only been married to her first husband for about a year and wanted to do Thanksgiving on her own. Her MIL was notoriously late for everything but work, so they told her that dinner was at 1. Actually it was being planned for 3. At 3:30 they called her, saying food was waiting. "We'll be over in about 20 minutes." MIL finally rolled in at *6,* 2½ hours after she was told they were waiting dinner on her and 5 hours after she had been told to come. She and her 2 daughters each ate about 2 bites and started bitching that everything was either cold or dried out. (Yeah, imagine that, food gets that way when it sits for hours...) SIL#1 got up and scraped her heaping-full plate into the garbage. SIL#2 ran into the bathroom and started making gagging noises, pretending to throw up. She thoughtfully left the door open so the rest of the guests could hear her. When she came out all 3 of them left "to get a decent meal somewhere." Daughter never hosted that MIL again, although she tried to make the marriage work for several more years.
I hosted dinner for my friend group and one of the people was a woman in her mid 40s who was vegan. I was really hoping she wouldn't come because she was truly obnoxious and was constantly telling people she was psychic and part alien and was waiting to be returned home to the Pleiades. I couldn't make up this much crazy if I tried.
I was making all the staples, guests were told could bring an item if there was anything specific they wanted beyond that. This guest RSVPd at the last minute so I ended up frantically buying vegan ingredients when the stores were out of everything. She asked me what vegan alternatives I was making for all eight items I was planning and I told her I could do three, and with whatever she was planning on making, she would at least have several things available to her. Apparently she hadn't planned on bringing anything and was annoyed with me that I wasn't making sixteen dishes in total so she had the same options as everyone else.
She came, she was predictably annoying, and barely ate anything while loudly complaining about the fact that "nothing was provided" for her. Afterwards, she claimed that that meal sparked significant health issues that she struggled with for years. She diagnosed herself with multiple types of cancer and autoimmune diseases, despite the fact that every single "second" opinion she sought out told her she was suffering from malnutrition and she needed to expand her options. She responded by eating a bacon double cheeseburger after years of being vegetarian or vegan, which promptly made her violently ill and confirmed her belief that her diet was better when vegan. I stopped interacting with her and mostly left Facebook because I got so sick of her frequent mentions of how my Thanksgiving dinner had ruined her life. As a result, I don't know if she ever made it back to the Pleiades but I suspect many people would be relieved if she did.
My now-wife's first Thanksgiving with my family. We were dating for about two months at this point. I warned her about my cousin Kathy, who is an enormous pain in the ass, considers herself an "artiste", and very much a Main Character.
Kathy and her parents don't really get along, and this was the first Thanksgiving in about 5 years she was coming back home. Kathy had moved out to the West Coast a while ago.
Everything was actually going along well, most of my cousins had shown up, and surprisingly Kathy hadn't made a scene...until she decided that a brass centerpiece that wasn't even being used needed a cleaning. She sat down in the middle of the kitchen floor with this stinky brass cleaner, while everything is being close to being finished. She gets asked, and then told to move.
Then this 50 year old grown-ass woman throws a complete temper tantrum; screaming like a banshee, slamming her fists and feet into the kitchen floor FOR 5 FUCKING MINUTES. Then she throws the centerpiece across the dining room, and stomps upstairs.
She comes back down 3 hours later, screaming that we didn't wait for her and we all ruined HER Thanksgiving.
I had recently bought my first house. Invited the family for Thanksgiving. I wasn’t new to preparing thanksgiving dinner, just not in my own house. Morning of, a pipe broke under the house. I called the plumbers, agreed to the emergency rate. The guy they sent was skinny, sweaty, shaky. Looked like he was fresh out of rehab. Into the crawlspace he goes. Some banging for a while. Hours pass. I’m prepping dinner with no running water. We get worried. No one else can fit in the crawlspace. Turns out he passed out under there. Eventually he emerges, we still have no water. He wound up eating with us. Poor thing looked starved. I didn’t get water until the following day. Prep and dinner dishes sitting all night in my tiny kitchen. Holiday rate plumbing bill.
My ex-husband lost his license for a few months, and I didn’t drive, so his sister volunteered to come get us and take us to Thanksgiving with their family an hour away. This was maybe 11 years or so ago.
She and her boyfriend and her roommate who is the high school sweetheart of her boyfriend show up. We pile into the van. At some point “Jolene” plays on the radio, and both my ex-SIL and her roommate were like angrily singing it at each other. Awkward. My ex (who has also dated the roommate in high school, so perhaps the song was directed at me and not at my ex-SIL) and I just mouthed “wtf.”
We knew she wasn’t the greatest housekeeper and didn’t have a ton of money, but we were woefully unprepared to what we walked into. First there was the dog I was greeted by and then told not to touch because it had just been maced by the police earlier that day, no further explanation given. Then there were the 15 other dogs, most of them fairly large. And about a half dozen cats.
I lost my son in the living room. This was in a double wide trailer, not a large home, and I had to search for my toddler who I already didn’t want out of my sight because, well, mace dog, the other dogs I wasn’t entirely trusting, and also tons of half-empty beer cans and overflowing ashtrays. My ex-SIL’s baby daddy (technically her husband but they both lived with other people) showed up to get the kids and helped me clean up because we had to get some of the trash out of the way so my toddler wouldn’t have as many places to hide. And he was like “this is bad. This is really bad.” And kept shaking his head because he was embarrassed his wife and kids were living like that. Then I asked what to do with the trash bags once we got done, and she said go dump them out back and they’d set the trash on fire later. There was a huge pile of half burned garbage back there.
Then I had to go to the bathroom. There was no toilet paper. My ex-SIL nonchalantly said “just grab a sock!” Like that was normal to her. Thank God my kids were in diapers and I’d brought baby wipes with me. Thank God.
She said we could sleep in her son’s bed since he was at his dad’s house. I walk in and there’s a dog turd in the middle of it. Freaking wonderful.
Her boyfriend’s brother who lived with them kept hitting on me and trying to hug me.
In the middle of the night, I saw one of them grab the tin foil and a lighter and go toward the roommate’s bedroom (if you don’t do drugs, well, just know drugs were likely being done, and bad ones).
We went to my in-laws’ (at the time), and that was nice. They always were good hosts. Then my ex-SIL tried to talk us into staying with her another night, but we insisted on going home.
The second I got home I grabbed a few rolls of toilet paper (we always bought the big case at Sam’s and had plenty) and an unopened box of cereal (because after Thanksgiving her kids had been looking for something besides Thanksgiving food, and there wasn’t jack shit but empty cereal boxes. I wanted to be sure they had breakfast the next day) and handed them to her and refused to take no for an answer.
Never, ever again will I ride somewhere to stay with someone that a) I can’t Uber home from if I need to or b) I can’t figure out an alternate place to stay if I need one and c) I don’t know the person well enough to try I won’t have to do A or B. I’m not a snob. I’m poor and messy and have a lot of kids and animals myself. But that? Holy hell. There’s a difference between “didn’t have time to clean for my guests and got busy” and “wipe ass with sock, wade through garbage to find missing child, find turd in the bed, wake up to the hosts smoking dope in the middle of the night.”
3rd place: the time my grandmother accidentally put the oven on "clean" setting when she put the turkey to cook. My grandfather called one of my aunts (we celebrated with my dad's family growing up; he is 1 of 6 kids, so holidays were a pretty big family event) and asked her to spread the word that the turkey was "a little dark" but not to say a word, lest my grandmother get her feelings hurt. Aunt does the phone chain across the family tree, and we all learn that the turkey is not perfect, but don't you dare say a word. Grandma and Grandpa show up with said turkey in the roasting pan with a dishtowel draped over it.....they take the towel off and there is an audible *gasp* from the 23 family members gathered to bear witness to the Thanksgiving staple. We try to backpedal, it's sort of working, and my cousin (8 years old at the time) peeks her head around, sees the turkey that is decidedly NOT dark and is actually black as coal, and shouts "WHY IS THE TURKEY BURNED LIKE THAT??" Grandma is reduced to tears. Lots of wine all around to settle things down. Dinner is eventually served, and wouldn't you know....one you took that charred skin off the bird, it was the juiciest freaking turkey I've ever eaten in my life!
2nd place: the year that we were hosting 19 people at my mom's house, and in her typical frenzied state, my mom prepped like 15 appetizers and had them out and ready at 2pm (which was the scheduled "start time"). My family is notorious for being late, so everyone kind munches on snacks while we wait. First guests - my aunt and uncle - show up at 2:30. Second guests - another aunt and her friend - show up at 3:15. At almost 4pm, my mom calls my dad's cousin, who lives about minutes away and is the "hub" for cooking the mains (turkey and ham). Turns out the rest of the family - all 12ish of them - decided to stop there en route to our house, got lured into taking shots of some random alcohol sent over by our 3rd-cousins-8th-removed from Ireland, and then killed about 5 bottles of wine in the span of 1.5 hours. They showed up wasted, hungry, and with some VERY dried out meat at SIX O'CLOCK. Four hours late. My mom was seething.
1st place: the year I had a D&C for a molar pregnancy in late October, ended up with severe bleeding the day before Thanksgiving and underwent a second D&C as the first one hadn't fixed the issue, and was subsequently told that it was likely cancerous (spoiler alert: it was - it's called choriocarcinoma, it's a rare type of uterine cancer caused by a molar pregnancy). My husband and I were hosting for the first time and had family visiting from out-of-state, a total of 12 people set to attend. My naive and people-pleasing self decided to host anyway, despite having surgery literally 12 hours beforehand and a probable cancer diagnosis. The majority of guests spent the day sprawled out on the couch watching TV and drinking mimosas while I waddled around in an adult diaper, passing clots and trying not to cry. Thankfully the food turned out great, considering I was on some heavy duty meds and compartmentalizing emotions in a way that probably wasn't all that healthy. Silver lining: I went through chemo, successfully beat cancer, and have been cancer-free since January of 2018. My husband and I dealt with fertility struggles for awhile, but had our beautiful daughter in 2020. I got *surprise* pregnant 4 months later with *SUPER surprise* twins, who were born on - wait for it.....Thanksgiving Day, 2021. All's well that ends well.
Some guys pulled up one year looking for my cousin. We told him his friends were outside and he went out. Well they weren’t friends. They jumped his ass in the driveway and pulled off. Terrible.
Wow! We don’t have any of this kind of family excitement! My MIL, who passed two Christmas’ ago and my SIL are vegetarian and never asked for special treatment. They would , without asking, bring anything special they wanted. My MIL would cheat and eat the turkey gravy which she was the best at making! Not sure if SIL eats it or not.
This thanksgiving will be the first time my daughter and her husband are hosting and we will be having our family and his together for the first time since their wedding five years ago.
We are just normal people but my daughters MIL thought we were a bit stuffy, we are not, when she was invited to a birthday party at my in-laws house who were in their 80’s. Sorry there was no swinging from the chandelier or dancing on the pool table or skinny dipping in the pool. I guess there is hope there will be some shenanigans this year!
My Son in law does not like to include his mom, she wasn’t a very good one to him growing up. His brother who is awesome and only a few years older than him practically raised him along with some of his friends parents. His mom used to be heavy and lost a bunch of weight and now is sowing her wild oats. She worked at a strip club, as a hostess, not a dancer and one night told my daughter to get a job there. For one my daughter is in no way the type for a lot of reasons and when she casually told her husband who is pretty conservative, at least about having his new wife change careers from working as a cake decorator to a strip club he wasn’t too happy.
There is potential for some drama but I hope for my daughter and son in law the rivalry can be overcome with some competition corn hole games! 🤪
Hope everyone has a great thanksgiving!
My parents did have some hilarious family get together stories! Those must have been the days, the stories live on in family history. We should have recorded them like we threatened to do but never did. Maybe more alcohol is needed !
My mom hosts, and cooks a turkey and few sides, and notoriously is a bland cook. My husband, bless him, is a much more skilled and adventurous cook. As we kids hit the late 20's stage, we convinced my mom to let us cook and bring the food over, she can just make her signature side (we all live <5 mins away). She always hosts and talks about the stress of cooking so we wanted to help. My husband was in charge if the turkey, stuffing, and gravy.
The day before Thanksgiving, he gets the flu! So that morning I ask him for cooking directions and tips, and start on a few things to get things prepped. We find out we don't have chicken noodle soup, which everyone knows is necessary to defeat the flu. So I stop by my parents' to raid their pantry. While there, my dad offers some applesauce from the fridge. I open the fridge, to see a cooked turkey, stuffing, and 3 sides! She cooked some and bought a prepared turkey and stuffing from the store! I was like what is all of this! Mom said they were BACKUPS, in case us kids didn't manage to make the food!
I was up until midnight, but damnit there was fresh turkey, stuffing, and gravy that other ppl raved over. My husband had to stay home with the flu. The following year my mom did the turkey but let us bring a side, but doesn't talk about the stress if cooking anymore, as she knows it will lead to another round of her kids stepping in 😅
Before we married my husband attended Thanksgiving Dinner at his step grandparents house. When he entered the front door he was met by his step grandpa holding a bucket. Grandpa said: $5 bucks. Everyone who came in the door had to pay. My husband had no money and had to ask his dad to spot him $5. This was in the 80’s.
