Every family celebrates the holidays differently. While Thanksgiving is primarily about showing gratitude and feasting on delicious food, there are no strict rules about what exactly you have to prepare or what time dinner will be served. The only thing to keep in mind as a guest is respecting and appreciating your host. Otherwise, you might not be invited back next year.
Thanksgiving hosts have recently been sharing their biggest pet peeves on Reddit, so we’ve gathered their rules for being a great guest below. From showing up empty-handed to insisting on discussing politics, make sure you avoid these cardinal sins at your family’s gathering. And be sure to upvote the behaviors that would get someone kicked out of your house too!
#1
The men folk who don’t help do anything to get dinner ready, then sit around afterwards watching the game while all the women clean up.
#2
When people show up.
#3
Our best Thanksgiving was last year when my husband & I were supposed to host & came down with bronchitis & had to cancel the whole shebang. In other words, I’d rather have bronchitis than host Thanksgiving. 😂.
#4
The last time I hosted, my friends’ kids were awful (examples: putting things from around my house in the toilet and HITTING MY DOG). I spent so much money on food and decor and table settings, and their kids said my food was gross and refused to eat, so their parents just let them run around my house leaving a path of destruction while we tried to have dinner. When they finally left I broke down crying because they made me feel so fully unappreciated and shat on.
#5
When people show up too early.
#6
I hate it when no one offers to get off their lazy behinds and help clean up.
#7
I have 2 bathrooms for guests, don’t go in my bedroom and use my personal bathroom.
#8
The height of entitlement and rudeness to bring groceries and expect to use someone’s kitchen on THANKSGIVING!!!!
#9
Criticisms about food, especially when you brought NOTHING (cue my mother..). “The turkey is over cooked.” “The broccoli casserole needs more salt.” “Did you forget salt in EVERY dish?!” 🤦🏻♀️.
#10
The “I just need to heat this up” crowd.
The loitering in the kitchen crowd. If you’re not helping, stay out. If you’re “helping” stay out. Just stay out. And please, please don’t make me take my earbuds out.
#11
Y’all, I have thoroughly loved reading every single comment so far!! This will be the 3rd Thanksgiving that my sister and I will be alone..Thanksgiving was always our favorite holiday and we had such a big family..so many wonderful memories!! I miss those times.. and I miss my family..
Please don’t misunderstand, I am so blessed that I still have my sister..we are in our mid 50’s ..divorced.. but we are happy, healthy and grateful!!
Thanks again for sharing all of these stories..made me remember so many wonderful times with my family…and y’all, for me it’s priceless and means the world 🥰.
#12
One year one of my brother’s in-laws made a HUGE deal out of bringing the green bean casserole. She brought the smallest bowl I ever saw for 30 people. She commented, wow, that went so fast, we usually have leftovers (for her family of 2 adults and 2 kids).
#13
Showing up late without the rolls they were supposed to bring. (Parent)
Bratty kids.(sister)
Showing up empty handed except for their to go Tupperware and don’t help serve or cleanup at all. (Sister).
#14
Dang, I never realized how chill my thanksgiving was compared to a lot of other people’s. The host makes a turkey and a ham. Everyone else brings a side dish and/or appetizer and/or dessert. Always plenty of food.
#15
I just tell people to bring drinks. We have an assortment of sodas because unfortunately I drink them like water lol, but I know soda, lemonade, and water aren’t for everyone. I look forward to making the meal every year. This is my Super Bowl. Ain’t no one going to mess this up by bringing something I’m already making lol.
#16
I make it easy for everyone.
I am the host and the chef. This is the menu. Dinner is at T0 and guests are welcome to arrive for cocktails at T-2 hours. Invitations are by individual. RSVP.
I direct contributions to be appetizers, desserts that complement the pumpkin and pecan pies I will have already made (from scratch), and wine of specific menu-appropriate varieties. Individuals’ contributions (if any, and if to be relied upon) should serve eight; couples’ therefore sixteen, etc. Guests are welcome to address any dietary requirements independently.
The kitchen is not available (absent prior arrangement) and off-limits although spectators are more than welcome. Specific individuals may be deputized temporarily as sous or line (crudite, salad, pastry) chefs or sommelier but otherwise refrain from entering or touching anything absent express instruction else risk severe cuts, burns, spills, or delay, and severe reprimand in any case.
Everyone has a great time, no one complains (not that I care), and they all keep coming back.
#17
Last year I set our meal for 1pm, at 11am my Aunt and Uncle show up. I’m still in my pajamas, the food is all still cooking, I’m vacuuming the floors and I’m crying hysterically because my Mom woke up that morning with the stomach flu and couldn’t come help me.
