Just Laugh’s Guide to Surviving Thanksgiving Dinner

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It’s a time to give thanks for air conditioning, flush toilets, and the blessing of spending an entire day with your family, albeit with everyone still glued to their respective mobile devices most likely envying other people who are very far away. Thanksgiving!!!

Of course, just like any bar mitzvah, this turkey-laden holiday can be a minefield of indigestion and political dissent if one isn’t prepared with the kid gloves and iron stomach an event of this magnitude requires, but thankfully for you, we here at Just Laugh have put together this convenient, bulleted list of precisely what you need to remember in order to make it to Black Friday relatively unscathed and thus ready to shop until your dinner is properly digested…

• Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy – these are your tools to tolerate being around your extended family for an entire afternoon. Also, lots and lots of red wine. LOTS.
• When someone asks you to pass the rolls, just do it. No one needs your four-minute dissertation about the suffering of wheat farmers in Darfur every time that they need a stinking roll, Janet.
• Be sure to give thanks that you’re not a pilgrim because those guys had to make all of this food by hand! Also, something like 60% of them died of scurvy, which was probably also a bit of a downer around the holidays…
• When setting the table, remember that forks go on the left and guns go on the right. Because this is America, damn it.
• Much like WarGames, the only way to win a debate about politics at the dinner table is not to play. Or be willing to scald your opponent with hot gravy when your Republican uncle starts being ridiculous – either strategy is traditionally acceptable.
• For the 800th time, why do we even bother buying cranberry sauce again???
• It’s not actually the tryptophan in the turkey that makes you sleepy on Thanksgiving – it’s the fact that you just ate three days worth of food in the better part of an hour and still have the gall to say that you’re “holding back” to leave room for dessert.
• If you don’t eat at least three pieces of assorted pies for dessert over the course of the evening, you’re an absolute monster who’s definitely not getting invited back for Christmas.