An Indian tells the Pilgrims the many uses of butternut squash at the first Thanksgiving [Photo courtesy of The History Channel: "Our history has pop culture references, and thus is inherently better.(tm)"]
When most of us see the word “Thanksgiving,” the images that will most likely come to mind include binging on a variety of holiday-appropriate food, legitimately not going in to work, and falling asleep watching football as the effects of tryptophan-laced turkey meat overtake our central nervous systems. Were that it so simple. All of the fun of sloth and gluttony that comes packaged with Thanksgiving is ruined by the simple fact that, on this holiday, it’s considered appropriate to invite monsters into our very own homes, and in many cases, to enter the dens of these terrible beasts.

These abominations known as “relatives” should be easy to avoid at this point in your life; however, social traditions dictate that we must see these people at least twice a year, if only for gift exchange and passive-aggression. Avoiding family members is fairly easy to do once you reach college age, but this lack of contact will only lead to inexperience and nightmarish holiday encounters with people that your parents claim are related to you in some way. However, I think you’ll find that each and every family is essentially the same; they just have different haircuts. And, with a brief lesson on the family dynamic, it won’t be necessary to poison the cranberry sauce to escape the torment of conversation, although that approach may be more effective.

Grandparents are an easily-pulled piece of the Thankgiving Jenga puzzle. For the most part, grandparents come in three different categories: crazy, religious, and crazy/religious. No matter what their scientifically-defined dispositions may be, grandparents aren’t hard to please. If you happen to be a woman, inform them of your upcoming marriage and possible future babies that you may name after them; in their eyes, this is pretty much your life purpose. If you’re a man, don’t be gay. This may be somewhat tricky due to the suspicious nature of the elderly, so I recommend dressing up in army fatigues and jungle face paint for the meal in order to prove your manliness. To carry this further, if you want someone to pass you a food item, smash a dinner plate against the side of the table and threaten a nearby family member with the jagged edge. This will add a much-needed bit of intensity to the Thanksgiving meal, and your grandparents will appreciate your apparent heterosexuality.

Aunts and uncles are a somewhat more complicated breed. The weird, middle-aged and single aunt and uncle are easy to tame, and should not be worried about. Desperate for attention and now at the age where hanging out with you would be considered inappropriate, these family members will easily submit to you and enjoy the opportunity to eat food not cooked in a dirty microwave. If you play your cards right, you may even get a free subscription to MAD Magazine out of them!

However, don’t get too confident, as the bitchy aunt and/or uncle may be at your table, looking for a chance to gain dominance. Your parents hate them, they hate your parents, and by the transitive property, they hate you. If your Thanksgiving meal was taking place 10,000 years ago, they probably would’ve opened up your trachea with the equivalent of an electric carver and then urinated in the various corners of your house. Keep this in mind, and try not to put them on edge by making eye contact; they may catch on to the fact that you know they’re secretly power-judging your entire family.

The most elusive of the familial bonds are represented in what I call the “phantom phamily.” Who are these people? I guarantee that only one other family member will know, and even then no amount of theorizing or playing “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” will connect them to your family. Of course, you could ask your grandparents, who are fountains of knowledge when it comes to people you don’t know or care about, but you‘ll most likely get an answer such as: “You know your aunt Beth? Well, she got married to her au pair, and this is his second wife’s adopted mother.” To which you may respond, “What the hell is an au pair?”

Of course, there’s always the chance that this phantom phamily member may indeed be a homeless drifter who has infiltrated the tight network of security around the dining room. Just look for a bindle to identify this person as a vagabond, unless of course any of your real family members happen to carry their belongings inside of kerchiefs tied to sticks. If there is a real, honest-to-god hobo at your table, take the opportunity to ask him about the boxcar life and also to share his homemade “chocolohol,” a homemade concoction made of pure grain alcohol and fudge.

If none of this advice works, there is one last-ditch maneuver that can be pulled off with a little skill. Should the meal degenerate into a circus of snippiness and awkward conversations, grab the turkey as fast as you can and scream, “No one is eating until we stop talking to each other like a normal family!” If you’re lucky enough to have a hobo at the dinner table, you may want to reinforce your point with one of his many knives. Why not make stab wounds a Thanksgiving tradition? I’m sure the Pilgrims would’ve had no problem with this.