Please don’t arrive any earlier than 15 minutes before the time on the invitation text I send out. Later is fine. Earlier is always a disaster cause I’m a Last Minute Sally.
Now, my aunt is not much of a cook, and my uncle doesn’t have much of a personality. So it took me a bit to figure out what was happening. When my aunt heard my mom was sick and not coming, she got herself ready and in the car and over to my house so she could sit in the kitchen and be there should I need help. We were never close when I was growing up, but to realize that she came early just in case I needed a Mamas advice means the world to me.
#18
Don’t be coming to the kitchen picking and sampling the food before dinner is served!
#19
My sister-in-law’s yearly contribution… a single can of jellied cranberry sauce. After my mom, sister and I have each spent a ton of money and effort each making multiple dishes.
#20
I had a family member bring Mac and Cheese last year as we have some kids (ok they’re actually young adults now) who really enjoy it. They brought gluten free noodles with sauce made from cauliflower. I thought my daughter was going to leave the house in protest. We now refer to it is the “Cauliflower incident of 2022”.
#21
When my mother in law used to show up and act like she was the host. She wouldnt lift a finger to help. Which honestly wasn’t the problem. I actually love to cook and my husband is good at cleaning up. . But she’d invite random people and mess with the flow. You just don’t mess with the flow. Like decide 10 minutes before dinner that she wanted all the grandkids to paint. On the table. Where half the food was already staged. And the other half was being carried out. The final straw was when we were doing the toast before dinner one year and my nephew knocked over entire bottle of red wine. They all continued to sit and eat whilst my husband and I crawled around under the table around everyone’s legs trying to clean it up. She wanted to be the “fun Gramma” but honestly she was so disruptive and bossy , she actually stressed my kids out.
#22
Bring what you are “assigned” to bring, don’t go rogue.
#23
When people bring food but won’t take the leftovers home and tell me to just get their dish back to them.
#24
We have the entire house – the living room with the game on, the dining room table with snacks and treats, the backyard with the firepit going, and the garage with the beer fridge, but noooo, let’s all congregate in the 95° kitchen where I’m prepping food.
#25
No politics and remember you aren’t the only one eating…save some for everyone else
#26
I have a guest pet peeve. In-laws who ask me to bring a side dish and then they go ahead and make a duplicate just in case I don’t do it right. I’ve had this happen and my offering gets treated like the “spare”.
#27
When I’m only halfway through eating and people get up and start clearing the table and doing dishes.
Sure I should be glad for the help, but I would really like to enjoy the food I worked so hard to make first. Also somethings can’t go in the dishwasher, or need to be on the top shelf, etc so I feel like I need to be in there directing.
#28
My nephew and niece won’t eat anything that is served at Thanksgiving. Without fail, my SIL wants to make grilled cheese sandwiches for her kids just when all of the rest of the food is almost done. It’s always at the worst time to have someone else trying to use a burner for something that is not part of dinner.
#29
When somebody (my mom cough cough) brings an entire alternate menu because “so-and-so likes it this way”.
#30
DON’T TOUCH MY TV!!! At some point, me and my 82 year old father will be watching A Christmas Story, followed by National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. As we have done every year for the last 30+ years or more
#31
Do not interrupt me when I’m in the middle of basting the turkey or stirring homemade strawberry pie filling! In fact, stay out of the kitchen altogether while I cook. If you must come in, get what you need and get out!
#32
OK…kind of reverse…
My mom was actually hosting, and it was going to be scaled back since it was just 4 of us which is rare in our family. I got there and my contributions just needed some warming.
Her ham was still in the foil – because it was fully cooked so we can just eat it – and her scalloped potatoes (from Costco) were still frozen.
We will not be repeating that again.
#33
People salting their food before even tasting it.
#34
My brother and his wife are incapable of teaching their kids table manners so I always have to remind them to wash up AFTER dinner or my house and throw pillows will be smeared with food. So gross! I always washed up my kids at other people’s houses after eating when they were small.
#35
When I do most of the cooking and hosting and then when the meal is over, they leave me to do the dishes. I feel like I should get a pass on that since I’m hosting, making the food, etc.
#36
Host no accepting your reply of,” No, thank you.” upon being offered a food that you don’t prefer.
#37
Dont waste my food: leaving a heap of food on your plate when you’re done, after YOU served yourself. If you’re unsure whether or not you’ll like it, just get one or two bites’-worth. Go back for seconds if you like it. This doesn’t happen often because my family knows now that they don’t have to plate anything they don’t like. Heck, I will prepare some foods and not put it on my own plate (carrots, for example) because I know most of the others like them.
#38
Basically when people show up late. If I say dinner is at 6, I’m pretty much ready to serve it!!!
