Post your interesting Thanksgiving family debates here!

[tigereye]

and or other relevant and amusing Holiday Debates. Break out the rum and egg-nog, put out that Santa and fire up your copy of Christmas Carol.

;)

[swag]

1. I have nothing to contribute to this thread.

[tigereye]

11. Heathen!

;)

c'mon i bet you have a great libation or pie recipe! Regardless of the strange energy of this time of year!

Plus didn't Montana go Dem? That counts for something.

[Fenris]

2. We don't debate, we mostly just drink.

[greatauntoftriplets]

7. Same here...except for the kids, of course.

They usually gorge themselves on cheese and crackers.

[tigereye]

12. wwell in my family we do both

there is no dinner table conversation that doesn't have politics mixed in, but we all pretty much agree, so it isn't a negative.

[flamingyouth]

28. And talk about what an asshole Bush is.

Ah, Thanksgiving at my parents' house. Have some more Champagne! Wait - do we need to open another bottle? :D

[eyesroll]

3. 2004, it was So Are You Really Depressed Over Your Divorce Yet?

2005, it was Let's Interrogate the New Guy.
2006, it'll probably be So, When Are You Getting Married? (Peppered with: What The Hell Are You Doing Here? You Should Be Studying.)

(All courtesy of my younger sister.)

[tigereye]

15. after husband and I had cohabited for many years,

my mom said, don't you want to decide where you will be buried?

No endless when are you getting married questions, just cutting to the "when you are dead" chase. ;)

You'd think they'd all have realized that you are highly competent by now, Eyesroll.

[cwydro]

4. You left out

how many bottles of wine/champagne to buy? That is always our debate.:evilgrin:

[tigereye]

13. why, a case, of course!

my brothers always bring a case of good imported brew - there used to be a midnight run to the only open Tavern in the old days.

[mduffy31]

5. This year will be

Oh I'm so sorry about your marriage......plus I will have my Lap-Band adjusted the day before so I won't be able to eat....have to work that night so I can't drink.....oh fuck it I ain't going.

[terrya]

6. We really don't debate...just talk.

:-)

[LeftyMom]

8. Last year I got to roped into discussing AR and whether animals have souls.

This year I plan on arguing about who gets the last piece of pie, and nothing else, so I'm skipping the family deal.

[tigereye]

17. I kind of like the soul debate...

and I hear you make really good pie....

my husband has recently found out that his grandfather was actually a Native American (oddly, no one had ever said anything), so we've been having interesting discussions about Spirit guides and animal wisdom.)

[LeftyMom]

23. It was a bit frustrating because we were talking past eachother

The people I was talking to are Mormon and I'm not religious in any way, so they wanted to know if I think animals have souls and maybe that's why I'm vegan, and I wanted to know what the hell a soul is and if there's any proof that they exist or people have them either.

I also told them that as far as I'm concerned, people are animals. As their religious perspective leads to the idea that humans are special, that also went over like a lead balloon.

[tigereye]

26. mmm, well, it makes sense to me that everything might

have a soul, even if modern science is unable to locate it's source. I'm waiting to see where the neuropsych people find it! he he. THe idea of a soul for all creatures seems like a really good place for respect to start.

That's why the Jain and Hindu religious traditions ( and many others) make sense to me, I suppose.

I also think that not being able to quantify something, doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't exist. And I'm actually the rationalist in my family. ;)

[Susang]

9. My brother ( a surgeon) and uncle (a urologist) trade graphic medical stories

At the dinner table. Another uncle, a surgical tech, usually joins in. They get so involved in their graphic descriptions of blood and guts, they can't understand why the rest of us are all screaming at them to stop. :banghead:

[greatauntoftriplets]

10. But I bet they excel at carving the turkey!!!!!

:evilgrin:

[tigereye]

18. GAOT, you should be a stand-up

you have excellents ripostes!

[buddhamama]

14. my being a leftist and a vegetarian.

never fails to be a subject of debate when my family gets together.
also, my anti-consumerism and lack of participation at x-mas. :eyes:

[tigereye]

19. well, I keep thinking that there should be a way to blend

different views, somehow, and honor everyone's views. I wonder if it is different if when those of us with less-commercial and spiritual views, held our own celebrations on our turf - if our relatives would see the situation differently.

