Thanksgiving is celebrated with family. It always includes a big dinner with tons of food. This can be overwhelming for first time hosts of Thanksgiving dinner. Don’t panic! Try these tips to help calm your nerves and make your first hosting a successful one.
There are two things that can make a person who is hosting Thanksgiving dinner nervous. One is that the guests are going to expect specific foods that are made exactly the way that mom or grandma used to make. Their big expectations can be hard to live up to.
The other difficulty, of course, is that this is a day that one must spend with your family. Not just your immediate family, either. Hosting a dinner for several generations of one’s family, at your house, can be an overwhelming prospect. This is especially true for families that can be described as “dysfunctional”.
In other words, Thanksgiving dinner can be delightful, or devastating, depending on so many factors. Instead of freaking out, try some of these tips for first time hosts of Thanksgiving dinner.
Keep some things the same.
There’s that one dish that your family raves about every Thanksgiving. Its the one that your relatives have been talking about since Halloween, saying how much they are looking forward to it. Whatever that dish is – put your best effort into keeping it the same. Follow the recipe exactly. Get the beloved dish right, and it may outshine whatever else happens during dinner.
Get advice from Butterball.
How much turkey do you need? When should you start thawing it out? How long is it going to take to cook it? These are very important questions! Guess wrong, and Thanksgiving dinner might be ruined.
Butterball has some incredibly helpful calculators that can give you all the answers you need. One can not only tell you how many pounds of turkey you require, but also tells you how many cups of stuffing to make. Butterball also has helpful advice on how to thaw a turkey and how to roast a turkey.
Don’t sweat the small stuff.
There will be things that do not go as planned. It is helpful to focus on the “big picture” instead of the “small stuff”. In other words, if you didn’t accidentally burn down the house – whatever went wrong is probably not that big of a deal.
Grumpy aunt Gertrude likes to gripe about things. She is undoubtedly going to find something that she thinks you did “wrong”. Realize her fixation on that, instead of the stuff you did well, reflects more on her personality than on your shortcomings. Angry uncle Artie is going to bring up politics and try to provoke an argument. Don’t get sucked into that conversation!
It doesn’t have to be every Thanksgiving.
If all else fails, keep this one important thing in mind. Just because you hosted Thanksgiving this year – that doesn’t mean you are required to host it every year. If it was too stressful for you, allow another relative to take a turn next year.
Image by Tim Sackton on Flickr.
Related Articles:
* Thanksgiving is for Family Fun
* Help Your Family Get Along Over the Holidays