#39
Since my parents have passed, and I don’t live close to my son, I have made small celebrations for myself. I miss family holidays, but here I am.
#40
Not helping with cleanup
#41
I hate it when people show up with cut flowers tied up in cellophane. Now, in addition to welcoming them, hanging coats getting them drinks, and making introductions….I have to find a vase unwrap the flowers in my cooking space trim and arrange them and get rid of the debris and mess. Never do this! Bring a jar of something instead, or arrange flowers at home and bring them ready to display.
#42
I hate hosting. It’s a lot of work and money and prep and clean up. I also don’t like people in my personal space. Invite me and I’ll help with buying stuff or making stuff but don’t come here.
#43
When people show up with random food I didn’t ask for. I spend a lot of time planning the menu making sure it complements the other dishes. No, I don’t appreciate you showing up with lukewarm Italian meatballs.
#44
People not showing up after saying they would. Especially if I go out of my way to make something just for them.
#45
Everyone has been a great Thanksgiving guest over the years, except my MIL.
DNA proves she’s half Italian,but she won’t cook.And she won’t stay Put of the Kitchen! She will eat the croutons that I cut,measured, and baked for the stuffing! She will come in with a dirty tissue she blew her nose in and hold it out and say she doesn’t know where the trash is.
She got really huffy when I picked her up from the Airport once and she had to hold a heavy dish of sweet potato casserole that I was dropping off to a church for a charity Thanksgiving. Yet She is the ultra religious one!
#46
Duplicate dishes. I ask everyone what they’re going to bring to avoid duplicates and so I know what “holes” need to be filled in, and I share the menu. Every year my MIL tells me she’s going to bring one thing (which she does), but she also decides last minute to bring something else to “help”, and it always ends up being a duplicate of something someone else brought because apparently she doesn’t read the menu. So now we have Ed’s delicious homemade pecan pie that he spent hours on and her store bought one that someone takes a pity slice of. If you wanted to bring a pie, ask me and I’ll tell you that we don’t have pumpkin yet so that would be great!
#47
My sister-in-law shows up with take-out plates and a huge appetite. Then the family asks if she’s hosting next year’s Thanksgiving.
Crickets.
#48
Family who always volunteer to bring paper goods, then bring them from dollar store (think: too small Styrofoam cups for our beverages, flimsy paper plates, one package of napkins), AND their own Tupperware that they load up BEFORE anyone has had seconds — and they load up their first plates like they are at a buffet. It’s disgusting. They’ve been doing it for 40 years and have taught their now grown children the same. No one confronts them bc they are ill mannered, rude, and nasty and will make an ugly scene.
I hate it.
#49
If being offered anything to eat or drink, please just pick from what’s offered. I hate when i say, “would you like soda or wine” And someone says “Do you have juice?” Or lemonade or milk.
No. No I don’t have whatever random drink asked for. And, if I did, but didn’t offer it, there’s a REASON (maybe i don’t have enough for everybody, maybe i don’t want grape juice near my couch maybe someone had a terrible milk allergy, or maybe i have offered you all the options I have. But you have just made it clear that my options aren’t enough for you ).
#50
Last year I asked my MIL to bring cranberry sauce. I was thinking homemade or even the canned jelly would have sufficed. She made “cranberry fluff” with marshmallows that nobody ate, because she made it the night before and it became soupy with the marshmallows floating around. Stick to what I ask you to bring and not some weird concoction!
#51
Yep, about the cooking at the host’s house: we’ve (in the group that meet together) include in the invitation that dishes should be cooked and re-warming requests must be managed through the host’s daughter! This year the request that, if possible, hot dishes come in their own “crockpot” type of self-contained heating (we are serving buffet style). Also, requesting that people wash the dish at home and bring serving bowls and implements! As we age, we have to take more of the work and responsibility OFF OF the host, who also has to clean the house and set the table.
#52
When someone bringing a staple side is running late so im trying to keep everything warm, not answering their phone to see where they are, and they decided to make up for it by stopping to get another side making them even later. We already had the other side.
#53
“Please let me know if you’re coming (by Nov 10) so I can buy the appropriate size turkey” I’ll either get no response with them just showing up or a response two days before.
#54
My brother-in-law’s sister would always offer to bring deviled eggs, and then show up with a dozen raw eggs, and not only did she need to cook and prepare them, she needed mayo and paprika.
#55
Bringing 5 people I don’t know and 10 to go boxes to fill up and NOT bringing anything or asking “what can I bring”
#56
My biggest pet peeve is when someone insistes they bring one of the main dishes and shows up just in time for dinner and say, “Oh, I forgot that I was supposed to bring something! You should have called to remind me!” Then proceeds to complain during dinner that what they were supposed to bring is missing. And then goes on to say, “She knows how busy I am and she should have called to remind me!!!”, total silence from everyone and then they glare at me…. Oh, yah it’s got to be the worst.
