"My parents decided to announce to our very large, very Catholic extended family that they were getting a divorce."
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! I know every family has at least one legendary Thanksgiving Drama Debacle. So, I decided to ask members of the BuzzFeed Community what happened at their family's Infamous Thanksgiving Incident. Here are their best answers:
1. "My aunt and uncle who don't believe COVID exists tried to have everyone over for Thanksgiving in 2020 after their trip to Boca Raton. No one wanted to go because they are pretty rude in general and it was 2020 and they'd just been to Boca Raton."
2. "The FBI came to my door as we were having sushi. ([Yes, sushi] on Thanksgiving, I have no idea why.)"
Nes / Getty Images/iStockphoto
—sbuzzfeed7
3. "The stomach bug started to hit the children first, and two of them vomited on the Thanksgiving dinner table minutes apart. Half of the family was puking by the next morning."
—lizney
4. "So my aunt and uncle are swingers, and apparently, I was the only one who didn’t know."
Paramount Pictures / Via youtube.com
"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
5. "The week before Thanksgiving, my mother overdosed on pills and alcohol. They almost didn't save her in time. She was released a few days before turkey day."
Channel 4, BBC Two / Via giphy.com
"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
6. "My family decided to be fancy and use Sterno-powered chafing dishes to keep everything warm...in another room, unattended. We almost burned the house down and had no leftovers that year."
—lobster_lemon_lime
7. "My mother’s birthday is on or around Thanksgiving, and every year I purchase or make a cake to honor her memory. A few years ago, my sister hosted dinner at her house, and the night before, we set up tableware and desserts plus other things buffet style."
Aideen Mcf Photography / Getty Images
"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
8. "I almost killed my entire family, quite literally."
Yellow Dog Productions / Getty Images
"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."
"Somehow, I still had enough sense to realize that something had gone wrong with the generator, and we were getting poisoned with carbon monoxide."
Dmitriy Yermishin / Getty Images
"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
9. "I came out as a lesbian and my homophobic little sister smacked me in the face. :)"
ABC / Via giphy.com
"She was like 13 and she has grown since then. Now she's my biggest supporter. I don't ever bring it up but I still laugh to myself about it whenever we go over to my grandparents' for holiday dinners."
—Anonymous
10. "One year my brother wanted to roast a suckling pig to go with my turkey, but he couldn't use my kitchen... I had a whole day of cooking ahead of me, especially in the oven! Everyone was coming from out of town, so ours was the only kitchen."
Gary Chalker / Getty Images, NBC / Via giphy.com
"[On Wednesday evening my dad, husband, and brother constructed an outdoor oven. They started the cooking process early Thursday morning and were in and out checking the pig every 10 to15 minutes. Please note: It was VERY WINDY that Thanksgiving.
About two hours into the process, several grandkids and the outside chefs ran through the kitchen and out the back door. All I heard was, 'The pig's on fire!'
I flew outside to find smoke billowing from their 'outdoor oven...' a 3'x3'x3' cinderblock cube in which a groove was chiseled to allow a spit to rest that held the pig. The inside was lined with foil and a foil-covered piece of plywood served as the lid.
So... yes, they had created a KILN. With the wind continuously blowing through the little spit holes, that poor charred, black, raw, baby pig never stood a chance."
—Anonymous
11. "My brother decided I was too stressed cooking dinner so he insisted I have a marijuana gummy. Not something I normally do, but something he regularly does. I eat a whole delicious fruit punch gummy bear and go on cooking."
Paramount / Via youtube.com
"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
12. "Unbeknownst to me, my family invited the uncle who molested me. Before he could even sit down my brother went and beat him to shit with a baseball bat."
AMC / Via amcplus.com
—Anonymous
13. "We learned that my brother was having an affair with a married man. We hadn't known he was gay, but we'd suspected. (Yes, the affair guy was married to another man.)"
BBC / Via youtube.com
"My sister tried to announce to the family that she had an unhealthy dependence on alcohol and wanted to be sober by Christmas, but this was upstaged by the gay brother affair. By the end of the night she, my aunt, and I were the last stragglers in the gleaming kitchen splitting a bottle of wine."
—Anonymous
14. "My grandma decided we were all on a diet and tried not to use any butter. For anything. That would've just been kind of a fail, except it started a fight between my mom and my uncle about diet culture that they still haven't stopped beefing about. It's been two years."
Pop TV / CBC Television / Via giphy.com
—Anonymous
15. "My sister's abusive piece of shit husband got shot while dealing drugs on Thanksgiving morning."
NBC / Via giphy.com
"He was admitted to the hospital at like 5 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day and my sister didn't tell us until she came over for dinner without him and we were like, 'Where's Jeff?'
Turns out he had been dealing drugs to teenagers! Now we don't have to worry about him because he is in jail. I always hated him. Now I am free ❤️"
—Anonymous
16. And finally: "When I was in eighth grade my parents (who I thought were in a very loving relationship!) decided to announce to our very large, very Catholic extended family that they were getting a 🎵Divoooorce!🎶 😃"
Martinedoucet / Getty Images
"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