What is your worst Thanksgiving holiday story?

Rating: 5 after 1 vote

We've all had tough holidays, and Thanksgiving can be especially hard since it's just a long weekend. Travel, family pressures, traditions to uphold, expectations of perfection -- something is bound to give.

Our friends at TravellingMamas.com are hoping you can share your worst Thanksgiving story with us. If you've already blogged about a Thanksgiving nightmare, all the better! Just post a synopsis here and a link to your blog. The moms over at TravelingMamas will read through this list and compile the "Mother of All Thanksgiving Nightmare Posts" on their site, linking back here or to your blog.

So what are you waiting for? Start venting and have fun!

Tags: thanksgiving

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Permalink Reply by jazzy on October 26, 2008 at 10:21pm: Hmm, Thanksgiving 2003 I fainted on Thanksgiving day and had to be rushed to the hospital. Turns out I was preggo :); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by jalove on October 26, 2008 at 10:40pm: aloha,
well, as i began my motherhood with my son's dad, i had my mom make our first thanksgiving dinner. (ya know how the moms cooking is right, hehe i loved that she did it) than when my son was 3 i decided to take on THE MEAL. oh i did what she did, got up early prep, snooze, add this , mash that, and we(me , the dad and my son ) would go for 2 nights on that weekend to the MAUI PRINCE hotel in makena. jus to treat ourselves and invite friends with all our "leftover "meal. well.... on nov of 99 , we had it planned. the room , the food, the other kids to invite(remember i am a mom of one child) than the week of thanksgiving on that monday, robert(the dad) didnt' come home that night. hmmm. i was of course worried. well long story short(but i can tell more details later)he was already renting another house with another family. yes i said it! can u imagine! i was sick for 2 days. than it was time for the cooking to commence and he never came back to our house. (he only visited in public place to see our son whos 9 going on ten at the time). i cried so hard while cooking the meal. it was just me and my son that thursday. we did do our room at the prince and robert only visited and ate with us and took a plate and left. it was a very hard adjustment for me to think i have to go home and be with jus me and my son. soooo. that sunday when i left the prince with so much left overs(homemade cranberry sause, stuffing,mashed potatoes,gravy, turkey, glazed carrots, pumpkin pie , rice, )and all the food i had . i left the hotel with my son and check out as usual. as i was driving home to piihilo(up the mountain) all i could think about who is gonna eat this food! . i gave it to the homeless people that used to hang out at the kanaha park here near the airport. yes, i just had to.in my mind i am thinkling, i got to turn this in to something positive. and this local hawaiian girls accepts but she sees i am in tears and than i break down and tell her my story and she says"well looks like you have your son and his dad will come back", that was the year that robert left our house hold to go live and support another family. . my tradition with jus me and my son has changed since(ya know sometimes you just got to get it catered) and that was my worst thanksgiveing every!. thanks ..jalove(jamie love, maui, hawaii); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Kipling on October 27, 2008 at 4:50am: Well, I would have to say , our worst Thanksgiving nightmare was just last year. We live in CT and we were travelling to PA to my mother-in-law's for Thanksgiving dinner and my poor seven year old got car sick the whole trip, which we had no idea about. It is a 4 & 1/2 hour drive with no stops. Needless to say, my poor son was sick for two hours in the car with multiple stops on interstates, anywhere along the way for him to get out and throw up, etc.

It took us over six hours to get there, so I called my mother-in-law to tell her to start serving without us, because we were now over two hours late. Then, we got there, literally, we just walked in, my poor, son threw up in the dining room!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Andrea Cook on October 27, 2008 at 6:14am: I love cooking and hosting! I invited entire inlaw family last year only to hear that everyone already had plans elsewhere.
:(
So, I bucked up and decided I would make a more gourmet meal with just the four of us, hubby and 2 daughters. Day before Thanksgiving, on the way to the grocery store, my husband calls my on my cell:

Honey, I just talked with my mom. She wanted to know if it was ok if they came over for dinner.

I said:

Cool. That is fine.

He said:

She also said that Aunt Kelly and her family, Uncle Bruce and his girlfriend and Grandma and Grandpa wanted to come.

So, we went from planning for a large party, down to four then on the eve of the holiday, just before I got at the store having a guest list that ballooned up to 25!

