We Don’t Do the Big Family Thanksgiving Table Thing

I've never truly understood the whole cultural notion that Thanksgiving has a designated script everyone needs to follow. It's supposed to be a big, shiny, Norman Rockwell production where extended family arrives in choreographed waves, someone’s in the living room yelling about football, and someone else is aggressively basting a turkey in the kitchen.

Then, once all the food is ready and everyone is situated in their pre-assigned chair, the whole table pauses so everyone can go around and share something profound they’re thankful for.

I have never had this experience. Not once. Not even accidentally. The closest I’ve come (outside of witnessing fictional movie portrayals) is watching other people argue about it online.

I actually grew up assuming something was wrong with how Thanksgiving looked in my household, like maybe the factory forgot to install the “big family chaos” feature before I left the assembly line.

People talked about this holiday like it was supposed to be emotionally transformative, but it was never like that for me. Yes, we always had plenty to eat. Yes, it was delicious, and yes, I'm grateful for that, as I'm very aware that a lot of kids didn't have that. But suffice it to say, the whole "togetherness in gratitude" aspect was conspicuously absent, as my family... just wasn't like that.

When we'd all come back to school after our Thanksgiving breaks, leftover-turkey sandwiches in tow, we'd always have to write essays about how our families spent the holiday. Mine sounded nothing like the other kids', unless I lied (which I eventually learned to do well, so no one would know my parents really didn't love each other or see us kids as much more than a nuisance).

Now... to be clear, I’m not anti-holiday. I have grown increasingly skeptical of the idea that gratitude has to be performed at a decibel level that could wake the dead. I’ve personally never needed a spotlight and an audience to tell people I’m grateful. (I’m generally doing well if I manage to say it out loud at all.)

And I’ve stopped pretending I’m missing out on something because my Thanksgivings have never looked much like the movie versions. As an adult who's spent many years figuring out where the social scripts end and I begin, Thanksgiving has transitioned into a much smaller affair... and it works.

Small, Quiet Thanksgivings as Chosen Peace

These days, the average Thanksgiving at my house looks like this. I prep dinner by myself, starting when I first get up. But I’ve whittled the menu down to something very sane and approachable over the years.

A turkey breast instead of an expensive whole bird. A vegetable I won't resent cooking and that everyone likes. Enough mashed potatoes to soothe my soul, but not enough to require a forklift. My special sausage-cranberry stuffing everyone likes even better than the turkey.

And enough gravy to properly soak it all, of course.

At some point, I self-started a personal tradition that involves me watching Vanilla Sky in my office while everything cooks — not a Thanksgiving movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s become part of the ritual anyway. (I'm beginning to suspect this is how all traditions begin.)

When the food is ready, I bring my mother a plate so she can eat privately in her room, which she prefers. Then Seth and I eat together either outside or in our room, depending on the weather and our mood. Afterward, we just… exist. We hang out. We decompress. At some point, we usually watch Babette's Feast, another thing we tried one year that quickly became a tradition we look forward to.

It’s not flashy or particularly Instagrammable. It doesn't involve anyone standing up to give a canned speech to relatives they barely speak to the rest of the year. But it’s peaceful in a way some of my previous attempts at traditional Thanksgiving never seemed to be.

And now that I’ve experienced this kind of holiday — the quiet, intentional kind — I can’t believe I ever thought I needed the other version.

Performed Gratitude vs. Experienced Gratitude

Of course, there was a time when I tried very hard to manufacture the “real” holiday. Back when I was married to my ex, I was concerned with doing Thanksgiving "right," which meant making it into the kind of event all my classmates used to write about in their perfunctory elementary school essays.

This meant a full-scale production requiring several grocery runs, multiple elaborate dishes (including vegetarian alternatives), every family member invited over for dinner (whether I wanted them there or not), and enough emotional stamina to run a small country. It also required my ex-husband and me to take our bedroom door off the hinges to create a makeshift table because our apartment was too small for a proper year-round table.

And of course, my ex refused to help with anything (despite also thinking traditional holidays that met expectations were mandatory), so every Thanksgiving found me pretending to be having fun while actually trying not to cry into the pie filling.

I cooked more dishes than any one person could eat, invited people who did not want to be there, invited other people I by no means wanted in my home, and spread myself so thin I practically evaporated. And the worst part? The vast majority of the people who attended didn’t appreciate the effort. At all.

Many didn’t even seem to like the food. Everyone arrived completely empty-handed, and no one ever offered to help with the prep or the cleanup. Then, after entertaining well into the night? I’d have to drag myself into work at some obscene hour the next morning, because working retail over the holidays was a form of punishment clearly invented in hell itself.

