I Stopped Cooking Thanksgiving Dinner (and My Life Got Better)
Winter asks for rest. Thanksgiving demands performance. I'm choosing rest.
“Know yourself.”
I’ve always thought that was a really goofy thing to say. I’ve heard this advice from self-help gurus, therapists, Instagram influencers and always rolled my eyes a little. How could I not know myself? I’m with myself 24 hours a day.
Or am I?
Are you?
Maybe not if we’re following old programs, living on autopilot, performing scripts we didn’t even realize we’d memorized. Not if we’re numbing ourselves with shopping, watching Netflix, or getting wasted.
Thanksgiving is next week. I’ll be seeing my kids and grandkids at my daughter’s house. Thank goodness, I’m not hosting. I won’t make that dinner again. Or at least that multi-course gourmet day of gluttony I used to produce.
As I face this holiday again with an open page, I realize that this is what “knowing myself” actually means.
Not navel-gazing, nor getting up at the crack of dawn to put a brined turkey in the oven.
Yes, I’m 62, and weary of doing the same things over and over year after year. Making a meal of that proportion feels like climbing Mount Everest. But it’s not just age, it’s honesty. My body won’t do what my heart isn’t in. That’s not failure. That’s finally listening to what was always there.
When I stopped drinking five years ago, I discovered I don’t actually enjoy holiday cooking that much. The wine wasn’t enhancing the experience; it was taking the edge off something I didn’t want to do. Without wine, I had to face the truth.
I was performing.
When I realized I was performing, it was hard to keep doing it. While I’ve been with myself for decades, I hadn’t been paying attention to my emotional and physical exhaustion.
Once I let myself off the hook for planning, shopping, prepping, cooking, and cleanup, I saw there are other things I’ve never questioned.
Like the cultural mandate that this specific Thursday means family togetherness.
The script that says you’re supposed to smile, do a massive amount of work without complaining, and then be grateful for everything, including your family and guests.
While being with family on holidays can be wonderful, many won’t be together with their loved ones. The tired phrase “family is everything” haunts us this time of year—except togetherness isn’t for everyone, not in the way we’re told it should be.
I have a friend who never married, has no siblings or children, and both of her parents are gone. She participates in a Friendsgiving on another day but spends the day alone, reheating a store-bought Thanksgiving meal for herself and sitting in front of the TV.
The old script-following me would have been horrified if that were my fate. But now, it doesn’t sound bad at all.
I have other friends in complicated family relationships. How thorny these holidays become when a family is in turmoil!
I remember an Easter when my mother wasn’t speaking to me, and didn’t include my family in the holiday. Instead, she invited everyone except us. As an only child, I had no other family to visit, and my husband’s family lived 400 miles away. I was so upset at my mother’s shunning that the holiday was ruined for me. Ever since, I feel an extra layer of stress when the holiday doesn’t look like I think it should.
People who are not in loving familial relationships are not broken. The script we have internalized may be too narrow.
But here’s what makes it even more absurd: the script doesn’t just conflict with many people’s realities—it conflicts with the season itself.
I was recently reminded in Qigong class that winter is a time of Yin energy. Yin means that with the cold and the darkness, we naturally turn inside, rest, and reflect. The days are short. Everything is pulling us toward slowness and contemplation.
Forcing ourselves to feel festive when all we want to do is relax in our cozy spaces runs counter to the capitalist frenzy that this season initiates. The holidays insist on Yang: brightness, busyness, consumption, forced togetherness, relentless cheer. We’re supposed to fight the season rather than honor it.
What if we didn’t?
What if Thanksgiving looked like a quiet morning walk instead of hours in the kitchen? What if gratitude arose naturally on a random Tuesday in February instead of being performed on command? What if seeing my kids meant actually being present with them instead of exhausting myself to prove I’m still the matriarch?
This year, I’ll be at Thanksgiving without performing it. It might not look like much—I’m bringing the butter (of course) and a side dish, not cooking a turkey. But it will be honest.
And that’s what “knowing yourself” actually means. It’s not the goofy self-help version where you journal your way to enlightenment. It’s the practical, embodied version: noticing what you needed wine to get through, what your body refuses to do anymore, what boundaries need to be respected, and what the season is actually asking of you, instead of what the calendar demands.
So this Thanksgiving, I’m doing something that once would have terrified me: I’m asking myself what I actually want. I’m making the holidays a laboratory for waking up from autopilot.
And then I’m listening to the answer.
Even if the answer is nothing at all.
Questions to consider: What would your Thanksgiving look like if it reflected your values instead of society’s script? What do you want to write on your blank page?
If this resonates with you—if you’re also rethinking what the holidays should look like—please hit the ❤️ button, share this with someone who needs to hear it, or restack it. And I’d love to hear: what traditions are you ready to let go of?
I completely understand what you share here. My problem with letting it go is my late spouse. Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday. Even though it has been over four long years since losing him, my tiny family (5 of us) loves to get together and loves that I provide the meal. We do prepare it together, except for pie-making. So, until there is another option, I will host.
The good news is that at least once a year, I am encouraged to unearth my beloved china, crystal, and silver, and we sit in the little-used dining room I adore, and talk for hours. I hold onto it as a relic of the past, a romantic version of what life used to be, and in some cases, still is with loved ones.
Now, Christmas is an entirely different set of challenges. I may be mostly alone this year, but I will love my time by the fire with a good book. After all, I am never completely alone, am I?
As a close personal friend of yours, I say "Bravo!" And I'll go one further: As you know, I've never been a big fan of your frenzied state whenever we host a barbecue or big meal at our house for family and/or friends. It's not worth all of the consternation. I'm a big fan of simply ordering pizzas (or other take-out food) and dispensing with all of the tension, pressure and angst. So yes, you go girl, you're starting the Anti-Domestic-Anxiety Movement (ADAM?!) and I'm right here on the bandwagon with you!