5 GREAT ways to get into family arguments at Thanksgiving

As the holiday season approaches, it’s important to focus and reflect on what’s important – family, friends, and fighting with both of them. So we’ve compiled this list of tips to help make your holiday season everything that it should be – and more!


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We hope you find this quick guide useful. Be sure to let us know your results!

1. Drink early, and drink often

This is probably the easiest and quickest way to have a Thanksgiving Day throwdown. General guidance is to take how many people will be at dinner, divide that number by 2, and start drinking that many hours in advance. So if your dinner is at 5pm, and there are 10 people attending, start drinking at noon. And go with hard liquor, none of that beer or cider bullshit.

Swearing loudly in front of young children is also encouraged. Bonus points if you get your drunk uncle to say something really racist.

2. Be a contrarian.

Did someone say that climate change isn’t real because it’s the coldest Thanksgiving on record? Somebody say something that is objectively true about Donald Trump? Just tell them they’re wrong and that’ll take care of it.

A key note here is to not tell them why or how they’re wrong. Just tell them they’re wrong and use personal attacks. Be sure to mention something embarrassing your relative did when they were a kid, too.

3. Ask your parents to borrow some money.

This works well with tip #1, because it increases the volatility of the situation. On the one hand, if they’re drunk, it might work. On the other hand, they might rail on you about how you’re irresponsible with money, how you never learned the value of a dollar, and how you’ll never own a house because you’re just not working hard enough.

4. Ask for Tofurky.

No group of people is disliked more than vegans, so this should be a quick way to get people angry, especially if you don’t tell your host in advance. Ask for that Tofurky thing. And be super casual about it. What’s important here is to act with a subtle sense of self-righteousness as if you just expect everyone prepares vegan-friendly meals for Thanksgiving. And when they don’t, refuse to eat anything, even if you’re super hungry.

5. Reminisce over last year’s arguments.

Everybody loves memories, and nothing is more memorable than last year’s holiday arguments. For the best effect, wait until about 2/3 of the way through dinner, after most people have had a few drinks.