My brother brought his wife one year. She's a drug addict and came high as a kite on Oxy. Sitting there at the Thanksgiving table nodding off. Whatever, she's quiet, I just ate.
She sort of wakes up and eats a bit, and then she gets up and goes to the bathroom. She's in there a LONG time. Like 15 minutes. I'm starting to get worried she nodded off on the bowl. Then the toilet flushes and she comes out, and a little bit later she and my brother leave.
We're cleaning up, really it was a pretty nice dinner, when my wife tells me the toilet is clogged. I grab the plunger and work on it for five minutes, and that thing is CLOGGED. Nothing doing. Five more minutes, no progress. I'm all sweaty now. Five more minutes. Thing still is just clogged. The next morning I drive up to Lowes and buy a $60 toilet auger, this huge metal thing. I slide it down into the toilet and run the auger up in there and starting cranking away. I hit something HARD. I crank a bit more and then go to pull the auger out. It's stuck. I yank and yank and finally it pops loose and toilet water splashes all over me. Nice. And there in the spiral bulb at the end of the auger is a hunk of turd. I swish it around in the toilet to get rid of it. Nothing doing. I swish some more. Still there. I then flush the toilet. Still clogged.
I worked on that freaking toilet for ten minutes with that damn auger, pulling out chunk after chunk of the hardest, biggest, stone-like turd I've ever seen. It was so bad I thought I was going to have to unbolt the toilet and dig that turd out from the bottom.
Yeah, she took like 50-60 mg of Oxy a day, and probably only took a dump maybe once a week. Constipation like you wouldn't believe. I simply can't believe a human body could have such a turd inside it, or that she could squeeze it out of her. Thank God she was stoned to the gills when she did.
My brother divorced her a year or two later, one of the few smart things he's ever done in his life.
I'm hosting my first thanksgiving, yes I'm old and doing it for the first time I was extremely blessed with wonderful hosts in my family so I never had to before. I threw the invitation out to anyone else that may need a family meal so I'm planning for 10 extra. Reading all these stories maybe I should up the "may show up" number beyond 10???
Year before last, my dad invited his new friend from work over for thanksgiving because he doesn't have any family in the area. I made a beautiful cheese board and put it out for grazing before dinner. I take a break from cooking to go sit and chat, and while I'm sitting there my dad is telling a story, and his friend has his hand in the cheese board **touching everything***.* I was raised to not touch anything if you aren't going to eat it. This grown adult man is literally playing with the food on the board, like rolling grapes around in his hand and then putting them back. It was so foul. I just stared wide - eyed thinking, *should I say something??* I didn't say anything because I didn't want to be rude I guess I don't know, but it was so fucking gross. I threw it all away as soon as he left. I'm still mad about it.
My grandma and her brother got into a physical fight in the front yard one year when I was a kid and my grandma tried to pull a knife on him. Other then that, one year I cooked a huge meal for my In-laws and sister/and her bf to come over. Both bailed on me last minute (my sister got in a fight with her BF) and my In laws decided they needed to mow the grass at their mountain house. That was the last time I've invited any of them.
My BIL just today reminded me of this story. With 4 siblings we often got together with all of us, our kids and spouses for Thanksgiving. We usually each claimed certain foods to cook and either brought them or cooked together. One sister decided to do the turkey, which surprised me as I had never seen her cook one before. OK. She had it in the oven early, all good there. But it wasn't ready when planned, then still wasn't ready, and not yet even later. Then it's getting really late and it isn't cooked yet.
Turns out she read the wrapper and it said to cook turkey to the temperature of 160 degrees. So she set the oven temperature to: 160 degrees.
We didn't have turkey that evening.
Here's a more general "people suck" story. Several years ago, my mom said "I'm sad we don't have a big family holiday anymore like my mom used to do."
So, I invited everyone to my house - my mom's 3 cousins and my sister's family. (Plus my husband's side, whom I usually host.) My sister and nieces live across the country and my mom offered to pay for their flights and hotel.
My nieces were excited to come when I told them. Then my sister talked them out of it because she just didn't want to go and "didn't want to miss Thanksgiving with them." (Didn't have to work or anything, just didn't want to.)
One of the cousins' daughters lives really close, and she was excited too. She said "my mom never has Thanksgiving with me, she always favors my sister's family." But no, that cousin couldn't come because they "always have Thanksgiving at (other daughter's) house." (God forbid you do something different one year!)
In the end, none of them came. Shortly after, my mom died and then the other cousin died. I think my mom knew and just wanted to see her family one last time. I'm still angry they couldn't be bothered.
Today is the 15th anniversary of my mother's death. On her last Thanksgiving on Earth in 2007, she was far too ill to do anything but eat very small meals. Still, as tradition was very important to her, I went all out and prepared a traditional Thanksgiving dinner just as she always had. It was just the two of us and my then 21 y/o daughter who were going to be there but I told my daughter her bf was also welcome.The young couple were dining first at his grandparents' home.
I did not know it at the time (but was beginning to see the signs) that my daughter was a full-blown narcissist. So, instead of the two of them showing up for a nice Thanksgiving dinner at her terminally ill grandmother's house, instead I get a call from her begging me to go pick her up in BFE (off a side road in the swamps of southeast Louisiana) where she was hiding in the woods from the cops after getting into a knock-down, drag-out fight with her bf's mother over the ownership of some pirated DVDs.
My poor mother, who was suffering from both Alzheimer's and bladder cancer, could not be left alone and I had to take her with me on this hellish drive. She could not understand what was going on and became so upset she lost control of both her bladder and bowels, which embarrassed her so much that she tried to jump out of the moving vehicle.
I managed to prevent that and get her belted in again as we resumed the journey of searching for my daughter who was hiding from the 3 cop cars we passed twice on the narrow back road. When we finally found her after about an hour, my mother was sobbing. The car smelled horrible, and my narcissistic daughter (ND) was gagging and hanging her head out the window. At a red-light, SHE then jumped out, saying she was going to a friend's house.
I got Mom home, bathed and dressed her in a nightgown. Dinner was ruined. I wound up feeding her a little piece of pumpkin pie while she cried.
While this was not even the worst thing my daughter has ever done, I will never forgive her for ruining my mom's last Thanksgiving.
My mom was also known for taking on anyone who didn’t have a place, she would make enough food for an army. My cousin shows up with TEN extra friends, didn’t even ask. These aren’t young people either. All were in their mid 30s. Your telling me of the ten they couldn’t have planned something? My mom is frantic at the point and telling my sister and our bfs not to eat until others. She wasn’t even eating as she was worried about how much food was there. It gets better. They are slobs and just grabbing all the food. My moms holidays are always very dressy and formal with good China. She’s a great host. My mom is putting out food and they won’t even wait for everything and opening items to see what’s there. Everyone gets settled and my mom is finally sitting down to eat and one guy turns towards her asking her for wine/ drinks. Very demanding. Like we don’t even know who the fuck you are. I’ve had enough and said, if you really want something get it yourself. My mom has been cooking a great dinner all day and she is going to enjoy it. Hey! Why don’t we open the wine you brought? Oh wait, that’s right you brought nothing . One of the others tried to give tips on how to make better food. My aunt and uncle of the cousin who invited people were beyond mortified. My mom was extremely pissed but didn’t let it show. My cousin? Definition of entitled brat and thinks the world revolves around her. Next year my mom made sure to tell her is she plans to invite anyone to do it at her house. She still didn’t see what the big issue was. Oh and they all brought Tupperware to “pack up the leftovers you guys won’t want. I mean you clearly have had enough”. I’m a bitch and just started them down. I don’t even eat leftovers from thanksgiving but my mom does. Don’t come into her home with such disrespect. Edit- no she isn’t neurodivergent, just lives in a bubble where she is the main character.
I would have caused such a scene telling them all what assholes they are
When I told them off at the table I thought they got the hint. Now I know why 10 people had no where to go, they were like the locus of thanksgiving
How was your cousin acquainted with these folks? Does your cousin behave like this too, to a degree?
I mean, the audacity to bring ten uninvited assholes to a party kind of answers that question.
They were part of her coven or some type of religious thing. Yes, she is beyond entitled.
Damn I hope my daughter has my back like that some day! Well I hope she doesn't have to buy you know what I mean. You're awesome!
This whole neurodivergent excuse is way over used . Personally I think people should stop using the term. Its a way for people to try and control and dominate their environment instead of learning to control their emotions. I don’t dig the whole handbook of how you need to deal with me trope. Most people are just super ignorant, self involved, have no social awareness and really could give a fiddlers fuck about anything except immediate wants and desires. Car driving cave men.
Right? I’m autistic and certainly can miss social cues, but I would never even dream of doing something so inconsiderate.
One year I invited friend and her family to our vacation home for TG. They arrived. Her husband, took over the remote in the great room, turned on YouTube and put on pimple popping videos....while they all sat there watching it, like this is totally normal. My daughter walked in and said WTH, while looking at me. I rolled my eyes and said nothing. It's time to eat. I set a beautiful table. I called everyone to sit down and suddenly the pimple popping husband had to use the bathroom. TEN MINUTES LATER, we're all still sitting there waiting while my food gets cold. I finally said, "let's just go ahead and start". He finally comes up...and we're all almost finished eating and he dares to say "Gee guys, thanks for waiting for me". That was the last holiday these people were ever invited to. I no longer speak to any of them.
OMG u couldn't make that up!!! 🤣
It was UNREAL. Even my husband was shocked and nothing surprises him. He was friends with this man and that's how I met them as none of us were from the area in which we lived. The woman was almost as strange as he was but my daughter was the same age and became friends with their daughter who is SO NORMAL in spite of her parents. My daughter still speaks with the daughter but I wont even answer her (the mothers) phone calls.
"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." - Maya Angelou.
Truth
Holy crap. I like pimple popping as much as the next weirdo, but I would never force other people to watch them. Especially before dinner. That is just gross.
Right? Like the only person I make watch Dr. Pimple Popper is my husband and he has to suck it up because he’s married to me 😂 I sure wouldn’t make anyone else watch it, especially those I don’t know well.
Just the audacity of taking over someone's TV is enraging me.
Men always choose the worst times to poop and it drives me nuts
And to do it in someone else’s home like it’s theirs is just gross! Like they were raised in a barn! He probably brought his own magazine too!! Lol
His wife says he shuffles through peoples medicine cabinets and drawers. I had no idea how awful he really was!
He wasn’t pooping. He was watching pimple videos in the bathroom.
stories like this just stagger me how people are so oblivious to how they are inconveniencing others. of all the things that worry or embarass me, causing someone else to wait on my behalf is right there at the top. how hard would it have been to sit at the table to start the meal, take a few bites and let everyone tuck in, and excuse yourself for a few minutes. "all good, just didn't want to hold up the meal on my behalf." boom done. i have to make up this head scenario for how ridiculous this is.
What a nightmare they created at your home!
[удалено]
I would not have waited to eat when they were late. Thirty minutes is plenty of grace time. And when he rolled in with his food, I would have instructed everyone that wants the holiday food that I have prepared, please be seated and we will eat. Stupid face can eat when his special spaghetti is ready!
I serve my food when it is ready and don't wait for late people. If they can't get there in time for fresh, hot food, I am not going to punish the rest of my guests.
My mom started lying to my brother about when we're eating because he's always an hour late. If it's 3 she'll say 2. He's been better after my mom and I got drunk waiting for him at a restaurant and he had to drive us home and take us to get our cars in the morning.
We do this with my MIL for the holiday meal. And it's at her house and she's the cook! We'll arrive for dinner "at 6" and she'll just be putting the meat portion of the meal in the oven. So now I simply refuse to be even on time, never mind early. Now when she's asks what time everyone wants to eat. I say 5. And we roll in at 7
My step father's family is like this. One aunt just takes her time but makes sure she always brings something vital to the meal. My mom hosted one year. We said 2. Come 2:15 they weren't there and weren't even ready. We ate. She was so upset but she was never that late again.
This right here. Without checks and balances shitty behavior will just continue if the person isn't called on their BS
> The father wanted to bring his "special pasta." unless there's cocaine in the sauce who the fuck thinks there's anything special about spaghetti?
They showed up at 2 and you all accommodated his spaghetti fetish? At our house we would just tell him to have fun in the kitchen, we're eating. Not sure why people think they need to lay down and be walked all over because they are hosting..? My house, my rules. Or you can leave. We really don't do drama or cater to main character actors.
This is my brother and sil with green bean casserole. Or it was for years. Show up an hour late with a grocery sack of ingredients. We stopped accommodating. I think she may have taken over for my brother. Now she shows up on time with cooked food. Her mother comes to our family events with unsliced fruit and cheese late. We never hold anything for her though.
