How to Enjoy Your Family Thanksgiving

Next week, throughout the United States, you may be one of the many families who will be getting together for Thanksgiving. You may get together for the day or several days. Depending on whether you are host or guest, you may turn your home or another’s home into a temporary hotel – or, more accurately, a bed & breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Even if your family members usually get along (a big assumption), put them together in the same house, interdependent around space, food, sleeping quarters, and bathrooms, and things can get challenging (think back to your adolescence, but now imagine your adolescent siblings with children). By the end of the stay, you may leave (or say goodbye if you are the host), giving thanks that you have survived another family get together. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Here are a few simple ingredients you can mix together to increase the chance that the holiday is enjoyable for you and for others.

Share Relevant Information.

If everyone has the same relevant information, everyone will be better able to make informed decisions. If your brother and sister-in-law will be sharing a bedroom with your son’s nocturnal sugar gliders, it would be good to let them know in advance. If you need to leave immediately after the Thanksgiving meal without helping your mother clean up (God help you), better she should know earlier than when dessert is served. Give people the information they need to plan ahead. The fewer surprises, the less stress.

Focus on Interests.

If everyone identifies their interests and jointly designs a way to meet them, you can prepare and eat a Thanksgiving meal and even cohabitate for several days, in a way that people will feel good. If you have an interest in having people help prepare the meal and your family has an interest in getting some outdoor exercise, jointly work out a plan where they are not all exercising when you need help. If you want to relax while watching some football on TV, let others know and find out their needs, so together you can plan where and when to watch the game(s) so it doesn’t interfere with others. If you would like to take an annual family picture (a ritual in my family), let people know in advance, so that together you can plan a good time for it. Without joint planning, you may end up like a camper standing between a bear and a table full of food. Not a pretty sight.

Test Assumptions.

The situation can unravel quickly when you assume things that turn out not to be true. To avoid upsetting yourself and potentially others, test out your assumptions. Don’t assume that your host will be happy to entertain your new not-yet-house-broken Labrador retriever in her new freshly-carpeted home. Ask them. Don’t assume that your parents will make your vegetarian son a Tofurkey creation to substitute for the real thing. Ask them. Don’t assume that your children will entertain and otherwise attend to their grandparents rather than go outside and play with the neighborhood kids. Talk with them about this.

Notice that sharing relevant information, focusing on interests, testing assumptions, and jointly planning are all related. When you mix together these ingredients you have a recipe for an enjoyable Thanksgiving – even if someone overcooks the turkey.

Originally published November 2009