Or when someone shows up late, clean up is in progress and makes a scene about, “You told me this was the time you were having dinner! Why would you tell me the wrong time?” And then they expect to have dinner after the fact.
#57
Having to deal with relatives who always cause a problem/don’t know how to act/drama queen or king/grouchy, just general AHs.
#58
My hosting pet peeve is my mother. She has not gracefully relinquished control of the hosting duties and every singe event is made 10xmore difficult then it has to be.
She lives in an efficiency apartment but volunteers to make certain items but when we follow up, her response is always well I don’t have the room to make that.
She asks about the dress code for every single event even though it never changes.
And she wants to “help” but never when I need help or in a way that is actually helpful and then gets pissy with me. Example: she’ll ask me 5 times what she can do to help while I’m waiting for the oven to preheat, but then stand in front of the oven completly oblivious to the timer going off. Or I’ll tell her multiple times to use the dishwasher and she’ll refuse and take up 1/2 the counter space with drying dishes that then fall back into the sink creating a bigger mess. It’s like hosting with a toddler.
#59
People who take to go plates for people who didn’t bother to come. People who are not coming call & say I know you are busy but… an hour later you finally get them to hang up.
When people f*ck with my decorations or move stuff on the table. Cause I have it planned out already. People who walk in & let their children run free. As for people bringing stuff I think they are all liars & never believe till it happens.
#60
Pet Peeve: Being given a time for dinner, only to arrive and find that they started eating half an hour earlier because the turkey was done.
#61
When people bring an allergen and want to use my stuff to prep and/or serve it. In spite of me always clearly stating my safety guidelines ahead of time: if you must, bring it in your own serving dish with your own serving utensil(s).
Overly cautious? Yes. But everywhere else in the world always comes with *some* risk of cross-contamination for myself and one of my kids to eat. The rest of our household is 100% on board, and I do most of the cooking anyway. Still, this really offends some people who like to test my boundaries and feel we are somehow unworthy of a risk-free meal anywhere, including our own home.
#62
My cousin and his now ex wife showed up one year with a can of corn… Like the Great value 15oz can. One can for 15 people…
#63
Honestly, someone not complimenting my cooking lol. If I spend 8 hours in the kitchen preparing literally every dish, I expect to be thanked. One year, MIL told me I went way overboard. Like hello it’s my favorite day of the year. I’d never tell someone they went overboard when hosting.
#64
To show up late. no political talking anymore.
#65
picking over the food!
#66
People who insist on bringing a pie, and it turns out to be a store bought pie.
I hate green bean casserole, but 5 of my usual guests love it. This is a dish I ask my sister-in-law to bring. I remind her that just five people will want to eat it, so it doesn’t need to be a huge casserole. Also, since we live in the same neighborhood, it would be helpful if she baked it in her own oven, and brought it over fully cooked. She always arrives with TWO 9×13 dishes full of uncooked green bean slop, and then she tries to find room in my oven.
#67
When people say “why are you fussing so much?”, “you know I’d be happy with a pie from Costco!”.
#68
Your first pet peeve is also my pet peeve, but only in certain situations. My sister shows up with a bag of ingredients, but she shows up several hours early. My former sister in law did this but shows up at lunch time.
#69
The majority of people suck at being on time and bringing a quality dish, that sounds horrible, I know. But I just don’t trust people anymore! There’s a handful I can count on. I ALWAYS do the veggie tray, fruit tray, chips, dip or any appetizer I want ready when people arrive. I will also do the main dish and a couple sides just to have control over having food to eat on time. I allow people to bring fill in items that don’t make or break the meal. I also allow dessert, because I hate making dessert.
#70
My MIL, who offered to bring dessert, arrived 30 minutes after the meal time. With a frozen unbaked pumpkin pie. In my daughters small kitchen small oven, already full of turkey and casserole.
#71
Had a friend recently invite everyone over for Friendsgiving and the invite says dinner but she is not cooking the main dishes like a turkey or chicken or whatever – she is only making dessert and providing non alcoholic drinks. Everyone else is bringing all of the side dishes. How are you hosting? She said it wasn’t a sit down dinner and its all finger food. So I said like a cocktail party with no cocktails?
#72
I had to specifically tell my mother not to do this. Also, when I was living in another city where her sister was hosting I had her come to my one bedroom apartment to prepare her food to avoid this.
#73
“The Macy’s Day Parade.”
It’s “The Macy’s THANKSGIVING Day Parade.” Say it right or leave.