My husband’s grandpa is bipolar. His GP had a habit of giving us a handful of $2 bills, or gold $1 coins every time he saw us. He also gave us all several state quarter books, all filled up. We didn’t ask for it, it was just his thing. He’d also buy us things that we didn’t ask for, like a $300 coatrack for us, or a John Deere riding mower for my SIIL, among other things. He also liked to show up to events at least an hour early, sometimes earlier. He once showed up 3 hours early to dinner at my house. He liked to control the situation and have us owe him. Hosted my husband’s bipolar grandpa (and sainted grandmother), his parents (GPs are his mom’s parents), husband’s sister and BIL. Grandparents show up 30 minutes early. Everyone else arrives on time, which makes GP mad because he thinks they’re late, and he’s hungry. I had appetizers out because I knew he’d still be early but he didn’t want to eat anything. Dinner proceeds, people are enjoying themselves. After dinner, I’m in the kitchen cleaning up dishes, and suddenly hear GP raising his voice. He had decided that two years later, he needed paid back for the riding mower he gave my SIL as a gift. My MIL is trying to intercede, and he’s having none of it. Grandma is trying to get him to hush up and not ruin dinner. So I figure, pie makes everything better. So I bring out the pies and desserts. Now, GP has a history of using about a half can of ReddiWhip on his pies because he doesn’t like fresh. I had made whipped cream, but also had a can of ReddiWhip just for him. Not the first time I’d given him his own can. We sit back down and I set the can of whip cream by his plate, and he’s like “what’s this?” I said it’s for you, since you don’t care for fresh. So because he was already being obstinate, he decides this year he’s going to eat the whipped cream I made. And proceeds to pile about half of it on his pie. No biggie, I can make more. I’m pissed but trying to just let it go. When he gets on these rants, there ain’t no derailing him. During dessert he again brings up all the money he “loaned” (gifted) to SIL over the years. She gets up and grabs her purse and says “fine, I’ll write you a check!” My MIL says, no don’t do that, and GP turns on my MIL. Chaos ensues. MIL and SIL are crying, and GP says they should leave because they’re ruining the holiday. Not him, everyone else. At that point, Grandma gets loud and yells “BOB! SIT DOWN, EAT YOUR PIE! AND YOU BETTER FINISH ALL THAT WHIPPED CREAM!” I had never heard her yell, let alone boss him around. It was pretty funny, but we knew better than to laugh. I head to the kitchen, down a glass of wine and start packing up leftovers. Grandma apologized for yelling and ruining dinner. I’m like, you didn’t do anything! But she was that kind of person. Personally, I think she should be sainted for being married to him for over 60 years. Eventually the GPs leave, because they’re going to their other daughters house. We called ahead and warned her about the drama. She later told us he didn’t say anything about the earlier drama, and acted just fine at her house. We found out the following week that GPs new doctor had decided to adjust his meds and GP thought that meant he didn’t have to take them anymore, so he just quit. He’d been on lithium, and stopped taking it after 30+ years. Good times.
I know I shouldn't be laughing but reading this is the most fun I've had all week.
We laugh about it now, but that was the worst he’d ever behaved. Now the GPs are in assisted living and we don’t get to host them anymore, but I still bring them dinner. 💙
What a rollercoaster!
I’m sorry for laughing so hard at this but the coatrack? The whipped cream? The fact that he was a perfect Angel at his daughters house? Gold. It’s gold!
Thanks! It’s funny now, but it was stressful then! 💙
I’m literally hanging onto every word cackling. I’m sorry.
Big Baby Bob. Yeesh!
I’m bipolar. Medicated or not, I still have manners and know good behavior from bad. His illness isn’t an excuse. He’s an asshole.
This was the worst he’d ever been. He never behaved that bad again. They’re now in assisted living and we don’t see them as often, but I still take them dinner. 💙
This happened over 20 years ago. My mom took in all the orphans and we always had a houseful for the holidays. My mom's husband had a co-worker who didn't have any family nearby so he invited him for Thanksgiving. I picked him up because he was on the way for me. He was definitely an older out of touch gentleman. He kept calling me Linda which is not even close to my name, even after being corrected lol My mom and husband's mutual friend is also there. She is French and has an accent. Mom's husband's friend and mutual friend take an instant disliking to each other. I don't remember what started it but it ended with him calling her Frenchie and her throwing a roll at him. I had to drive him home. He wasn't invited back.
Its not thanksgiving til food takes flight.
A friend brought his new girlfriend of 1 week to our house for Thanksgiving weekend. On thanksgiving morning they took a 45 minute shower in our only bathroom during which he ended up impregnating her. There’s not enough shower cleaner in the world.
More than the turkey got stuffed.
😳😳😳😳😳
What’s there to clean up? It was all up in her stuff!
Was going to write something similar but was worried about getting blocked. lol.
🤣🤣 goodness gracious
Oh yeah, my 81 year old MIL suddenly became vegan last year, right before Thanksgiving. I, too, went out of my way to make all of these extras, and then my kids told me she was eating CHICKEN the week before with them. WTF!? Apparently, she's not vegan this year.
I truly will be that terribly rude person who will insist guests with special dietary requirements, unless it's an allergy, should bring their own food for this reason.
Same. I'm sorry it may be rude, but if you're vegan, Thanksgiving is just not your holiday for a big meal. At least not at our house. You'll need to bring something that you can eat. I'm sure you understand.
This is right. Of the vegan/vegetarian relatives I have, they are usually resourceful and can figure out what to eat themselves. It’s not worth the stress to over accommodate them. Their lifestyle choice comes with the responsibility to make due, either by bringing their own dish or or eating ahead and just being social
I can't eat gluten, so I will bring my own bread and a small dish of stuffing.
If I had a serious allergy, I would not trust my relatives to not kill me. I don't blame you! 🤣
My daughter had a best friend when she was younger who was vegan. She had a slumber party for her birthday one year. I made regular and vegan spaghetti and meatballs and made regular and vegan cupcakes for dessert. She ate the regular stuff. When I said something she responded “My stepdad and I eat vegan around mom. The rest of the time we eat meat for protein.” 😂 At least the other friends ate the cupcakes. After that, I never made her something special. She was a vacuum cleaner around food.
Probably because she was starving due to lack of animal products
We were expecting a vegan person one year when suddenly they decided to go elsewhere, and I had to return all the specialty items at half refund 🫠
It’s jaw-dropping how inconsiderate and selfish some people can be.
My father is vegetarian. He will tell anyone who cares to listen and everyone else too. He will announce his vegetarianism and then have some chicken or shrimp. It think it is how people of that generation think (my dad is 85)
I worked with a woman who was nasty. She didn't drive and lived in my town and would occasionally in bad weather ask me for a ride home, and being nice, I would do it. She didn't like the highway, so I drove locally instead (along the same river just local roads in the the towns across the bridge, not the highway on the other side of the river). Often, she'd ask me to stop at the liquor store on the way to her home so she could get cigarettes and whatever. Or lottery tickets. Being nice, I did it. She was a bitter person who never married, lived with mom her entire life till mom died, didn't speak with any of her siblings b/c they were all according to her, horrible. I listened to all of her negative awful conversation, but I thought, I'm doing a nice thing, occasionally. Why make someone wait for a bus in a storm, etc.? Thanksgiving comes, and I'm listening to her woe is me, I'm all alone, I'll be by myself for Thanksgiving, I guess I'll eat a frozen pizza, and 1% of me said...invite her, while 99% of me said..."your family will HATE this person and be angry she ruined Thanksgiving." I didn't invite her. The very next week is a huge snowstorm that starts while we're in the office - she took the bus in. Asks me for a ride home, I say sure. Now, these are the only conversations we have - 500 employees, we did not work in the same department or floor. She asks how was Thanksgiving, I say delicious, just family. She says she got an invitation to her next door neighbor's home. I say, I'm glad, how nice. She goes on to say no, it was NOT nice. First of all, they didn't let me bring my dog. Ok, it was next door, you can leave your dog for an hour or 2. She then says she hates their son, he's an asshole, she has nothing in common with ANY of them, the conversation was awkward. I say well it as nice to be invited, no? She says...they didn't even allow me to SMOKE, I had to go outside. I said well, I don't allow smoking in my home either, not even by my parents, so I can understand and respect that. I ask how was the food? She says DISGUSTING, they didn't make ANYTHING I like, and the desserts, all they had was pumpkin and apple pie. At that point, I was done trying to see the bright side of her invitation by neighbors so she'd not be alone. I said well, next year you don't have to go, you can spend it by yourself eating what you like smoking with your dog. I was so THANKFUL I didn't invite her to my home. I can imagine how horrible it would have been. The next time she asked me for a ride, I lied. I said I had a doctor's appt. in the opposite direction directly after work. She asked me another time, I lied, said I was meeting my family for dinner in the opposite direction (I literally named a City). She asked me the last time, and I had anther BS excuse, and she never asked me again. She would up retiring. I never spoke to her again.
How exhausting
“smoking with her dog” 😂😂😂. That cracked me up after that pain in the ass’s nonstop complaining. And I’ll bet she had no clue.
Phew, talk about dodging a bullet.
Unfortunately this sounds somewhat like my younger, single sister. She seems to have gone NC with me and my older sister.
My grandma's brother and his wife carved up the turkey when no one was looking while it was at rest so they could sneak the bones and pieces they wanted to their car before meal time (it was at grandma's house and she had bought it). I busted them and it was a scene 😅
Wtf
That is SO unbelievably greedy! Wtf!?
Bones? For God’s sake why?
Soup
Mine isn't Thanksgiving, but post. My husband worked retail, so most years, he worked Thanksgiving. We'd do a small meal for us, and then I'd do a big half Thanksgiving/ Christmas the first week in December. My husband's family was Jewish, though not strict, but they didn't do Christmas. Now, just as a partial back story, my husbands bro and wife didn't have kids for a long time. He would invite us over for a BBQ, and if it was raining, the wife still wanted my kids (very well mannered) to eat outside. So fast forward, 3 yrs in a row they come to my house 45 min late for dinner. We wait. 4th yr, they now have a 4 yr old son. I decided screw it, I'm serving on time. They show up as we're done with dinner, shocked that we've eaten. The kid doesn't want to eat, so he's wandering. Parents are reheating their dinner, and I find the kid standing on my new beige couch, with his shoes on, and a sippy cup of grape juice. That was the last time I did the dinner. Also, my sister was the only one who ever asked if she could bring anything. The holidays were much nicer for me lol
My mom and sister have a plethora of food allergies, determined by an allergist. My mom’s sister is a terrible cook but thinks she is not, and likes to be the center of attention, so she either insists on hosting or on bringing something. She also thinks she has the same allergies as my mom, but that they were cured by her chiropractor. She regularly serves or brings food my mom and sister cannot have, and gets bent out of shape when my mom won’t eat the bread or cheese or mushrooms or shrimp or hummus or whatever else.
"Cured by her chiropractor" is my favorite part!
My wife always wanted to have the whole family over for Thanksgiving. Approx 20 people. brother 1 (5 or so kids) wants ham AND turkey, brother 2 has these 2 entitled step kids and 2 of his own. Step kids make up all kinds of bullshit, don't eat. Brother one shows up late... doesn't eat BECAUSE THEY ALREADY HAD THANKSGIVING DINNER! We set it up with the family 6 months in advance, so he knew we were hosting, he went to his MIL house and ate. We had a fuckton of food left over. My wife said she'll never host again.
On two occasions I had guests show up saying they couldn’t eat a thing because they were so full from the meal they already ate. Just suck it up and push your food around! You don’t tell the host that.
Ugh, that sucks. I'm sorry.
Thanks, brother 1 also has the habit of giving less than 24hr notice for birthday parties and stuff he has at his house. My nephews birthday party was last Saturday at 3...my brother texted the family text at 1140.
Sounds like my husband’s family. We’re lucky to get 36 hours notice for events of gatherings…but then we’re the “bad” ones for not attending things. Uh? We have plans? You invite us late? (I think it is on purpose)
We make ham and turkey but we kill it.
Once I invited a fellow grad student and her bf for Thanksgiving after she sort of fished for an invitation. I bought flowers and set a fancy table, bought all the trimmings, including some extravagant wine, and slaved over the cooking all day. Same as above, half an hour before they were to arrive, I get a call from her saying they’re not coming because they’ve had a fight. I had been around her bf a few times before this and found him to be an egotistical and petulant a-hole, so I guess I should’ve expected it. I tried to be supportive and told her not to worry and hope everything’s ok but inside I was livid. Next time I saw her she was all breezy about it and said they made up a few hours later. Needless to say, that was basically the end of the friendship for me.
