A Guide To Surviving Straggler Thanksgiving
- The ultimate friends-giving.
I haven’t been home for Thanksgiving since high school. Not because I hate my family or anything (hi guys!), but, like most people who write about and pretend to be authorities on the New York area, I was raised thousands of miles away. Thus, it’s never made sense to spend the time and significant money involved to travel at the very worst time of year to be home for just a couple of days. Everyone knows that Christmas is the money holiday, anyway — if you hold out just a month longer, you can wrangle a full week at home, plus presents. Much more worth it than a single dinner.
Nevertheless (or possibly as a result), Thanksgiving is actually one of my all-time favorite holidays. There’s no gift-giving pressure or the tacit, extremely stressful assumption that the entire 24 hours are meant to be a time of festive, unbridled joy. No, this is a time to sit with people you like, be grateful for stuff, eat ungodly amounts of food, and start drinking wine at noon. Just make sure you prepare correctly.
