This year my older sister in what I can only assume was a momentarily decreased mental state decided to host Thanksgiving at her place. Since everyone is whizzing off in several directions for Christmas this year we combined the holidays into an event I call Thanksmas. As chaotic as Thanksgiving has always been with my family, Christmas has always been twice as much so. Combining the two was like dropping a series of chaos bombs on my sister's apartment.
It started like Thanksgiving normally does. Me, my younger sister, and her boyfriend being three people of the poor college student variety, are the three people given permission to actually stay at my sister and her boyfriend's place. We arrived midafternoon and after some bumming around the bookstore where my sister works Thai food was eaten before heading back to her place to prepare for Dungeons and Dragons. Yes, we play Dungeons and Dragons and there is a very likely chance it will become a standard holiday tradition with all future generations.
Sometime in the evening my aunt arrives and drops off all sorts of stuff for cooking food and a break from D&D preparations were made while last minute grocery shopping occured, but the chaos party didn't really start until my parents arrived with my other aunt and grandma.
Now, arrive is an understatement. They more or less exploded onto the scene in an array of Christmas presents, old people needing to pee, and various allergen free pies. It took at least twenty minutes to unload everything they had to drop off and come the next day there was somehow still more stuff. My parents while completely insane have mastered how to turn small cars into areas of infinite holding. (I do believe I may have inherited this trait from them allowing me to keep two days worth of things needed to survive in my pockets.) Amongst all of these things was a rolling pin my dad gave me and resulted in me hearing the phrase "don't forget your rolling pin," enough time to make me use it as a murder weapons.
Now before I go on let me explain something about Thanksgiving dinner in my family. We all have various allergies and other food related issues. My mom is allergic to gluten and dairy. My younger sister is allergic to green peppers (the lucky brat has nothing to worry about in Thanksgiving foods). My younger sister's boyfriend is allergic to peanuts and shellfish (again one of the lucky Thanksgiving bastards). I'm allergic to tomatoes and potatoes. And the collector of the most allergy trading cards is my older sister. She is allergic to gluten, dairy, soy and potatoes. Also, on top of that my siblings are vegetarians. As you can imagine group meals like Thanksgiving are a bitch to make.
We have a lot of labels on Thanksgiving to make sure no one is inadvertently murdered by food(passive aggressively murdered is another story). The pie table alone is insanity. There's always an apple pie for my dad. Then next to that we have the fancy one that my mom likes to make, but can't eat. Then we have the pumpkin pies. There's always two gluten free dairy free soy free pumpkin pies and the two regular ones for the rest of us.
It doesn't stop at pie either. Most years (this one being an exception) we have the gluten free dairy free vegetarian stuffing and the normal meat eater stuffing. Then we have mashed potatoes for the lucky bastards that can eat them and there are usually like three kinds just to add to the torture. We of course then have the standard classics of green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and Turkey. That's where we get to the meat replacement dish for the vegetarians. My family doesnt do tofurkey. We do something weird obscure and completely unthanksgiving related. It varies from year to year. This years was a mushroom rissoto.
Making all that and keeping it straight drives all the designated chefs insane and come time to eat all the guests not properly versed in Robinson culture (such as my sisters' boyfriends) are promptly driven insane as well. The people allergic to things get up first and collect their plates full of the things they can eat, then everybody else gets up and gets to decide if gluten free vegetarian stuffing actually counts as a food and if they want to try it.
Seating placement is crucial for such gatherings. My older sister rented the club house event room place for her apartment complex so that we had breathing room and acrobatics weren't necessary when getting seconds. Even with the extra space it took my younger sister and I about twenty minutes of rearranging place cards before we finally figured out how we could seat people to avoid arguments. If you sit this person next to that person they'll start with the racism, and if dad sits across from this aunt they'll fight about something. And oh yeah, this person's not talking to this person because something that happened months ago so they can't be next to each other. In order to avoid conflict yes my family needs assigned seats like an elementary classroom. Now once we're eating, we're happy because, well, food. So argument chance decreases naturally and we're seated properly so no one can easily start an argument. It is hard to tell if things are this difficult in other families, but mine is like herding angry declawed cats into a pond.
After dinner was the tricky part. Because Americans are fucking crazy, Black Friday now starts at six pm on Thanksgiving. My dad in desperate desire for a new TV decided to go shopping. My older sister, aunt, and mom went with leaving my younger sister, her boyfriend, my older sister's boyfriend, and me to move everything back to the actual house. We left the three remaining old people in the club house while we hung out for awhile and did a little bit of excavation on our sanity.
After enough of our sanity was recovered, we decided that we should probably lock up the club house and collect the old people, so we did. This is collectively regarded as a terrible move and should have never been done. For the next hour or so the living room was split. On one side there was good old fashioned wholesome family racism. On the other side there were the rest of us trying to ignore it by playing zombie risk, and a violent videogame. It almost escalated past a passive aggressive statement and jaw clenching, but luckily everyone's return was never more welcome or perfectly timed.
Then we did presents because remember it's Thanksmas. (And yes we all forgot at the time as well.) It was your basic Christmas morning scenario. Awesome gifts mixed in with the subpar and the "the hell?" ones. It was a fun Christmas morning held at eight o'clock at night on Thanksgiving. And afterwards they all left. This like everything else was an ordeal and I was reminded no less than five times to remember my rolling pin, but eventually they were gone and no one had been murdered.
While we love our presents and family dearly, their leaving meant alcohol, foot room, and Dungeons & Dragons for everyone, so we we're quite happy. It's amazing how effective that combination can be.
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