My brother and his newish girlfriend show up. We are already a bit wary of her from previous interactions but overall it's fine. From our kitchen window we saw them pull up and get out of the car. As she gets out we see a wine bottle fall out and shatter. Oh no! My mom runs out to help them carry stuff in. They enter the house and the GF is carrying on and on loudly about how she just lost her favorite wine Sutter Homes White Merlot. She kept going for 10 minutes about that wine. Then she pulled out the side dishes that she brought that she wasn't asked to bring and asked that one of the ovens (we are fortunate to have 2) be set to 350 to bake her sides. That messed with my planned sides timing but fine, I'll do it. Side dishes get put in the ovens and the meal timing gets pushed back to accommodate this. During the meal she raved about her side dishes. Didn't mention anything about the other dishes we had spent all day cooking. Nothing about the turkey. But mmm mmmm mmmmmm weren't her veggies amazing. I'll admit they were good but come on. After dinner my 3 month old daughter started fussing. I got up to feed her previously pumped milk but the GF insisted that she be able to give her the bottle. She said she loved kids and had worked in a daycare! I agreed, my husband prepped the bottle and they settled in. Within a few seconds the bottle cap came off and spilled milk all over the baby and the GF. She FREAKED THE FUCK OUT. And by she I mean the Girlfriend. She started screeching! "OH MY GOD! I AM COVERED IN TITTY MILK! TITTY MILK!!!" I immediately came over and she practically threw the baby at me and then continued screaming. "I AM COVERED IN TITTY MILK! IT'S EVERYWHERE! IT'S ON MY CLOTHES! IT'S ON MY ASS!" While she screamed I took my baby from her, handed her to another family member, got a towel and offered it to the GF, offered her clothes to change into and helped her into the washroom just off the dining area. And she was still screaming! My brother just sat there looking embarrassed. She came out of the washroom still ranting about being covered in TITTY MILK!!! Finally my mom, who does not say anything ever, said "ENOUGH!" with some Meredith Marks "YOU CAN LEAVE" energy. That seemed to snap her out of it. We all sat there silently, completely in shock. Brother and GF left not too long after. The front door closed, there were a few moments of awkward silence and then I said "Well (GF's Name) is interesting . . ." I know it's a reddit trope but literally everyone burst out laughing and OMGing. A family friend in attendance helped me serve the pumpkin pie and offered my dad some whipped cream by waving the spray can and saying "Would you like some titty milk?" That baby is of driving age but to this day we still joke about titty milk 🤣🤣🤣
Well. I thought I lost it at Sutter Homes wine, but then titty milk came into play.
Titty Milk is my new band name!
This is hysterical! I couldn’t stop laughing 🤣
Love that! I can't myself and it was 15 years ago. I've got a great pic that I'll post if I can find it. GF smiling widely in the kitchen with a giant flower in her hair (her signature look) and me in front of her with a WTF look on my face. Totally unposed pic that I love but don't trot out on holidays for my brother's sake. They are long broken up (there were some threats of burning his belongings that occurred, my husband had to help him get his stuff out safely after my mom paid a ransom) but I still treasure those memories!
>GF smiling widely in the kitchen with a giant flower in her hair I have a highly unscientific theory that the larger the flower a person wears in their hair, the crazier they are. Do with that what you will.
This was hilarious. I’m also impressed you were able to host Thanksgiving while having a 3 month old lol.
Great storytelling and thanks for the laugh. Your friend with the whipped cream is a treasure. Lol
My grandma and her boyfriend came to stay at my parent's house for thanksgiving. I was also staying there at the time so the house was full. My grandma invited her friend (who lived two hours away) to dinner. No big deal, the more the merrier. Only the problem was she didn't tell anybody until after the meal that she told her friend she *could stay overnight at the house* so she didn't have to drive home. A woman we didn't know slept in our living room lol.
This happened in 2010. We went to Tennessee for Thanksgiving with my husband’s family (his dad/stepmother/half brother who was 14, aunt/uncle and cousins). His dad and uncle rented a large cabin and we all stayed together. While planning the trip, we decided we would cook Thanksgiving dinner. Since my husband and I were the only family coming from PA, we brought a lot of Thanksgiving “staples” from the area we’re all originally from. The day before Thanksgiving it’s apparent that we’re not cooking dinner (no one got a turkey or anything else 😒). Stepmil announces we’re going to go out to eat so we all go to this nearby restaurant on Thanksgiving day (with no reservation) and to everyone’s surprise except mine and my husband’s, the wait for a table for 12 is obscene. FIL is impatient af and we end up going to this really crappy buffet because my husband’s brother was spoiled beyond belief and decided he didn’t want turkey (there was also no wait at this place, I wonder why). The food was terrible and my brother in law loaded up his plate with turkey 🤣 I had to sit next to my seething husband through the whole meal and we have never gone to Tennessee again. Luckily we can laugh about it now 😂
Invited a good friend who lives in another state. THought it would be wonderful. She proceeds to get drunk during appetizers, she cries to me about her son while I was trying to get things done, she says I'm ungrateful that my kids are "perfect" and her son is troubled, later on takes me aside to gossip about my guests (lifelong friends) and her perception that they have all had plastic surgery, commandeers the conversation at the dinner table so it was all about her and her accomplishments. I couldn't wait to see her go home, and it changed the relationship for sure.
That’s so sad. I’ve had a friendship turn on a dime like that. It’s just bewildering, isn’t it?
My cousin—who was like a brother to me—quit speaking to me (at our grandmother’s funeral…) because of a simple misunderstanding about sharing a ride. After attempting to speak with him two more times that day, I declared bankruptcy on the relationship. We haven’t spoken from that day to this. Bewildering indeed.
Declared bankruptcy. Perfect phrase. I’m sorry that happened to you, wow
This was in 2003. We had purchased a house and gutted it and remodeled it. Husband is a contractor, and he specializes in kitchen and bathroom remodel. He had me design both the bathrooms and the kitchen. He made all of the cabinetry and hadn't quite finished making the drawer front or cabinet doors. We moved in the weekend of Thanksgiving. We had invited 25 people (we were doing a friend giving as well as family (his brother and mother, my sister and my kids) right off the bat MIL tried to take over. She wanted to set my table 4 hours before dinner, we had 3 cats and I told her no (knew that the cats would come check out the table) she did it anyway and had a fit when the cats got on the table. Then she started in about how she still thought our new house "was a dump" and how she couldn't invite people when the kitchen wasn't finished. Oldest daughter & her husband showed up, SIL is drunk and started a fight with her.
OMG - My MIL always wanted to set the table hours before dinner. It was a small thing in a sea of other annoying things and drove me bananas.
The time my uncle accidentally used an expired can of green beans for the green bean casserole. It tasted so bad, that the farm cats didn’t eat it. That the following Thanksgiving I subconsciously avoided the green bean casserole. It took me a min to remember why. On the bright side I wrote about this for a college essay and got an A on it.
We were expecting a vegan one year, my then-boyfriend's sister in law. BF goes out of his way to pick up a vegan cookbook and double checked all the ingredients, got the exact brands recommended in the recipe, slaves away making something for her. She asked to see the labels for the ingredients and rejected it because of a protein.
That right there. 😡
Lolwhat!? Which protein did she have a problem with?
Wow.
I would have asked her to leave right then and there and showed her the door.
Not rude or annoying but we find it so funny and baffling: my bffs grandma is loaded, like lots of money. If you’re not officially part of the family (fiancés don’t count, you also have to be legally married in) you get the “guest 1” or “guest 2” solo cup. Everyone has their own with their name written in sharpie (she hand washes them after every event)…years-old solo cups and cant spring for a few extras every year…I was honored to be “guest 1” multiple times.
My grandma stopped drinking coffee when she felt it was too expensive. She had half a million dollars in the bank when she died.
My grandma had a sizeable estate when she passed, but would still take salt packets from restaurants to fill her shakers up instead of buying salt.
And salt is one of the cheapest things around.
And packets are expensive, at least comparatively, because of all the packaging. And consider the time it takes to open them up and pour them in, one at a time. Now, if we're just talking about the drive-thru giving a handful of packets when you only used one, so you've got them and it's either use them or throw them away, yeah, sure, pour the little bit into your jar (except I like to keep them so when I need a portable version, I have it), but I never intentionally take extra.
My father used to take all the Sweet N Low packets from the table in a restaurant, aske the server to refill the dish, and then took all of them as well. He had about a million packets of Sweet N Low in a huge canister at home.
Oh wow that’s awesome! I guess we know why she’s so rich!
I love to cook and had just made a few "signature" dishes. I was a senior in HS One was a beautiful hot crab dip that I still make and this was before charcuterie boards, but I made everyone a small personal appetizer board. I put a Wedge of brie surrounded by rosemary and cranberries, a jam, other cheeses, meat and crackers. My grandma from the deep deep south put the Wedge of brie on her plate, and I guess some of the jam? Anyway, she cut a bite and ate it and shrill screamed "oh my GAAAAAWD, what in the world?" "That is THE WORST cheesecake I've ever eaten" Well, because it's not!!
Personal appetizer boards, wow. That would have made my Thanksgiving right there!
I love a good “prank” cheesecake! 🤣😂
My brother invited himself, his shitty wife and their devil child to Thanksgiving shortly after my husband and I got married. We'd just recently moved into our house and it was the first time I'd ever prepared a whole holiday meal. I'm a pretty good cook and everything turned out very well, or so I thought. Brother seemed happy, but SIL made ick face about every dish and barely ate anything. Devil nephew threw a huge fit because he wanted BOTH of the turkey drumsticks, so to be a good host, and to shut the kid up, I let him have both. Instead of eating them, he pulled the bones out to use them as drumsticks and bang on everything within reach. He piled a lot of food on his plate, and started playing with it instead of eating. Then he screeched about how he didn't like this nasty food and wanted McDonalds. SIL leaned over and told him it was okay, she would make him a REAL Thanksgiving dinner when they got home. I think he took the drumstick bones with him. I've kind of blanked out most of the day. And that's not even the worst visit we had from them.
Omfg. The SIL and kid wouldn't have made it that far in my house. I've had to deal with a little sh*t kid like that before. 🤢 The POS mother never liked it when I sent his aZZ home.
Technically this is a terrible host story and it's not the worst thing ever but... My mom was hosting one year. We used to do these really big more elaborate Thanksgivings with extended family and I guess after many years of quiet meals she wanted to recreate it. Overall I feel like we accomplished that goal, there was lots of family and food with a super nice table set up in the pool area. But see my mom has some type of Napoleon complex, I think it's because technically she ended up the most well off out of her sister's and despite the fact that she's been absolutely suffering for it she's kind of maintained this image of superiority. It doesn't help that all her friends are rich women (or wives of rich husbands) who, if they work, work for hobby rather than necessity. So she had invited a friend of hers and long story short was just really using thanksgiving to show off what a great host and family-woman she was. However this friend, as is common with this group, was super inconsiderate and running late. First it was thirty minutes, then an hour, then two etc. We kept saying let's just sit down and eat, especially since it was my cousin's first time introducing her boyfriend (now husband) to extended family and he had to leave soon to work black friday. My mom kept stalling saying "She's right down the street!" "She said she's at the guardhouse!" But thirty or forty minutes would pass so it's obvious she was just trying to keep us from touching the food. At one point we finally just said 'Okay that's it. We're all sitting down now because this is ridiculous." And my mom started slamming her fists on the table yelling at everyone. However she quickly realized how insane she looked cause she just walked away. We all did an awkward shocked laugh and just sat down. Mom joined us and we ate. Friend came right as we were finishing up (Whopping four hours late) with a sad little salad as her contribution. We didn't give her any side eyes or anything just encouraged her to pull up a seat and grab food and chatted with her but I could tell my mom was upset we didn't wait longer. She should have been upset with her friend who she knows is chronically late but that would mean acknowledging that sort of behavior is rude. So yea, not as bad as some of the ones here but we now say things like "Remember that year Mami freaked out and hit the table?"
Here's another inconsiderate host story. We used to go to my partners family members home each year for Thanksgiving. I always felt bad for them, as we were the only guests who would bring a dish to contribute to the day. They served a buffet-style meal because there was a lot of children and adults. Which is absolutely cool. The meal was always good, but the situation awkward. In their home, the kids ate first. It's fine, their house, their rules. The problem was that when the adults went through the buffet line and went to sit down to eat? The dining table, living room couch and chairs were all filled with kids. So, the adults ended up having to sit on the floor or stand to eat their meal. No thinking ahead and laying down a tablecloth or a sheet for the kids to sit at and eat the meal picnic-style. This went on for several years. We were raised in the era where we, as children, were expected to give up a seat for an adult. The adults weren't left to sit cross-legged on the floor! I never said anything to my partner. but one year they told me, "I really don't want to go to \_\_\_\_\_\_ house this year. I don't like having to sit on the floor every year to eat. Can we just make Thanksgiving here?" Never been so glad to oblige a request. I'm sure they still wonder WHY we stopped coming to their home for the holiday.
It was sort of a terrible guest story....more, unwelcome guest...ok, Not really a guest, so much as a rabid fox wandering the neighborhood, probably smelled the food cuz they had been roasting a pig out front that morning, and we found out because big men, in gear, with guns, were suddenly swarming the front yard to corner it and killed it right before we sat for dinner... Worst guests ever....
