Thanksgiving is right around the corner and it’s time to prepare yourself for the barrage of cooking, shopping and quality family time that you may or may not be looking forward to. Surviving holidays after being away at college for months is both refreshing and probably a bit surreal in some way. I mean, you’re living in your own place with roommates and doing your own thing and then over holidays you’re back home with family. It takes some time to readjust to being around extended family you haven’t seen in a while. Here’s a few tips to get you through turkey day, Black Friday and every turkey leftover day over Thanksgiving break.
1. Make sure to mention how delicious all the Thanksgiving food is.
Yeah, I mean all of the food. Even if Aunt Bertha’s macaroni tastes like cardboard. You can’t destroy that three hours of pride and love she put into making that pound of cheesy-but-actually-cardboardy pasta. In reality, most food tastes pretty amazing during Thanksgiving. Especially after living that college/ramen/microwaveable meal/fast food diet for months. But there’s always that one dish that everyone kind of looks over but decides that something else deserves a spot on their mile-high plate. So compliment the food, even if it’s not all that. Asking for recipes and cooking tips makes people feel good, even if there’s zero intention of trying to recreate it at school with the one giant pot or pan you share with your roomies.
Courtesy: Buzzfeed
2. Don’t forget about your second stomach.
Scientifically, dessert stomachs aren’t a thing. But science doesn’t exist on Thanksgiving. When your first stomach gets full and you still want dessert, second stomach comes to the rescue. Just believe in yourself and channel your inner Beyoncé on Thanksgiving. Only then will you be powerful enough to discover your dessert stomach. Pies, cakes, brownies, puddings, whatever your family does for sweets, there will be room for it.
3. Take a break on that diet you started a few weeks ago.
Let’s be real, diets usually get broken over Thanksgiving. You’ve got your protein with turkey and ham, then some veggies as sides. But then there’s everything else, like mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes, cornbread and tons of other stuff the family may make for the occasion. That’s not even counting desserts, snacks and drinks. Embrace carbs for the holidays, the workout gods will forgive you.
Courtesy: Buzzfeed
4. Try not to get annoyed when extended family members start rattling off questions about your life.
When you haven’t seen family members in a long time, there’s the ever-present obligation to catch up on every. single. thing. So whatever’s happened in the past four or five months, Aunt Bertha or Uncle Joe definitely have to ask about it. “So how’s college? What are you studying again? Are you dating anybody? Have you been to any football games? I bet you’ve been partying hard.” Anything along those lines really. It gets redundant after a while but talking about possibly wild college life with your grandma definitely makes for interesting dinner table conversation.
5. Skip the Black Friday shopping.
Especially don’t go early Black Friday shopping. By that I mean, avoid lining up outside Best Buy immediately after Thanksgiving dinner. It’s like a mad dash to rush and eat just to camp out at a store to buy a television or video game. Thanksgiving is supposed to be family time and getting trampled by people that are 30 pounds heavier than usual due to turkey-food-babies is no fun. This is what Cyber Monday was made for. Eat until you slightly hate yourself, chill for the entire weekend, and then roll over in bed, still food hungover, turn on your computer and shop online in comfort.