For every dreamy vision of a Norman Rockwell-perfect Turkey Day dinner, there is a nightmarish tale to be told of dark emotions boiling over at the Thanksgiving table.
Doors slam. People storm out. Hams are thrown. Fights ensue over cheese – preshredded or grated, lovingly, by hand – and miffed mothers swoon in front of gathered relatives, threatening to have a stroke.
Family feuds, it turns out, are as traditional as football and pumpkin pie.
“The expectation around holiday meals is that it should be a time when everyone can get together and interact in a civil way, and all those differences that everyone knows each other has can be set aside, and we can have this idyllic moment during this period of time,” says Shawn Worthy, Ph.D., an expert in family dynamics at Metropolitan State University. “But that’s usually not the reality.”
It’s not just bickering over white meat or dark. Arguments, some building for decades, explode like a shaken soda bottle.
“We’re taught in our culture that this will be the year we all love each other and everything will be just fine,” says Linda Drury, who leads a 12-step recovery program at Orchard Road Christian Center in Greenwood Village. “But Aunt Tillie is still a jerk, and your uncle still belches at the table. We have these expectations that pixie dust will (transform) Thanksgiving, and somehow it will all go away.”
Shy Hammond, the new co-owner of Capitol Hill Books in Denver, was estranged from her family for many years, so she skipped most of the annual turkey dinners. The disaster of one Thanksgiving, however, was so dramatic that her sister couldn’t wait to tell her what she had missed.
“No one had hung out with my mom in a long time,” Hammond says. “My grandmother decided to invite her to Thanksgiving. Everyone was there. My mom’s been vegetarian for 30 years. She blew up – just freaked out – over ‘the dead carcass on the table.’ My sister said it ruined everything.”
Fights always raged around the Thanksgiving table of Otis Drury’s childhood.
“It was just horrendous,” recalls Drury, who co-directs the recovery group with his wife. “The adults would bring up something that happened the last year, or five years ago, or 20 years ago.
“One year everything was going fine, and the holiday was almost over. I thought we were going to dodge a bullet, but right during the pie and coffee, they all started fussing and fighting over who was going to host Thanksgiving the next year.”
A large helping of good humor can lighten the holiday tensions.
In Denver, you can spot tongue-in-cheek attitudes toward Thanksgiving at places like the Colorado Athletic Club Downtown, where November’s cardio boxing classes were advertised as a chance to “Get Ready for the Holidays and the Family Fights.” Or at Wild Oats grocery stores, where calming essential-oil blends such as “Mellow Mix” and “Chill Pill” are marketed under the heading “Om for the Holidays.”
An abundance of emotional quirks contribute to this dark side of thankful America.
For starters, there’s often a bounty of alcohol on the table. One man in his 40s, mentioning his trip back home to family Thanksgiving, jokes that he’s heading off to “the vodka vortex.”
Add to that a network of distant family members who don’t necessarily click any other time of the year; regression to adolescent roles immediately upon stepping into the family compound; and unrealistic expectations.
“There was the dread”
Worthy recalls Thanksgivings of his own childhood, when his alcoholic uncle would sporadically appear.
“That morning, there was dread in your stomach that he would show up, and if he did, there was the dread,” he says. “… Is he going to ask someone for money? Is he going to pass out? Is he going to owe someone money?”
In Denver, the fights typically don’t escalate: Domestic-abuse calls to the Denver Police Department do not increase from Thanksgiving to Christmas, says Leigh Sinclair, a therapist who heads the department’s crisis-intervention team.
There is, however, an increase in the number of 911 calls made by people checking on friends and family who haven’t shown up for work or been seen by a neighbor for a few days.
“It’s a time when some people isolate themselves or have a hard time,” Sinclair says.
It’s also a tough time for recovering alcoholics. Counselors such as Drury warn their group members that 50 percent to 70 percent of all relapses start during the holidays.
Instead of approaching such family holidays with personal boundaries and a social-management plan, many people often resort to passive-aggressive coping strategies.
“Last year, one mother told me that she pretended to be feeding her new baby to avoid joining her in-laws, who seemed determined to give her toddler a crash course on manners,” says pediatrician Cathryn Tobin, author of “The Parent’s Problem Solver.”
The whole concept of manners, however, can be ignored by the very adults trying to teach them to others – a problem exacerbated by life in the 21st-century technocracy.
“Right now, we’re in an age of too much information,” says John Cantrell, deputy editor of Town & Country magazine, which just released the “Town & Country Handbook for Hosts.”
“There is so much reality TV and so much talk-show, full-disclosure stuff going on in our society, which maybe influences people who aren’t on camera to feel like, ‘Gee, anything goes. I’m just going to say exactly what I think,”‘ Cantrell says.
“I’m all for party manners,” he says. “We need to rise to the occasion, not sink to it.”
Cantrell recalls a big family holiday gathering at the home of a cousin, who was then running for county judge. The wife of another cousin suddenly announced that she would not be voting for him.
“That was five years ago, and everyone has tried to move on, and we’ve done a pretty good job, but still a bit of a chill remains,” Cantrell says.
The shadow side of Thanksgiving, however, doesn’t necessarily mean we’re a nation of dysfunctional families.
“It’s just one of those traditions, more cute than chronic,” says Worthy. “(Someone) always messes up the party, and you go on.”
Staff writer Colleen O’Connor can be reached at 303-820-1083 or coconnor@denverpost.com.
