These 16 Thanksgiving Family Meltdowns Might Actually Make Your Own Family Seem Positively Quaint (2024)

—sbuzzfeed7

"So it’s the day before Thanksgiving and I’m sitting next to my grandma and my cousin's at-the-time girlfriend...We always had a huge feast the night before, with snow crab legs and blue crabs from the East Coast. I remember sitting there helping the new girlfriend out with the crab (she was very inexperienced compared to everyone else).

My uncle was at the head of the table far away from me. We were all talking and playing 'games,' some stupid word game that my cousins had made up. Somehow it became a question about favorites, like 'What’s your favorite book?'

So here I am, youngest at the table, across from my dad and stepmom, and right next to my grandma. My uncle looks dead at me and says to everyone, 'What’s your favorite sexual position?"

Mind you the other adults there are his kids, his mom, his wife, my dad and stepmom, his son’s very serious girlfriend, and myself. Deadass eye contact with me and no one knew what to say.

I don’t remember how I got saved from answering that one."

—edgywalrus305

"My sister and her new husband were visiting from Atlanta, I was on a break from California, and my baby brother was home from college. We were so stressed; at that time, Mom's drug addiction and mental illness were coming through hardcore.

Sis stuck close to her husband, but bro and I decided that we should remove all the alcohol from the house and the opiates from her purse. HOO boy – when she found out what we did, she screamed, 'That's MY property and you have NO RIGHT!'

Dad is her evil-minded enabler, so he was of no help. Suddenly, quiet sister pipes up and yells, 'F— YOU, MOM." We were so proud of her—even thankful—and that, my friends, became known as 'F-Bomb Thanksgiving 2004.'"

—clumsybunny8556

"I crashed on the couch and during the night, I heard her dogs moving around and playing with something. I went back to sleep and later ran a few errands only to come back and find out the dogs had helped themselves to a thing or two on the table (bread, crackers, etc).

After dinner, I asked my sister to bring out the cake and she said we'd eaten it the night before. Our other sister agreed with her and insisted we ate it. Turns out the dogs had eaten the cake and they did a terrible job lying about it."

—Anonymous

"We'd had a heavy snow, and trees were falling, taking out power lines. We had no power, and the home heater was electric as well. I fired up the portable generator in our basement and carefully ran the end of the exhaust pipe outside. We enjoyed a nice dinner in a house with lights and heat.

After dinner, the kids complained of having headaches. I found their complaints to be mildly irritating but went about the business of cleaning up after dinner. While doing so, for no reason whatsoever, I simply fell down... I hit the floor."

"Everyone in the house—all eight of us—were groggy by this time, but I summoned my brother to assist me. It was a struggle to walk, but we made our way to the basement and shut off the generator.

It turned out to be that the exhaust hose had fallen off of the generator, and the machine had filled the house with the deadly gas. We opened the doors and windows for the next several hours and cleared the house in spite of the 25-degree temperature.

Phones were down, so we could not even summon emergency help. For the next several weeks, most of those present had headaches, body aches, and great difficulty thinking and performing even simple tasks. What I have read since then about carbon monoxide poisoning is that we had experienced a very severe case of it, and had only very narrowly escaped death. That was the Thanksgiving that I ALMOST killed my entire family."

—Anonymous

"During dinner, I start feeling off. I think, 'it’s clearly kicking in,' and continue eating, thinking let the fun begin! God, was I wrong. I look across the table and my twin uncles start merging together. Starting to panic, I think, 'I’ll go to the bathroom, splash some water on my face, and be fine.' Spoiler: I was not fine.

My husband had to carry me to a bedroom to lie down. I start hallucinating some seriously crazy stuff. My husband decides he’ll sober me up with a shower, but has to carry me to the shower because I can’t walk on my own and proceed to violently throw up in the shower.

My mom, brother, and husband have to help me clean up and get dressed. The rest of the family is oblivious to what’s going on and thinks dinner simply did not sit well. I keep throwing up while my aunt assures me that dinner was great!

My parents finally put everything together and yell at my brother for getting me too high and ruining the evening. If anyone even mentions Thanksgiving my family tells this story and laughs uncontrollably. Apparently, I cannot handle my gummies and haven’t had one since. My daughter has no idea any of this happened and likes to tell me how great gummy bears are and that I’m missing out!"

—Anonymous

"My grandma cried.My other grandma (dad's mom) was there too, and she and my crying grandma put on a rare united front to yell at my parents. My two aunts and my uncle were texting each other under the table. My parents honestly had each other's backs in this one instance and were NOT gonna be pressured out of a divorce.

Turns out my dad had been lowkey cheating (talking to a woman from CHURCH! but no actual sex), and when we found that out, my aunt (his sister) smacked him with a full glass of wine in her hand and it broke against his face. Screaming ensued and my cousins and I went upstairs to play Mario Kart. I slept at my aunt's that night."

—Anonymous