But those years taught me something incredibly important. Gratitude quickly becomes hollow when you’re too exhausted to feel anything but resentment. And you can’t genuinely appreciate a holiday when your own unpaid labor is all that's powering it.

Eventually, I burnt out so thoroughly that the only logical next step was to stop performing altogether. No big declaration, and definitely no more dramatic turkey-related meltdown when my brother complained once again that it wasn't sliced thinly enough for his taste. Just a quiet internal shift where I realized this version of the holiday wasn’t giving me anything except stress.

And that’s when I started building the version I have now — one rooted in peace and actual gratitude, not performance.

Encouragement for Anyone Rewriting Their Holiday

So, now I'd like to say something to you that I heartily wish someone had said to me during all those years when I was still trying to rewrite my childhood by somehow staging a picture-perfect Thanksgiving all by myself.

You’re not obligated to make your holiday look the way it looks on TV.

Truly. You can build your own rituals, as well as delete the ones that drain you. You can even opt out of the emotional gymnastics entirely.

So, for anyone who finds themselves in a similar position — celebrating alone, with just your partner, with one or two people, or in a way that otherwise looks nothing like the cultural blueprint — I've got a few tips to share. I hope they encourage you if you're struggling with anything similar to what I'm talking about.

Your Thanksgiving is legitimate

It is legitimate regardless of how it looks. It doesn’t need a cast of twelve to count, and you don’t have to "earn" your holiday by cooking yourself into oblivion. Even if your version is just you and a plate of well-seasoned food, that’s a perfectly respectable celebration.

You can skip the gratitude performance

Not everybody wants to stand up and deliver a monologue about their personal blessings, least of all me. Some people experience gratitude quietly, mentally, or otherwise not in a form that translates well into a public speech. You don’t owe anyone a theatrical display to prove you appreciate your life.

Small rituals can be deeply meaningful

Lighting a candle in a seasonal scent you love, watching a favorite movie, plating food in a way that makes you happy — all of these things totally count. Thanksgiving is your holiday, too, and you deserve to experience it in a way that serves you. You don’t need an elaborate tradition to experience comfort.

Peaceful holidays are honestly pretty cool

There’s this idea that holidays need to be crowded and chaotic because chaos equals “family togetherness.” But for many (hi!), chaos just equals stress. That said, a calm holiday isn’t a sign that something’s missing. Sometimes it’s a sign you’ve finally set a long-overdue boundary.

The holiday doesn't have to evoke anything profound

Some Thanksgivings are very emotionally rich. Others are just… nice or even completely unremarkable. Some years, it's easier to get into the spirit than others. Not every year necessarily comes along with a Hallmark epiphany, and you don’t need an epiphany for the day to matter.

You decide what gratitude looks like

If you're anything like me, gratitude likely shows up for you in small, unexpected experiences — the smell of fresh bread warming in the oven, the quiet of the afternoon, the easy company of someone you love. Life has taught me that those details don't somehow become less valid because you didn’t talk about them in a circle while holding hands and making weird extended eye contact.

Your holiday can be quiet, and you can be thankful in your own way in private. You're an adult, so you don’t have to prove anything to anyone. You don’t have to audition for “Most Emotionally Mature Adult 2025,” either. You just have to be present enough to notice the parts of the day that feel good to you.

Reclaiming the Holiday and Making It Yours

Thanksgiving (and every holiday, really) became easier for me once I stopped making it hard by jamming myself into whatever mold I thought the day required. The minute I let go of the idea that gratitude needed witnesses (and to meet other people's expectations), something softened.

Eventually, that made it possible to actually enjoy the occasion and experience it myself instead of performing it for other people who barely cared.

These days, I enjoy making Thanksgiving dinner for the most part, because I'm no longer doing it for an audience or to earn familial approval I've long ago accepted I'll never get. I watch my weirdly specific holiday movie because it makes sense to me. I share dinner with Seth because we genuinely enjoy being together, not because it’s part of some "have to" list somebody inflicted on me when I was a kid.

And the variety of gratitude that shows up arrives naturally, comfortably, and completely without force.

I don’t necessarily know what this year’s Thanksgiving will look like in detail. The turkey could turn out a little dry (although I am unusually skilled at making non-dry turkey). Maybe Vanilla Sky will hit differently, or Seth and I will end up talking about something unexpected while we eat.

But whatever shape it takes, I know it won't be a performance or a production. Just a humble holiday that fits me — the very best version anyone could ask for.