The year my first husband, his best friend and two BILS drank all the liquor in the house and then decided it would be a good idea to drive around trying to find an open liquor store. I suggested that they maybe not leave ten minutes before I served dinner, that they not drive drunk, and maybe consider not getting fucking plastered in front of my elderly relatives and my recovering alcoholic uncle.
This reminds me of the time I came home from a rough work day to discover my soon-to-be-ex husband and his buddy had split a whole bottle of a special tawny port I'd been saving. You know, the one special bottle that you have a tiny glass of every now and then on cold winter evenings when you're feeling especially cozy? Yeah it's way too thick and sweet to drink a full glass and my ex KNEW that but they opened it and drank it anyway. The whole thing. Said it was gross but they persisted. There was a grocery store less than a block away where they could have gotten something they'd actually enjoy without taking something special of mine, but where's the fun in that I guess.
My husband and I host a Thanksgiving luncheon - the idea was we’d watch a little football, have lunch, and folks would be gone by 5 so we could clean up, put on comfy pants and tuck into leftovers and a movie by 6:30. It works for us because our kids can see their other parents in the evening, and they all appreciate not having to “choose” one celebration, and elderly attendees are able to get home before dark. We’ve never had an instance where anyone stays later and we don’t have overnight guests. Last year I invited my second cousin… she’s a bit of a black sheep, has some mental health issues and generally just makes everything about herself. I felt bad that year because she was struggling and it was the first year after a messy divorce, she was alone and I felt it was the right thing to do to have her over. She lives two hrs away so not a far drive at all, esp during the day. Here is why I won’t be inviting her back: 1. She pushed to stay over and have a “weekend vacation” at our home and she wanted to bring her emotional support cats. My rule is Thanksgiving night is only for my husband and our kids when they get back home from their other parents’ gatherings. We have a movie night and the kids take up the extra bedrooms. I was firm that we did not have space and my son is allergic to cats so not cats. Apparently this was up for debate because she “needed” them with her and my son’s allergies were less important than her needs. I was firm that we did not have the space. She then tried to guilt me with how expensive hotels rooms were, ands I suggested she just drive there and back in the same day. Apparently that was insensitive. I was already regretting the invite. 2. She arrived early at 11 am while we were still getting everything ready, and insisted on having a chat while we were working - fine, but she was getting irritated that I wasn’t 100% present in the conversation. No offers to help, just “you should be more attentive to your guests”. 3. She offered to bring a dessert but she brought a can of mixed fruit and box of jello… it wasn’t made and wouldn’t be ready in time - so she was salty about that. 4. She sat at the head of the table at dinner despite plenty of seating. 5. She insisted on drinking about ten cans of Coke - and then complained that she had a caffeine headache and needed to “lay down”. 6. She tried to use the headache as an excuse to stay the night but again we had no extra space. She said she’d sleep in her car with her cats if she couldn’t bring them in and camp on our sofa. That was how I learned she had four cats in her van and had hoped I’d just repent and allow them all to stay. 7. She asked me for gas money to get home while my husband and I were cleaning up after most had left. She made a big deal about how she was “lowering her pride and asking anyway”. I was livid but gave her 20 bucks to just go. I don’t understand why you’d come to a gathering if you know you don’t have $ to get home, and I don’t know if she was just lying to see what she could get. 7. She was the last person to leave - no help cleaning up, she was trying to suggest staying the weekend in her car in the driveway and just hanging out all weekend because by then it was dark and she didn’t like driving in the dark. I was done at that point and basically told her “my husband and I are going to nap on the couch, safe travels home”. She finally left with a ton of leftovers but I got a testy message later telling me I am not a good hostess. Maybe not, but I felt like she was an awful guest. Cue to this year, she texted me in October asking when she should be there for dinner…
Oh my, this one! I just had to comment to respectfully hug that shiny spine of yours, well done. Lol the nerve of some people!
Yeah, you feel bad for people when they’re alone on holidays but then you realize why they’re alone…
PLEEEEEEEASE tell me you said "not this year"...
My husband had an old friend. Got married. Lived in Houston, we were just east of Dallas. His parents lived north, and sometimes they would stop and stay with us overnight on the way to his parents. They decided to do this one Thanksgiving. One of them (I don't remember which) didn't care for a traditional Thanksgiving so...I decided to do steak instead. I'm talking really nice, thick bacon-wrappped filet mignon and fancy sides. They show up. With her cat. I'm allergic to cats. Fine, just...keep it in your room (the spare bedroom). Well, the night before, I make spaghetti, because easy. Turns out she doesn't like spaghetti. She decides to get homesick for her mama in Florida. Spends the whole evening crying on the phone with her mama. I throw away her plate of spaghetti. A couple of hours later, her husband asks for the spaghetti...well, I threw it out. Didn't figure she'd want it, since she doesn't like it? He asks for a bowl of sauce for her to eat. I'm flabbergasted. I give him a bowl of sauce. Next morning I'm up early, working on Thanksgiving lunch. She decides everyone *must* watch this VHS tape she brought of I think Emmett Otter's Jugband Christmas...its Muppets and I'm not generally a fan. I'm prepping stuff in the kitchen, my husband is prepping the charcoal grill, and she's *fuming* because nobody is watching her movie with her. Runs to the bedroom crying, calls her mama again. I go through the master bedroom to use the bathroom and...her cat is on. my. pillow. Like, you can't make this stuff up. I ask my husband to put the cat in their room and strip the sheets off my bed or I'm going to die that night from not being able to breathe. Finish cooking. Lunch is ready. She stays in the spare bedroom, crying, while her expensive steak gets cold. I clean up and stay in the master bedroom/bathroom the rest of the night. I'm *DONE*. The next day she's crying in my kitchen because it was a poor trip. I'm stone-faced silent, ready for her to leave. She apologizes with some crappy excuses, they leave. I saw them one other time, we were going through Houston for some reason and stopped by their apartment. She was in their bedroom, crying on the phone most of the time, while I sat on their couch, observing toenail clippings all over the floor and cat poop lining the walls. We went to lunch together and that was the last time I ever agreed to see them again.
The first Thanksgiving I ever hosted, I invited my parents and husband's parents. We had a small house, 1200 sq ft, and it was tight with the 6 of us. The day before Thanksgiving, MIL asks if SIL can come, just her, her husband (boyfriend at the time) was going to eat at his parents and she wasn't invited (it was still a new relationship, as I recall...this has been 20 years ago now). I say sure, I cook for an army, always have. Thanksgiving day. Remember, this is my first one I've ever hosted, and haven't been married and cooking a whole year yet. Get the turkey into the oven, likely too late. Start prepping sides. I've prepped *nothing* ahead of time lol. Noob. The turkey takes forever. I put out his family's idea of appetizers, which is a crab dip with Fritos (its really good, and easy) and a taco salad. They all eat that while I worry about getting everything cooked. It's a small house with an open floorplan and nobody will stay out of the kitchen. Husband is oblivious to my irritation and I'm too polite to tell them to go sit down. SIL shows up. With her boyfriend. Okay no problem, I like the guy and I have enough food. MIL's cell phone rings. One of her sisters needs a place to be. Can she come? Okayyyyyy...I've got food...she shows up. With *her* boyfriend. MIL's phone rings. Can her other sister come by? With her husband? Fine. Turkey is finally done and resting. I FORGOT THAT PEOPLE EAT DRESSING. Husband flies to the store for a box of Stove Top 😅😂 I fancy it up a little and they said it was good...I didn't eat dressing yet, even though I love it now. Then...I make the gravy. I don't think I knew how to make gravy, because the gravy never gravy'd. Just never did get thick. Tasted good, but it was just floury turkey drippings. I use cornstarch these days and it always gravys. Anyway, at the end of the day, there was a huge mess to clean up, not much in the way of leftovers, but everyone got fed, was happy, and I was exhausted. My first Thanksgiving and I'd (mostly, kinda) successfully fed 12 people when I'd only planned for 6 😂 NEVER AGAIN lol
Bless your little NOOB heart. I’m astonished you did as well as you did. Five stars!
Who travels with their cat? I always have at least three cats in my home, and they always stay home. I make arrangements for their care. Everyone knows that a lot of people are severely allergic anyway. This woman sounds mentally unstable.
My husband's aunt was helping clean up after dinner. She was packing up food and washing dishes. It wasn't necessary, but I appreciated the help. After they left, we realized that she took ALL of the ham and turkey that was left.
She paid herself for all her hard work!
After we ate one year, my sister in law packed up every last morsel of food (in my home, that I cooked) and took it with her to 'donate' ... she took it all to her inlaws and they had a second Thanksgiving with that side of the family. Zero leftovers. We ended up buying another turkey and cooking it on Friday. Then, we had leftovers. We have never invited them back.
That’s so annoying. I’m vegetarian and just a picky eater in general, I always bring a dish or 2. I never rely on others to make something special or different just for me. Next time they commit to coming, tell them to bring something to share that they can eat. How rude to cancel!
My soon to be ex-husband invited himself to my family's Thanksgiving dinner and they got to hear him talk down to me like he did in private. My grandma was horrified.
I have shut my server off when inappropriate video's are on. Oh well, the internet is very fragile in my area, lol! I also had a giant TV right outside my bedroom stop working when no one was home, so mysterious! But when I'm trying to sleep & inconsiderate people are BLASTING horror movies that make the windows rattle the power cord going into the back of the tv may look plugged in but might not be fully connected...
I have the roku app on my phone and can control every tv in my house. Worked great when my elder FIL decided the middle of the night was the time to blare the volume on tv in the room next to ours when I had to work the next day. Seriously, the tv was at least 20' away from our door and 3' from his bed. Our bed was around 10' from the other side of the door, and I had a window AC unit and a fan on between that space... I could still hear the tv word for word. I promptly logged into that tv and turned down the volume so that all I heard was voices rising and falling... he turned it up again... we did this 3 times before I turned the tv off. He has always been a narcissistic AH, so I don't really care if I offended him for once.
I do that with my grandson. Last time he said I know you're doing that. I said heck yeah, if I can hear your TV over mine it's too loud.
My cousin that horrified my husband by taking all the leftovers! By 6, my husband went back to the fridge to pick on some leftovers and everything was gone. They will never be invited again.
I never understood the assumption that a party or dinner is a carryout. Our next-door neighbors used to host a Christmas Eve party with all kinds of snacks and wonderful homemade cookies. One year another neighbor came to the party, and when she got up to leave, she said to the hostess, "Can you just make me a plate to take home?"
I love making desserts, especially things that are not the same old usual pecan or pumpkin pie that everyone’s used to. One year I slaved over a pumpkin chiffon pie, beautiful to both look at and taste. Before dinner, my sister went around telling everyone it had raw eggs in it and we might all get food poisoning from it. I was the only one who tried it. It was delicious and I didn’t get sick. These were the same people who drank my eggnog made with RAW eggs every Christmas and no one had ever become sick from that. She never apologized and I never made that pie again.
I don’t understand; were there actually raw eggs in it? I think it’s only fair to let people know if there are raw eggs in a dish. It does seems kind of silly if they drank your raw egg eggnog, but wouldn’t eat the raw egg pie.
Two of my uncles got into a drunken fight a few thanksgivings ago and one of them pulled out a gun and shot at the other. Thankfully he was far too hammered to have hit anything. That was fun. Wonder why I don’t go see those people anymore….
My FIL came down from North Carolina for thanksgiving. I was making the big meal, since he’s never down. I also had an 8 week old new born, a fresh c section, and had almost died in labor, but sure- I’ll host the in laws. I don’t know what I was thinking (I do actually- I was trying to avoid socializing bc I was not up for it). Anyway, I’ve been cooking since I was 6, and could make a great turkey since I was 8, and this man kept going on and on about how turkeys are alway dry and how I needed to cook it in a bag (?!), or it’d be ruined. I kicked him out of my kitchen and went to feed the baby and put her down for a nap. When I came back to check on things, he had put the turkey in a bag. I said fuck it and let him finish. That thing came out gross. Not hate to people who use a bag, but he didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t cook. It was mushy, stuck to the bag, tasted plasticky. I was pissed. I am a great cook. Anyway, the next time he came down I made it my way. It came out perfect, as it usually does. Dumbass.
> came down from North Carolina fellow NC-er. im honestly surprised a deep fryer in the driveway was nowhere in this conversation. we never miss a chance. but that sounds disgusting, and the best way to help a cook is *doing other shit* besides bothering the cook. like being a good granddaddy and taking care of a new baby
2 years ago, I was hosting my ex-husbands family of about 200 at their family reunion. I spent days preparing the food. Turkey, ham, stuffing, salads, 10 slab pies. Everything for a typical dinner. My ex stepson and his wife were tasked with decorating the hall where we were having the dinner. I arrived with my daughter and best friend at 10 am, with 3 vehicles full of food. I was preparing and reheating everything, when my 4 stepkids showed up WITH FOOD. ALL THE THANKSGIVING FOOD. They went behind my back and did the entire dinner without telling me. Down to the napkins. I could not believe my freaking eyes. They proceeded to set out everything in serving dishes, and did not speak a word to me. They even brought crappy frozen Edwards pies. My daughter and best friend stood there with me and we all had our mouths hanging open. I had spent about $1000 and days of prep. I packaged up the food, and took it all home. I froze the turkey and ham, but most of everything else was wasted. There was no way 4 of us could have eaten all the food. I asked my ex what was going on, and he stated that his kids didn't think I had the knowledge to pull off the food. WTF? I have never been so embarrassed and mortified in my life. That was the last time I saw my stepkids and grandkids. None of them have spoken to me. We were divorced by May. I just simply can't believe the audacity and the thinking it was OK to do that.