This year, family Thanksgiving potluck. Everyone is invited and is expected to come. They owe me! And, all I am making is a big fat turkey. They can bring the trimmings!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Joy Bonamarte on October 27, 2008 at 6:25am: Not really worst but really funny.. We had the turkey and the ham going everything was on time and running smooth.. THEN when we went to go cut the ham granddaddy called out to my mom.. YOU KNOW THIS WOULD CUT ALOT EASIER IF YOU WOULD HAVE REMOVED THE PLASTIC BEFOR EBAKING IT!!.. hahahaha; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Mary on October 27, 2008 at 6:46am: mmmmm mine was really, really BAD! We moved to Columbus, Ohio (Reynoldsburg) and decided to spend our first Thanksgiving there, at home just the kids, hubby and I. We didn't have much choice since we didn't have friends or relatives in Ohio.

The door bell was ringing and ringing and everytime we went and check there wasn't anybody. Hubby decided to check around the house and found a dead, black cat on our driveway with a note attached. The note said something like we had 1000 reasons to celebrate because we were living in the wrong side of the town and nothing had happened to us or the kids yet. It also adviced us to move out to spictown...I will never forget that day, nor will my family . . . nor will GOD!

~M~; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Astrid Nicole on October 27, 2008 at 6:56am: My Thanksgiving nightmare was the year I tried cooking EVERYTHING with an eastern Indian flair. As much as I love eastern Indian cuisine, I pretty much learned to leave eastern Indian seasonings to dining out and sticking to what I do best. Old fashioned Swedish cooking.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Katyb on October 27, 2008 at 7:08am: I broke the news (totally by accident) to the entire family right as we were about to carve the Turkey that my brother had gotten a tattoo. Needless to say, the tension during that weekend between my brother and father, and myself and my brother was thicker than pumpkin pie!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Candes on October 27, 2008 at 8:18am: Candes said:
2007 - Because my SMIL had some depression issues we held two Thanksgiving events in one day. DH didn't want them NOT to have a Thanksgiving. I had to rush MY family out of my house just as everyone was getting in to the grove of things (it was usually an all day thing but we cut it down to 3 or 4 hrs) JUST so my SMIL wouldn't have to deal with a crowd. She was afraid she'd burst out crying and didn't want to be around people.

We're NOT doing that this year. If they can't deal then we'll hook up some other time. I was so upset and my husband didn't seem to be concerned. He just wanted to make sure I could logically accept that "but you're ok with that right?"

DH saw the light this year THANKFULLY. It's not up to us if they want to skip out on Thanksgiving that's THEIR choice. BTW I wouldn't DARE post this story on my blog, family may read it and there might be a sequel.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Melissa Lowe on October 27, 2008 at 12:51pm: Oh Lord... It was the only Thanksgiving I have ever had at my own home. My sister and I got in a horrible fight because she was being a jerk to my husband who had worked all night the night before. She was upset that he hadn't got up to join us yet at 9 am. She ended up throwing a big fit and walking home. When she called to apologize my mom told me that if I didn't apologize to her myself that my mom would never talk to me again. Needless to say, I have never had another Thanksgiving and my house and thankfully, my sister has hosted the last few with no problems.

The very next year my Mom called me fat on Thanksgiving... I wonder if I wouldn't have apologized if I wouldn't have had to hear her say that...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by kidsrtc on October 27, 2008 at 8:45pm: It was last year. My 15 year old son was living out of state at a treatment center. He had been there for about 5 weeks. We were planning to drive out and spend thanksgiving with him so that we could all be together as a family. Well, when you are at a treatment center you have to earn your priveleges and he lost his the day we were going to drive out. We received a phone call from the school not to come. That was the doom and gloom phone call and there we are with NO plans for thanksgiving, no turkey ordered, no family visiting and we can't talk to our son.
Luckily, you can order a turkey dinner from Safeway withouth advance notice, and that is what we did. Kind of sad, BUT with all the extra time on my hands that was also the weekend that I started my blog http://www.troubledteenblog.com.

Now you know the rest of the story!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by serendipity joy on October 28, 2008 at 4:53am: Ohh......too many to tell. Holidays never went well when I was a child but they are much better now. A few years ago though we had a small grease fire in the oven and we knew you could throw something on it to put it out......my cousins husband and I knew it was something white like flour so it must be flour right? Well needless to say we made it worse. Flour burns and we had high flames then......it's corn starch i guess. We laugh now about it but that day it was quite the event. Needless to say everything came out fine.....just a little smokey!!; ▶ Reply to This