A lot of our friends have holiday parties that are pretty global and include folks with many different food/eating philosophies, and usually there is discussion about the coolness of those differences, rather than skepticism and /or recrimination.

[trof]

16. Other: Sage in the dressing.

Mom was pro-sage.
Granny was anti.

To granny, any seasoning over and above salt and pepper was very exotic and "too spicy".
Garlic "stinks" and made her ill.
If you put rum or brandy in the fruitcake it made her "light-headed".
She was a die-hard tea-totaler.
Grandpa had to keep his "red medicine" (bourbon) in a cabinet on the back porch.
And that's where he had to drink it too.
:-(

[tigereye]

20. red medicine?

:rofl:

i love it, the sage debate. (I love sage, BTW)

My MGM loved turnips. Yuck. She was the quintessential old-fashioned - very traditional. She didn't drink either, but I don't know where my Irish grand-dad hid his libations...

[trof]

25. That's what granny called it.

We lived with granny and grandpa for 7 or 8 years after mom's divorce.
Every evening when grandpa got home from work, he'd head to the back porch and have one (I think) shot.
Then he'd return to the living room for his pipe and newspaper.
I was a little kid and took everything in.
Once I asked granny what that was in the bottle on the back porch.
"Grandpa's red medicine."

When I was 12 or 13 mom and I moved out on our own.
And that's when I discovered GARLIC.
And RARE ROAST BEEF.
Wow.
;-)

[Guava Jelly]

21. Politics many in my family watch fox news and vote republican

And me being a liberal goes over pretty well.

[tigereye]

22. but you can gloat this time!

bwa ha ha ha ha.

(families love gloating... seriously, my family are all liberal Dems (not sure how that happened), so you have my empathy.)

[dysfunctional press]

24. i haven't been to a SINGLE family function with my repuke in-laws...

since the ugliness of thanksgiving 2000. calling your drunk babs bush look-alike mother-in-law an 'ignorant partisan bitch' at the dinner table kind of puts a damper on the occasion.

[jmm]

27. The last Thanksgiving debate my family got into

was when an argument started over why the name Bambi is popular among strippers. Before 2001 there were a number of political debates but after Bush starting showing the world what he's made of my lone family Republican saw the light :D.

[crim son]

29. Dinner with my STBE's family.

Nothing makes a holiday more festive than a rousing discussion of "til death do us part, whether you love him or not" but if that fails I am sure I will hear "You LIED to GOD!" I have a dream that this will be my last meal with my MIL but something tells me it ain't necessarily so. Sigh.

[gemdem]

30. The start of another damned holiday season...

Another one to get through. I've never really fit in with my family (our interests and life prespectives are 180 degrees apart), and each year since my mom died it just gets worse. This is holiday season #22 without Mom. She was the person who made holidays special for my sibs and me -- my dad, stepmother, sibs, and I don't have that knack. Each year it just gets tougher.

I love my family (at a distance); however, more often than not I just don't enjoy spending time with them -- especially when it's command performance. The older I get, the worse it gets. I'd rather just spend the day quietly with my wife and kids -- I get to spend little enough time with them. Especially my wife who works second shift and goes to school, so I hardly get to see her at all. That presents its own set of issues, which are just made worse by the holidays when we're with family whom we love, but really don't enjoy.

The only times the recent holidays have been good are when I've been able to take my wife and kids out of town (to Sanibel, Florida) and avoid the whole family get-together. The rest of the family doesn't understand when we get away for the holidays, but I frankly don't care. Shame is that I can't afford that getaway every year.

January can't get here soon enough. Good luck to everyone else for whom the holidays are a special kind of hell.

[bluethruandthru]

31. Here I was lamenting the fact that

we - husband and two children - will be spending another Thanksgiving "alone". All of our family lives on the other side of the country and we never get together.
Anyway, after reading all these posts...I think I'm kinda happy it's just going to be the four of us! :)