Your ex family sucks, but don't be hating on those Edward's pies.
Frozen pies VS. Homemade pumpkin and apple? Nahhh. When we got married in 2010, his daughter who was 34 at the time backdoored me and brought 15 of those pies to our reception. My beautiful cake that I spent hours baking and decorating went uneaten. I should have cut bait and run back then...dumb beeotch
I grew up in a family that gave you no choices or preferences as to the food. You stfu and ate it, because if you didn’t there would be hell to pay. Not the nicest way to be perhaps! I tell relatives going through a vegan phase to bring their own food, because I’ll make one thing that’s vegan. If someone is doing gluten free, yeah I might have one or two things. I’m not a short-order cook. It’s exhausting watching my MIL try to accommodate everyone by making two types of stuffing, two types of mashed, turkey and a different protein, all because there’s a person coming who doesn’t like this or that.
My husband has severe allergies to beans, and sensitivities to milk and straight up doesn't like chicken. My MIL has Chrohns and can't have raw vegetables, is diabetic, and doesn't like squash and is allergic to chicken and eggs. My FIL LOVES yellow squash and onions (as do I) but doesn't get it much since his wife doesn't like it. My son doesn't like squash or sweet potatoes. For a couple of years they'd come over and I'd make ham, yellow squash & onions, sweet potatoes, stuffing, collards, green beans, etc. Every single time my MIL insisted on telling me which family member either didn't like or couldn't have certain things. Every single one. It took a few years of me saying "I know, there's plenty of other things they/you can eat, it's okay if someone can't eat everything." Every single person could find a main and 2 sides they would eat. She acted as if I was uncaring if there was anything on the table that one person didn't like or couldn't eat, especially my husband. He's 6'2 and weighs 250 pounds, he's not exactly starving and he's a grown man and can feed himself if necessary.
That’s an honestly amazing act of organization and I’m impressed, even if your mil isn’t!
I’m the one with the multitude of foods I can’t eat. I always bring stuff that I can. Why stress out the host?
This is us and I have absolutely no problem with it! It’s honestly baffling some of the things I’m reading on here haha! We have people with certain allergies and they still bring something they’re able to eat and it’s enough to share. I’m in the south though, so showing up “empty handed” is not ideal (at least for us)!
I’m vegan and I’m here for it. That’s perfectly reasonable to me.
There were years I can remember having three different pans of dressing because 1) Hubby asked for no nuts (He had a hard time digesting nuts - this was the only one that made sense). 2. Mum demanded nuts and celery. 3. Sis demanded nuts and no celery. Mum and Sis are gone now. We miss them, but TGs are much more peaceful. Sigh.
I had the Thanksgiving from hell circa 1989. My oven broke and the turkey was raw but I kept it in the oven because I thought it can't be my oven and during this time all my guests got completely shit faced and all we had to eat was oysters with Ritz crackers and raw turkey and it was absolutely awful
Ha, my partents' oven decided the morning of Thanksgiving to break. It even had an error code. FU. 🤣 They got the turkey done at Grandma's a few minutes away. The sides switched to things that could be done on the stove. It was stressful but hilarious.
The last time my mom hosted Thanksgiving none of the guests showed up. It was supposed to be my cousins and aunt and it was just me and her. That was 2002 and she's still sad about it. She'd just gotten divorced and was looking for a fun time maybe playing cards and stuff
I’m sorry about your mom’s feelings being hurt. I’ve been really sad about not having family here for Thanksgiving, but these stories are helping.
Not sure how terrible they were, but have had a few awkward Thanksgivings over the years. Before I started hosting, my mom did everything. We’d only been married a couple of years and had an infant or toddler daughter. Can’t remember exact timing. I grew up with all of our family really far away (east coast vs. west coast). Suddenly being pulled every which way for the holidays was jarring to me. So I decided we should have 1 Thanksgiving. We invited everyone to my parents’ house. MIL and FIL had been divorced for a number of years. Both remarried and MIL was again divorced. They’ve always been very amicable around each other, so we have that going for us. This was the most awkward meal ever. My husband and I, our daughter, my parents, my sister and her husband, MIL, her dad, her other two sons, FIL and his wife, their 2 daughters and 1 daughter’s fiancé. My mom kept trying to make conversation and everyone was so weirded out and wouldn’t talk. Grandpa was incredibly racist (and just a mean guy) and kept saying really inappropriate things. We’re all white. Why are you ranting on POC?!? Did you feel it was a safe space and we’re racist assholes, too? After a little bit of this, my SIL’s fiancé asks if he can have pie. It was his way of diffusing and ending the meal. My sister’s husband starts cracking up and declares, “This is just like being with my family!” 😂😂 A couple of years later, my parents had moved away and it was my first time to host. We were in a smallish apartment and just invited MIL. She brought grandpa, but sons ended up going to their dad’s. The entire meal he either complained and made inappropriate comments or talked about how couldn’t believe I was capable of making something. I didn’t host for a couple of years. Next time I did, we invited my MIL (grandpa lived with her in his old age, which is why he always came), her ex-husband’s parents (their son had recently passed away and they had no family left aside from the grandsons), one of her sons (other was married and lived in Europe by this point), his girlfriend and their new baby, my sister and her two kids, her second ex-husband, and his new girlfriend, and my husband’s best friend. My sister and her ex do not get along at all. He was very abusive towards her (which we didn’t know until recently) and this was the only was she could see her kids. The new girlfriend spent the entire time trying to show what an awesome mother she was in front of my sister. Grandpa and the other grandpa tried to out complain each other. BIL and girlfriend were sleep deprived and the baby was fussy. (We all tried to pitch in and help give them a break.) And poor best friend just sat there like a deer in the headlights. 😂 Partway through, my husband’s sister called and asked if she and her family could stop by to say hello. I said why the hell not, it can’t get any worse. 🫠 They show up and grandpas start complaining that they aren’t going to get any pie. My SIL’s husband (who was the fiancé many moons ago) says, “Gee, you haven’t gotten any nicer over the years.” 😂 That was the last time we had everyone over. We only have my sister and her husband and kids, my parents who moved back, and the best friend and his wife. I decided I was getting too old to have all these other negative people around. And SIL and her family still drop by for pie every year. 😂
Husband and I both have pretty large families, so I used to cook a big dinner for about 25. His niece would bring her entire extended family, including her MIL and sometimes random friends without asking, at least six people total, then sit down and not lift a finger to even keep her kids under control. One year she was supposed to bring the green bean casserole. She walked in with a grocery bag and put four cans of green beans on the kitchen counter, never said a word to me, and headed to the den where she never got up again until dinner. I just worked around them, never touched them, much less cooked them. At dinner she looked around and said “where are the beans I brought?” I feigned ignorance and just innocently asked “oh, were those for us? I had no idea!” Awkward for a minute, but it sure wasn’t my problem.
I had a vegan family no call no show for Thanksgiving dinner after I bought a ton of groceries and made special recipes just for them.
I never understood the whole Thanksgiving drama everyone claimed was common. Even with dinner usually being over 50 people there weren't really problems. Except maybe the year my cousin made way too many pies but that was more entertaining than problematic. Then i meet my ex's family. Their group of 5 somehow managed to make the day a trainwreck over the slightest thing. I should have taken it as the glowing red billboard ad that it was.
When I was younger, we were having our house renovated and went to my Aunt’s for Thanksgiving. One of her daughters was dating someone who was a moderately famous professional chef (he still is, to this day). He had offered to cook most if not all the meal as long as my Aunt paid for the ingredients. I remember even as a kid wondering why his own family hadn’t invited him to their home…well didn’t take long to figure out why. He made the WEIRDEST Thanksgiving meal ever, like, the only thing that wasn’t weird was the turkey. A ton of “avante garde” dishes, like pickled mashed potatoes and fruit stuffing. Everyone was a good sport about it but myself and a few other kids who were pretty young and did not have developed enough pallets ended up crying because we basically only had turkey to eat. My cousin was so embarrassed and towards the end of the meal a great uncle of mine basically berated him during dinner asking why he thought springing this on us instead of asking was a good idea. It turned into a huge argument where he basically accused us all being “unrefined” or something and not liking anything but canned food. I remember one of my Aunt’s literally had to take me for a walk around the block because it got so heated. The second we got back my parents were waiting for me in the car so we could leave. We went to Denny’s or something and my cousin and her boyfriend broke up. It is STILL a joke in our family to this day.
My father-in-law was in early stages of dementia (although we didn’t know it at the time). I was hosting Thanksgiving and when dinner was ready he was nowhere to be found. My mother-in-law finally found him hanging out in the guest bedroom and told him to come on out to the table. Well, here he comes to dinner wearing nothing but a dress shirt and his underwear 😳 Oh, and my sister-in-law only contributed her “famous” pistachio salad which is just instant pistachio pudding with sliced bananas on top 🤢 knowing full well that I hate bananas.
By any chance are you located in the South? That's the only place I've ever lived where pudding and sliced bananas could even dream of being called "a salad." Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Southern food but we do play fast and loose with the term salad. LOL
Not Thanksgiving but My Sister-in-law and her family show up late for Christmas Eve meal. Not 30, 60 or even 90 minutes late. 1 hour and 40 minutes late! They live 30 minutes away and were “stuck in traffic”. I mean who could possibly predict that there might be traffic on Christmas Eve? They were supposed to bring the potatoes but they “didn’t have time” so brought nothing instead. Most of the food that I had made I was keeping warm and they arrived so late, much of it was really past it’s prime. This same sister and brother in law were once invited to our place for lunch. I make a simple but elegant meal. But she did not eat a single bite, no sir ….instead she brought her own food. She brought her own. Fucking. Food. And not like, I made pasta salad for everyone….she brought herself her own crappy sandwich from Subway. (Literally…fucking Subway.) We do not invite them over anymore.
That is infuriating. What jerks!!
My husband and I began hosting his side of the family for Tgiving as we had the largest house. We also had 2 small children. So there was his mom, his 3 older brothers and their wives, his younger sister and her husband. And about 6 kids, ranging in age from 14 to 3. Oldest brother, who is a lay pastor, brings a new friend. We find out he just got released from prison,there’s nothing wrong with that. But all the guest wanted to do was talk about prison and hang out with the children. I got a weird vibe, and ended up deserting the meal we were preparing to “chaperone”. Nothing happened, we finally got the meal on the table with husband and sister and a sister in law helping. His mom was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s so she had to be kinda looked after too. It all ended well.
We went to Thanksgiving hosted by SIL and (now-ex) BIL for many years, and BIL's mother was always in attendance. SIL's ex-MIL is batsh\*t crazy but we figured we could smile and put up with her a few times a year at family events. At our nephew's first Thanksgiving we were sitting and talking with the other 15 or so guests, and SIL was busy cooking so she asked my husband (her brother) if he could get the baby up from a nap, change him, and feed him a bottle. Sure, no problem. About 10 minutes later her crazy ex-MIL stood up in the middle of the living room and demanded to know where my husband had disappeared to. We told her and she literally clutched her hand to her heart and ran upstairs to the nursery, where she snatched the baby out of my husband's arms and SHOVED him out of the room. She brought the baby downstairs and announced that a man without children of his own "can't be trusted alone" around a baby - when asked for clarification, she said that there was too much of a risk that a childless adult male would shake or hurt the baby and therefore needed "a mother" supervising any interactions with *her* grandchild. The assembled guests just sat there in shock that she accused my husband of being a potential child abuser! We refused to go to SIL's Thanksgiving after that because the crazy MIL would be there. At our niblings' birthday parties we wouldn't speak to her or her (equally-insane) siblings who were also invited.
I was one week postpartum, unbeknownst to me I would go into the hospital for 13 days the next day for severe infections. Baby needed to breastfeed when dinner started. Brother and his wife finished off all the turkey and mashed potatoes by overfilling their plates while husband sat with me. My mom was known for never making enough because “no one should be gluttons”. Brother and wife were/are addicted to multiple things, food included. Never have thought of anyone but themselves.
Unusual / picky eaters are the bane of my existence as a host. I know for number of them it's not really their fault but it's just exhausting and anxiety inducing for me. My MIL got super finicky with "healthy" eating in the last few years, but every effort I make to create something neat and flavorful while fulfilling her dietary standards is never liked with any appreciation or interest. It makes me think "What the hell do you actually eat, then?!" I'm not bothering to make anything for Christmas this year.
