Surviving Thanksgiving: Tips From Your Millennial Gemini Younger Sister

literally no one asked me

As the Gemini baby of the family, I am legally — and cosmically — obligated to speak on family drama. It’s in both the astrological and familial bylaws (subsection 3A: “youngest child must provide unsolicited yet wildly accurate Thanksgiving guidance”). My qualifications are that I was born with dual personalities and have spent three decades as a gifted observer of human chaos and familial dynamics — think Jane Goodall, but the primates are literally your cousins.

By the end of this article, you’ll have everything you need to make it through tomorrow without sobbing into a hand towel.

Welcome to my masterclass.

Tip 1: Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive, and Deflect

Someone is going to lob a conversational grenade.

“Who are you dating?”
“When are you having kids?”
“How’s the job search?”
“Is that a tattoo?”

Your move: redirect with speed and confidence.

Examples:

• “What do you guys think about Taylor Swift’s wedding ring?”

• “Did you hear Trader Joes is discontinuing something major?”

• “I actually submitted something to The New Yorker.” (Send something – anything – right now to fiction@newyorker.com and it’s not not true.)¹

Pivot fast and it’s like what dandelion tattoo?

Tip 2: Choose your seat strategically.

A rookie mistake is sitting anywhere near the head of the table where you’ll be fully visible but acoustically irrelevant.

No. Sit:

• By the cousins where you can trauma bond in a safe space

• Near the kids’ table (chaotic but you’ll learn a lot about dinosaurs)

• Farthest from whoever is most likely to say “I just want to say one thing about Marjorie Taylor Greene…”

Thanksgiving is a chess match. Protect your queen: you.

Tip 3: Get dressed. You will run into your ex.

This is not superstition. This is science. Exes emerge during Thanksgiving week like cicadas — every seven years, but also somehow annually.

You’ll be picking up nutmeg at 10am and — BAM — there they are, buying Cool Whip and still looking for closure. Better to be prepared.

Tip 4: Grace with grace.

Someone is going to ask you to say grace. It will be spontaneous. It will not be optional. And for reasons we may never understand, they will choose you.

Here’s the move, courtesy of my Scottish husband.

Pull out the most dramatic, most poetic, most cinematic blessing ever written:

The Selkirk Grace by Robert Burns. It’s short, it’s powerful, it’s vaguely intimidating (in a good way).

Rehearse this in the car:

“Some have meat but cannot eat,
Some would eat but want it;
But we have meat and we can eat,
So let the Lord be thanked.”

It’s four lines, it’s ancient, it’s Scottish. It’s basically Taylor Swift’s All Too Well (10-Second Version).

Tip 5: It’s all gravy baby

Here’s the truth — and the part where your little sister gets all annoyingly wise and soOoOo adorable. At some point, maybe after the fifth time you’ve rejected thirds, you zoom out and realize none of it really matters. Yes, Mercury is still in retrograde for three more days and the vibes are questionable at best, but right now you’re surrounded by people who witnessed your bowl-cut era and still choose you. The ones who call you by your childhood nickname, not because it’s diabolical (it is), but because they’ve loved you for that long.

Everything else is just… gravy.

Happy Thanksgiving, you turkeys 🦃

1. This pro tip is sponsored by Bob D Smiley