Call me a Scrooge, but if there’s one thing I put my foot down on, it’s how I spend the holidays. All the planning, airport chaos, and last-minute shopping is something I willingly side-step so I can spend more time drinking mulled wine and being cozy. And that absolutely means I will never, ever, ever host Thanksgiving. Never!
I actually think more people should not host Thanksgiving. Pan to last year’s Thanksgiving, when my friend put a turkey in the oven at 165 degrees (the ideal internal temperature for a turkey) for four hours which yielded a slightly lukewarm, raw turkey.
So with the holiday season just about here, Reddit’s Am I the A-hole thread has delivered us yet another gift. A user posted about how they are tasked with hosting Thanksgiving every single year, while the rest of their family does not contribute (by way of helping to cook, clean, or pay for supplies).
“Am I The Asshole for refusing to host Thanksgiving after being stuck with it for the past five years?” asks user DogeCommanderRex.
At the first sign of wanting to step away from this duty, mayhem seemingly broke out. “I suggested someone else step up, or we could split the cost of catering. Cue the drama. My siblings flipped out, complaining about how it’s ‘tradition’ for me to host,” says the user. “My mom called me selfish, and my aunt said I was ruining Thanksgiving for the kids because they ‘love coming to my house.'”
Resoundingly, other Reddit users chimed in to confirm that, no, DogeCommanderRex is absolutely not an asshole, adding all the many ways they celebrate the holiday by spreading out the responsibilities.
In one such case, a user’s mother-in-law would do the bulk of the prep, because she liked, while other family members chipped in the day before and day-of, as well as with bringing side dishes to round it out. After the meal? The mother in law got a chair and a cold beer, while clean up was assigned to the rest of the family.
Another commenter found out just how much emotional and physical labor the holiday involves, retelling the story of a family friend who hosted an annual year-end party: “The wife had gone back to university full-time and was just looking for some assistance with cleaning and service during the party,” says user PrairieRunner_65. “She told the hire service what she was looking for and how long, and they said, Oh, that’s at least two people and it’ll take this long…one person could never do all that. And she said, I’ve been doing it all singlehandedly for years.”
Of course, some family members love to host Thanksgiving; they live for it even. In my very large family, it’s a territorial thing. Each year’s holidays up for the grabs: Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve or Day, and Super Bowl Sunday, which is 100% a holiday. And each of my aunts gets to claim one, but the dishes are always divvied up pretty evenly. Whoever hosts may make the core dishes—a roast turkey and/or ham, cornbread dressing—and then everyone else quietly complains about who made the deviled eggs slightly incorrectly that year. It’s called balance.
Which begs me to ask: How does your family decide who hosts Thanksgiving? And have you ever said no to hosting, even if it’s tradition?
Mackenzie Filson is a food writer and contributing digital food producer at Delish. Her favorite ice cream flavor is chocolate-pine and if wine was an astrological sign she’d be a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. She’s never met a bag of Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos she didn’t eat in one sitting.