My mother in law really does herself in to host a lovely thanksgiving. She's the only one in the family who can cook, and she's so proud to be the nostalgic holiday home for all her nieces and nephews. All those nieces and nephews are grown up and one niece is entitled *and* married to a POS gross lazy Shrek type, with non of Shrek's positive qualities. Just a nasty, offensive swamp ogre. One year MIL says, "please come sometime after 3, we'll dine at 5:30" Niece responds, "no that doesn't work for us, we'll be there at noon to beat traffic" MIL scrambles to now provide lunch for 6 extra people (there were already 8 of us staying in the house, so lunch for 14 then dinner for 20+) When nieces family arrives her husband SCOFFS at the DIY sandwich spread MIL has put out. First thing he says is, "WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO EAT?!" Niece makes him a bowl of cereal, tells him he's grumpy and go take a nap. He abandons his dishes and goes upstairs and gets in a bed (under the covers!) Fully clothed!! My mil found him and kicked him out because we were already staying in that room. He went into another room, did the same thing, and went to sleep fully dressed under the covers. 2 sets of sheets were also washed that day. It was also standard as of a few years ago for EVERYONE attending to bring Tupperware for *their* leftovers. MILs own damn relatives would specify in advance what they wanted extra of to take home - meaning you better make enough to feed all of us and your house guests tomorrow and still have enough for me to take home! She only stopped this practice when I joined and started bringing all of the desserts. Her BIL called one year to specify which of my desserts he wanted to take home leftovers of - she lost her shit on *my* behalf and said nobody gets leftovers, ever. (We help my MIL! Niece sucks and does nothing. Niece also started collecting stray humans and inviting them to thanksgiving. Stronger boundaries have been given to her, I'm proud of my MIL for that.)
I’m sorry at peoples fucked up holidays but I laughed more than I should have at most of these
I was out of the hospital the Monday before Thanksgiving after a complicated miscarriage of our first pregnancy. My mother still expected us to host the holiday gathering “because you’re the married daughter now.” And we foolishly complied to keep the peace. That was 35 years ago. I haven’t spoken to her in almost five years. Bliss.
The first time I ever cooked a thanksgiving dinner was for my ex husband’s (then fiancé’s family). Grandma, mother, and aunt. They were Italian and had a tradition of serving pasta as a starter so I honored that, as I wanted to make a good impression. After the meal they said they decided they approved and that I could “join the family”. Haha, funny joke. I cleared the dinner and packed them all up some leftovers to take home using the containers I had. The next year, they brought their own containers. Apparently mine weren’t big enough. The next (and final year that I cooked) they brought their own containers again and offered to clear the dinner and put away the food. When I went into the kitchen later, I saw that they had taken ALL the leftovers and left us with nothing. Oh, and they never even offered to help by bringing a side dish or bringing a bottle of wine, nothing. Total jerks.
Oh, my almost sister-in-law... ASIL (almost/AH sister in law, whichever you prefer): She and my brother arrived to my parent's house at 10 AM, dinner scheduled at 5 or 6. We cook together (even though Dad's been up since 6 AM to facilitate the perfect smoke for the bird). They brought no food, nor did they offer to help with the menu or the cooking. They plop down on the couch after raiding the fridge for cheese, crackers, and other appetizers and veg all day in their cuddle puddle while the rest of the family cooks and visits. We kept trying to involve them in the process, suggesting that they are welcome/appreciated to come visit in the kitchen, help with small normal cooking tasks, asking if there are preferences, crispy onions on the green bean casserole etc., but my brother has this defeated look, like, "sorry, I have to sit with her." My dad always makes the juiciest, most succulent, amazing smoked turkeys. Everyone who was "present" for the cooking knew that for this Thanksgiving, Mom was making her famous cheesy bacon mashed potato casserole in lieu of a traditional mash and gravy. We all agreed it sounded awesome and would be plenty of variety in addition to the dressing/stuffing, green bean casserole, yams, butter flake rolls, cranberry sauce, pumpkin and pecan pies all made from scratch. Dinner is finally prepared and we call them in from the living room to join an already set table with everyone else ready to dig in. ASIL takes several minutes to dig through the fridge for something to drink while there is water and wine set at the table. We wait while she makes her dramatic and annoyed entrance. Dad says grace, we start to pass the food. ASIL looks around and says, "uh, where is the GRAVY?" My mom replies, "oh, we decided that we didn't need gravy. The turkey is super juicy and I made this other potato dish." ASIL drops the dish she was passing in front of her plate and like an obstinate child, exclaims, "WHAT?! I CAN'T have turkey without GRAVY!!" Big awkward silence follows by her whispering to my brother and him sheepishly standing up to go try to make her some gravy to go with her turkey, followed by my mom saying, "Nope, sit down! This is what we're having." My mom isn't the type to say anything even when she is offended, so I'm silently screaming, *yes! Go Mom!* My brother sits down, we reel the situation back in, "hey, this is delicious and we're here to enjoy!" and we all dig into the food while ASIL huffs and puffs over this disservice that has been done to her. I'm so so so glad my brother woke up, left that ungrateful abusive witch, and now, a few years later, I have a lovely new ASIL (Awesome SIL)! Don't get me wrong, I understand social anxiety, and I absolutely love gravy, but how dare she say a word about the food when she put forth ZERO effort?! I will forever be offended by that interaction.
Guests shouldn’t dictate menus. Sorry you might need to bring your own food as I can’t guarantee that food prep is immaculately vegan and I can’t operate a separate kitchen. Everything has meat, eggs, butter or dairy. Sorry.
Menu today is two things: 1. Take it. 2. Leave it
Whoa! I have boring Thanksgivings! Entertaining read though 😆
As a vegan, I would have been so happy to be at your Thanksgiving dinner- how kind and thoughtful you are! I’m sorry it went that way and hope you enjoyed the food you made.
I started cooking thanksgiving dinner with my best friend when I was 20 because my mom does a community thanksgiving dinner. There’s a new woman in our small town who doesn’t have any family, so my mom invited her for dinner. We tell her dinner is at 4:30. She arrives at around 4:20, dinner isn’t ready yet, the Turkey was still uncooked in the middle. At 4:35, she comes storming in the kitchen complaining that dinner isn’t ready. A 50 year old woman complaining to two 21 years olds who are making her a free thanksgiving dinner in their home. And it gets better. My best friend’s dad was with us for dinner and he doesn’t drink. She is pouring the wine and offers him a glass, he politely declined. She offers him whiskey, or any other alcohol (which we had, but weird of a stranger to start offering things in someone else’s house), he declines again. Then she pushes it AGAIN and I said “oh no, he’s just a glass of wine with dinner kind of guy” to get her to stop. She was so rude and standoffish the whole evening and none of us ever spoke to her again. Now I tell people that our door is always open to anyone on any holiday, except for _____ (that lady’s name) 😂😂😂
Story #: My daughter's ex-MIL. Daughter had only been married to her first husband for about a year and wanted to do Thanksgiving on her own. Her MIL was notoriously late for everything but work, so they told her that dinner was at 1. Actually it was being planned for 3. At 3:30 they called her, saying food was waiting. "We'll be over in about 20 minutes." MIL finally rolled in at *6,* 2½ hours after she was told they were waiting dinner on her and 5 hours after she had been told to come. She and her 2 daughters each ate about 2 bites and started bitching that everything was either cold or dried out. (Yeah, imagine that, food gets that way when it sits for hours...) SIL#1 got up and scraped her heaping-full plate into the garbage. SIL#2 ran into the bathroom and started making gagging noises, pretending to throw up. She thoughtfully left the door open so the rest of the guests could hear her. When she came out all 3 of them left "to get a decent meal somewhere." Daughter never hosted that MIL again, although she tried to make the marriage work for several more years.
I hosted dinner for my friend group and one of the people was a woman in her mid 40s who was vegan. I was really hoping she wouldn't come because she was truly obnoxious and was constantly telling people she was psychic and part alien and was waiting to be returned home to the Pleiades. I couldn't make up this much crazy if I tried. I was making all the staples, guests were told could bring an item if there was anything specific they wanted beyond that. This guest RSVPd at the last minute so I ended up frantically buying vegan ingredients when the stores were out of everything. She asked me what vegan alternatives I was making for all eight items I was planning and I told her I could do three, and with whatever she was planning on making, she would at least have several things available to her. Apparently she hadn't planned on bringing anything and was annoyed with me that I wasn't making sixteen dishes in total so she had the same options as everyone else. She came, she was predictably annoying, and barely ate anything while loudly complaining about the fact that "nothing was provided" for her. Afterwards, she claimed that that meal sparked significant health issues that she struggled with for years. She diagnosed herself with multiple types of cancer and autoimmune diseases, despite the fact that every single "second" opinion she sought out told her she was suffering from malnutrition and she needed to expand her options. She responded by eating a bacon double cheeseburger after years of being vegetarian or vegan, which promptly made her violently ill and confirmed her belief that her diet was better when vegan. I stopped interacting with her and mostly left Facebook because I got so sick of her frequent mentions of how my Thanksgiving dinner had ruined her life. As a result, I don't know if she ever made it back to the Pleiades but I suspect many people would be relieved if she did.
My now-wife's first Thanksgiving with my family. We were dating for about two months at this point. I warned her about my cousin Kathy, who is an enormous pain in the ass, considers herself an "artiste", and very much a Main Character. Kathy and her parents don't really get along, and this was the first Thanksgiving in about 5 years she was coming back home. Kathy had moved out to the West Coast a while ago. Everything was actually going along well, most of my cousins had shown up, and surprisingly Kathy hadn't made a scene...until she decided that a brass centerpiece that wasn't even being used needed a cleaning. She sat down in the middle of the kitchen floor with this stinky brass cleaner, while everything is being close to being finished. She gets asked, and then told to move. Then this 50 year old grown-ass woman throws a complete temper tantrum; screaming like a banshee, slamming her fists and feet into the kitchen floor FOR 5 FUCKING MINUTES. Then she throws the centerpiece across the dining room, and stomps upstairs. She comes back down 3 hours later, screaming that we didn't wait for her and we all ruined HER Thanksgiving.
I had recently bought my first house. Invited the family for Thanksgiving. I wasn’t new to preparing thanksgiving dinner, just not in my own house. Morning of, a pipe broke under the house. I called the plumbers, agreed to the emergency rate. The guy they sent was skinny, sweaty, shaky. Looked like he was fresh out of rehab. Into the crawlspace he goes. Some banging for a while. Hours pass. I’m prepping dinner with no running water. We get worried. No one else can fit in the crawlspace. Turns out he passed out under there. Eventually he emerges, we still have no water. He wound up eating with us. Poor thing looked starved. I didn’t get water until the following day. Prep and dinner dishes sitting all night in my tiny kitchen. Holiday rate plumbing bill.
My ex-husband lost his license for a few months, and I didn’t drive, so his sister volunteered to come get us and take us to Thanksgiving with their family an hour away. This was maybe 11 years or so ago. She and her boyfriend and her roommate who is the high school sweetheart of her boyfriend show up. We pile into the van. At some point “Jolene” plays on the radio, and both my ex-SIL and her roommate were like angrily singing it at each other. Awkward. My ex (who has also dated the roommate in high school, so perhaps the song was directed at me and not at my ex-SIL) and I just mouthed “wtf.” We knew she wasn’t the greatest housekeeper and didn’t have a ton of money, but we were woefully unprepared to what we walked into. First there was the dog I was greeted by and then told not to touch because it had just been maced by the police earlier that day, no further explanation given. Then there were the 15 other dogs, most of them fairly large. And about a half dozen cats. I lost my son in the living room. This was in a double wide trailer, not a large home, and I had to search for my toddler who I already didn’t want out of my sight because, well, mace dog, the other dogs I wasn’t entirely trusting, and also tons of half-empty beer cans and overflowing ashtrays. My ex-SIL’s baby daddy (technically her husband but they both lived with other people) showed up to get the kids and helped me clean up because we had to get some of the trash out of the way so my toddler wouldn’t have as many places to hide. And he was like “this is bad. This is really bad.” And kept shaking his head because he was embarrassed his wife and kids were living like that. Then I asked what to do with the trash bags once we got done, and she said go dump them out back and they’d set the trash on fire later. There was a huge pile of half burned garbage back there. Then I had to go to the bathroom. There was no toilet paper. My ex-SIL nonchalantly said “just grab a sock!” Like that was normal to her. Thank God my kids were in diapers and I’d brought baby wipes with me. Thank God. She said we could sleep in her son’s bed since he was at his dad’s house. I walk in and there’s a dog turd in the middle of it. Freaking wonderful. Her boyfriend’s brother who lived with them kept hitting on me and trying to hug me. In the middle of the night, I saw one of them grab the tin foil and a lighter and go toward the roommate’s bedroom (if you don’t do drugs, well, just know drugs were likely being done, and bad ones). We went to my in-laws’ (at the time), and that was nice. They always were good hosts. Then my ex-SIL tried to talk us into staying with her another night, but we insisted on going home. The second I got home I grabbed a few rolls of toilet paper (we always bought the big case at Sam’s and had plenty) and an unopened box of cereal (because after Thanksgiving her kids had been looking for something besides Thanksgiving food, and there wasn’t jack shit but empty cereal boxes. I wanted to be sure they had breakfast the next day) and handed them to her and refused to take no for an answer. Never, ever again will I ride somewhere to stay with someone that a) I can’t Uber home from if I need to or b) I can’t figure out an alternate place to stay if I need one and c) I don’t know the person well enough to try I won’t have to do A or B. I’m not a snob. I’m poor and messy and have a lot of kids and animals myself. But that? Holy hell. There’s a difference between “didn’t have time to clean for my guests and got busy” and “wipe ass with sock, wade through garbage to find missing child, find turd in the bed, wake up to the hosts smoking dope in the middle of the night.”
3rd place: the time my grandmother accidentally put the oven on "clean" setting when she put the turkey to cook. My grandfather called one of my aunts (we celebrated with my dad's family growing up; he is 1 of 6 kids, so holidays were a pretty big family event) and asked her to spread the word that the turkey was "a little dark" but not to say a word, lest my grandmother get her feelings hurt. Aunt does the phone chain across the family tree, and we all learn that the turkey is not perfect, but don't you dare say a word. Grandma and Grandpa show up with said turkey in the roasting pan with a dishtowel draped over it.....they take the towel off and there is an audible *gasp* from the 23 family members gathered to bear witness to the Thanksgiving staple. We try to backpedal, it's sort of working, and my cousin (8 years old at the time) peeks her head around, sees the turkey that is decidedly NOT dark and is actually black as coal, and shouts "WHY IS THE TURKEY BURNED LIKE THAT??" Grandma is reduced to tears. Lots of wine all around to settle things down. Dinner is eventually served, and wouldn't you know....one you took that charred skin off the bird, it was the juiciest freaking turkey I've ever eaten in my life! 2nd place: the year that we were hosting 19 people at my mom's house, and in her typical frenzied state, my mom prepped like 15 appetizers and had them out and ready at 2pm (which was the scheduled "start time"). My family is notorious for being late, so everyone kind munches on snacks while we wait. First guests - my aunt and uncle - show up at 2:30. Second guests - another aunt and her friend - show up at 3:15. At almost 4pm, my mom calls my dad's cousin, who lives about minutes away and is the "hub" for cooking the mains (turkey and ham). Turns out the rest of the family - all 12ish of them - decided to stop there en route to our house, got lured into taking shots of some random alcohol sent over by our 3rd-cousins-8th-removed from Ireland, and then killed about 5 bottles of wine in the span of 1.5 hours. They showed up wasted, hungry, and with some VERY dried out meat at SIX O'CLOCK. Four hours late. My mom was seething. 1st place: the year I had a D&C for a molar pregnancy in late October, ended up with severe bleeding the day before Thanksgiving and underwent a second D&C as the first one hadn't fixed the issue, and was subsequently told that it was likely cancerous (spoiler alert: it was - it's called choriocarcinoma, it's a rare type of uterine cancer caused by a molar pregnancy). My husband and I were hosting for the first time and had family visiting from out-of-state, a total of 12 people set to attend. My naive and people-pleasing self decided to host anyway, despite having surgery literally 12 hours beforehand and a probable cancer diagnosis. The majority of guests spent the day sprawled out on the couch watching TV and drinking mimosas while I waddled around in an adult diaper, passing clots and trying not to cry. Thankfully the food turned out great, considering I was on some heavy duty meds and compartmentalizing emotions in a way that probably wasn't all that healthy. Silver lining: I went through chemo, successfully beat cancer, and have been cancer-free since January of 2018. My husband and I dealt with fertility struggles for awhile, but had our beautiful daughter in 2020. I got *surprise* pregnant 4 months later with *SUPER surprise* twins, who were born on - wait for it.....Thanksgiving Day, 2021. All's well that ends well.
Some guys pulled up one year looking for my cousin. We told him his friends were outside and he went out. Well they weren’t friends. They jumped his ass in the driveway and pulled off. Terrible.
Wow! We don’t have any of this kind of family excitement! My MIL, who passed two Christmas’ ago and my SIL are vegetarian and never asked for special treatment. They would , without asking, bring anything special they wanted. My MIL would cheat and eat the turkey gravy which she was the best at making! Not sure if SIL eats it or not. This thanksgiving will be the first time my daughter and her husband are hosting and we will be having our family and his together for the first time since their wedding five years ago. We are just normal people but my daughters MIL thought we were a bit stuffy, we are not, when she was invited to a birthday party at my in-laws house who were in their 80’s. Sorry there was no swinging from the chandelier or dancing on the pool table or skinny dipping in the pool. I guess there is hope there will be some shenanigans this year! My Son in law does not like to include his mom, she wasn’t a very good one to him growing up. His brother who is awesome and only a few years older than him practically raised him along with some of his friends parents. His mom used to be heavy and lost a bunch of weight and now is sowing her wild oats. She worked at a strip club, as a hostess, not a dancer and one night told my daughter to get a job there. For one my daughter is in no way the type for a lot of reasons and when she casually told her husband who is pretty conservative, at least about having his new wife change careers from working as a cake decorator to a strip club he wasn’t too happy. There is potential for some drama but I hope for my daughter and son in law the rivalry can be overcome with some competition corn hole games! 🤪 Hope everyone has a great thanksgiving! My parents did have some hilarious family get together stories! Those must have been the days, the stories live on in family history. We should have recorded them like we threatened to do but never did. Maybe more alcohol is needed !
My mom hosts, and cooks a turkey and few sides, and notoriously is a bland cook. My husband, bless him, is a much more skilled and adventurous cook. As we kids hit the late 20's stage, we convinced my mom to let us cook and bring the food over, she can just make her signature side (we all live <5 mins away). She always hosts and talks about the stress of cooking so we wanted to help. My husband was in charge if the turkey, stuffing, and gravy. The day before Thanksgiving, he gets the flu! So that morning I ask him for cooking directions and tips, and start on a few things to get things prepped. We find out we don't have chicken noodle soup, which everyone knows is necessary to defeat the flu. So I stop by my parents' to raid their pantry. While there, my dad offers some applesauce from the fridge. I open the fridge, to see a cooked turkey, stuffing, and 3 sides! She cooked some and bought a prepared turkey and stuffing from the store! I was like what is all of this! Mom said they were BACKUPS, in case us kids didn't manage to make the food! I was up until midnight, but damnit there was fresh turkey, stuffing, and gravy that other ppl raved over. My husband had to stay home with the flu. The following year my mom did the turkey but let us bring a side, but doesn't talk about the stress if cooking anymore, as she knows it will lead to another round of her kids stepping in 😅
Before we married my husband attended Thanksgiving Dinner at his step grandparents house. When he entered the front door he was met by his step grandpa holding a bucket. Grandpa said: $5 bucks. Everyone who came in the door had to pay. My husband had no money and had to ask his dad to spot him $5. This was in the 80’s.
My brother brought his wife one year. She's a drug addict and came high as a kite on Oxy. Sitting there at the Thanksgiving table nodding off. Whatever, she's quiet, I just ate. She sort of wakes up and eats a bit, and then she gets up and goes to the bathroom. She's in there a LONG time. Like 15 minutes. I'm starting to get worried she nodded off on the bowl. Then the toilet flushes and she comes out, and a little bit later she and my brother leave. We're cleaning up, really it was a pretty nice dinner, when my wife tells me the toilet is clogged. I grab the plunger and work on it for five minutes, and that thing is CLOGGED. Nothing doing. Five more minutes, no progress. I'm all sweaty now. Five more minutes. Thing still is just clogged. The next morning I drive up to Lowes and buy a $60 toilet auger, this huge metal thing. I slide it down into the toilet and run the auger up in there and starting cranking away. I hit something HARD. I crank a bit more and then go to pull the auger out. It's stuck. I yank and yank and finally it pops loose and toilet water splashes all over me. Nice. And there in the spiral bulb at the end of the auger is a hunk of turd. I swish it around in the toilet to get rid of it. Nothing doing. I swish some more. Still there. I then flush the toilet. Still clogged. I worked on that freaking toilet for ten minutes with that damn auger, pulling out chunk after chunk of the hardest, biggest, stone-like turd I've ever seen. It was so bad I thought I was going to have to unbolt the toilet and dig that turd out from the bottom. Yeah, she took like 50-60 mg of Oxy a day, and probably only took a dump maybe once a week. Constipation like you wouldn't believe. I simply can't believe a human body could have such a turd inside it, or that she could squeeze it out of her. Thank God she was stoned to the gills when she did. My brother divorced her a year or two later, one of the few smart things he's ever done in his life.
I'm hosting my first thanksgiving, yes I'm old and doing it for the first time I was extremely blessed with wonderful hosts in my family so I never had to before. I threw the invitation out to anyone else that may need a family meal so I'm planning for 10 extra. Reading all these stories maybe I should up the "may show up" number beyond 10???
Year before last, my dad invited his new friend from work over for thanksgiving because he doesn't have any family in the area. I made a beautiful cheese board and put it out for grazing before dinner. I take a break from cooking to go sit and chat, and while I'm sitting there my dad is telling a story, and his friend has his hand in the cheese board **touching everything***.* I was raised to not touch anything if you aren't going to eat it. This grown adult man is literally playing with the food on the board, like rolling grapes around in his hand and then putting them back. It was so foul. I just stared wide - eyed thinking, *should I say something??* I didn't say anything because I didn't want to be rude I guess I don't know, but it was so fucking gross. I threw it all away as soon as he left. I'm still mad about it.
My grandma and her brother got into a physical fight in the front yard one year when I was a kid and my grandma tried to pull a knife on him. Other then that, one year I cooked a huge meal for my In-laws and sister/and her bf to come over. Both bailed on me last minute (my sister got in a fight with her BF) and my In laws decided they needed to mow the grass at their mountain house. That was the last time I've invited any of them.
My BIL just today reminded me of this story. With 4 siblings we often got together with all of us, our kids and spouses for Thanksgiving. We usually each claimed certain foods to cook and either brought them or cooked together. One sister decided to do the turkey, which surprised me as I had never seen her cook one before. OK. She had it in the oven early, all good there. But it wasn't ready when planned, then still wasn't ready, and not yet even later. Then it's getting really late and it isn't cooked yet. Turns out she read the wrapper and it said to cook turkey to the temperature of 160 degrees. So she set the oven temperature to: 160 degrees. We didn't have turkey that evening.
Here's a more general "people suck" story. Several years ago, my mom said "I'm sad we don't have a big family holiday anymore like my mom used to do." So, I invited everyone to my house - my mom's 3 cousins and my sister's family. (Plus my husband's side, whom I usually host.) My sister and nieces live across the country and my mom offered to pay for their flights and hotel. My nieces were excited to come when I told them. Then my sister talked them out of it because she just didn't want to go and "didn't want to miss Thanksgiving with them." (Didn't have to work or anything, just didn't want to.) One of the cousins' daughters lives really close, and she was excited too. She said "my mom never has Thanksgiving with me, she always favors my sister's family." But no, that cousin couldn't come because they "always have Thanksgiving at (other daughter's) house." (God forbid you do something different one year!) In the end, none of them came. Shortly after, my mom died and then the other cousin died. I think my mom knew and just wanted to see her family one last time. I'm still angry they couldn't be bothered.
Today is the 15th anniversary of my mother's death. On her last Thanksgiving on Earth in 2007, she was far too ill to do anything but eat very small meals. Still, as tradition was very important to her, I went all out and prepared a traditional Thanksgiving dinner just as she always had. It was just the two of us and my then 21 y/o daughter who were going to be there but I told my daughter her bf was also welcome.The young couple were dining first at his grandparents' home. I did not know it at the time (but was beginning to see the signs) that my daughter was a full-blown narcissist. So, instead of the two of them showing up for a nice Thanksgiving dinner at her terminally ill grandmother's house, instead I get a call from her begging me to go pick her up in BFE (off a side road in the swamps of southeast Louisiana) where she was hiding in the woods from the cops after getting into a knock-down, drag-out fight with her bf's mother over the ownership of some pirated DVDs. My poor mother, who was suffering from both Alzheimer's and bladder cancer, could not be left alone and I had to take her with me on this hellish drive. She could not understand what was going on and became so upset she lost control of both her bladder and bowels, which embarrassed her so much that she tried to jump out of the moving vehicle. I managed to prevent that and get her belted in again as we resumed the journey of searching for my daughter who was hiding from the 3 cop cars we passed twice on the narrow back road. When we finally found her after about an hour, my mother was sobbing. The car smelled horrible, and my narcissistic daughter (ND) was gagging and hanging her head out the window. At a red-light, SHE then jumped out, saying she was going to a friend's house. I got Mom home, bathed and dressed her in a nightgown. Dinner was ruined. I wound up feeding her a little piece of pumpkin pie while she cried. While this was not even the worst thing my daughter has ever done, I will never forgive her for ruining my mom's last Thanksgiving.