With Thanksgiving weekend coming up, we'll all be entering the height of the holiday season. For most of us, the holidays are a time to be with family and to focus on the bonds of love and support that bring us together as people.

Of course, many actual events fall far short of the Arcadian ideals that inspire them. Over the weekend, I was reminiscing with my parents about some of our own family's more spectacular failures at peaceful celebration. In one famous incident, the family watched in horror as my Grandfather dressed down his wife with the darkly ironic line: "The reason you're so fucked up is that you have such avbad self image!"

My father's mind wandered to an earlier Thanksgiving, from his childhood, which came to an abrupt halt when the drunken host pulled a shotgun on his guests and announced that it was time for everyone to head home. He carries far sharper memories of his father's drunken driving down windy roads through thickest fogs than of even the happiest family gathering since.

And then there's this excellent thread from mermaid33 in which she recounts her own grandfather's Thanksgiving tantrum, complete with the priceless line "want some gravy with that?"

Over the weekend, we'll be calling for stories from our readers in Fraywatch of family gatherings gone wrong... from the horrifying to the humiliating to the simply funny.

I wanted to give you guys a heads-up. If you've got a story to share, please let us know and I'll consider incorporating it into a Fraywatch we'll be running over the long weekend (possibly with headline promotion, no less).

thankful for. That was that there was one restaurant in town that was open on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Usually, I found myself parked at athe bar with none, one or two other guys who, like myself, couldn't stand their damned families on the holidays. Dougie, the old bartender, was always really good to us, never asked what went wrong, just served drinks and our choice of roast turkey, lamb or beef.

The causes of my decamping to the local inn were varied. Sometimes it was finding my mother stone drunk on the kitchen floor - yet again.

Others, it was my sister explaining that giving her child a timeout in a bedroom adjacent to the dining room was good for him, while the little s.o.b. kicked the door relentlessly. Somehow, mothers never actually hear the racket their kids produce. Uncles hoping for a peaceful, calm meal with something approaching warmth and friendship among the participants always hear the racket.

Or it was the time when I came home late from fishing offshore on Christmas Day to find the entire roast beef I had purchased had been consumed by a brother-in-law whom I detested. It was he who was drunk on the kitchen floor that time.

Dougie is long dead now. But that's ok, because my family, quite rightly, is spread across enough miles and enough years to make the Holidays largely forgotten.

No wonder you're such an asshole. This certainly explains a lot.

Jack

My mother was an alcoholic manic depressive which of course we did not even know existed back when she was raging full time. One Thanksgiving stands out, it was when Mom and her husband invited me up for Turkey day at their property near Coarsegold. I was a 22 year old college student living in Venice, California and the 60 buck round trip from LAX to Fresno was a big deal. They picked me up at the airport on Wednesday after I had woke up at dawn to catch the early flight. We drove up to their property near Bass Lake which had two trailers on it, one for them and the other one for my little brother who was 18 at the time. Little bro was stoked to see me and he said lets go hunting so off we went to get some quail. Mom and Tony stayed in their trailer and drank. My bro and I slayed the quail and came back with our limits in about a couple hours. Mom was ready for us. As we walked in the door of her trailer she started in on me, my brother, my two other siblings and her once convicted pedophile husband. It got ugly fast. I was a queer, she hated me, her husband was a faggot, brother Jimmy was good for nothing, sister Mary was deformed, the world hated her. We are talking screaming, crying, raging for at least an hour. One of her favorite ploys was to get up to your face, scream at you with her finger wagging and fake like she was going to kick you in the balls. She did it enough times to make the threat real.

I had heard this many times before, we all had heard it every holiday. This time though I had enough. I told them to drive me back to Fresno that night so I could catch the late flight back to LA. I did. I called my roomie at about 12 midnight from LAX to pick me up. He had just dropped me off about 18 hours before. I did not talk to Mom for about a year after that one. It was not the first or the last time this happened but as for Turkey Day fiasco's, this is one I remember. You should hear the Christmas stories, makes this look like a love fest. The year was 1979.

I had Thanksgiving with my roomies family, it was loving, fun and peaceful.

every holiday is an opportunity for personal disasters. None of them are pretty, and mostly they just smell of disappointment more than turkey; your expectation or hope that the nuts would abandon the asylum for just one meal enjoyed in Rockwell-like tones is rebuffed, again, and you realize that the best family is going to be the one you make yourself.

Which is why the story I remember most clearly about Thanksgiving (other than, possibly, this one -- see my Turkey post at DP) primarily involves pets rather than people.

Misha was our first Samoyed, purchased as an astonishingly cute puppy by my husband and me as our ersatz child. (We weren't planning on any). She came as close to anything I've ever known to convincing me about reincarnation; having some strange human tendencies. Like she enjoyed walking on her hind legs. She sang, beautifully, but only to the theme from "Fresh Air" on NPR. She once watched us eat pesto, then, no lie, dug the used stalks of basil out of the garbage and put them on some recovered pasta. Scary.

On the other hand, she had a true Northern dog's running ability, and more than that, need. Whenever the door opened she bolted out and ran for hours, leaning in tantalizingly close to you only to change direction and leave you wiped out on a corner. She remains the only living creature I ever watched accelerate running uphill. I know, it's odd, but she did that as if she were running for the pure joy of it. Despite all that exercise, she was ungovernable. Sweet and lovely by nature, and totally utterly resistant to commands.

The first Thanksgiving my husband and I hosted for my mother, her gentleman friend, and my grandmother, my husband decided he was going to teach the dog to come so she'd be better behaved when they got there. He took her outside with a length of rope and a dog training book under one arm and her and her leash on the other. He went to the overgrown acreage behind our house (a formal garden left to go wild) replaced the leash with the long rope and started calling her to come. Instead she saw a doe, broke the rope and immediately peeled off in chase.

What my husband saw next amazed him. The dog ran down the deer just like a nature program. She circled it repeatedly, cut off all its avenues of escape, and just wore it down. She sank her teeth into its haunches and started ripping away. My husband, city boy, was horrified. He tried to help the doe, who panicked, kicked him repeatedly with her front hoofs. She was so weak it didn't make a difference. The dog looked at him as if he were the dumbest thing on earth -- trying to help the prey escape? Nuts.

I didn't see any of this, being ensconced in the crappy little kitchen we had then making pie. This wasn't easy, I hadn't made one before and things were getting ugly. He led the dog back in the house and her face and front paws were completely covered in blood. He told me the story and was nearly moved to tears for the poor doe.

Just then, my mother and her little entourage pulled in. Seemingly oblivious to the fact that the dog was licking deer blood off her legs, my mother immediately ran over to kiss her. As did my grandmother. (Dog-lovers, the whole pack of us). The boyfriend looked a little worried. My husband was rubbing blood sweat and tears off his face when he got hugged, too. The mother stayed clueless. The killer dog proceeded to nuzzle my grandmother for the rest of the night as if she were a tiny Bichon and not as if she'd just spent the last hour hunting game. My mother kept mewling about how sweet that pooch was and complaining how I wasn't keeping the house clean enough for the dog. (Not kidding here).

My husband and I kept drinking, waiting to see if she'd spring and bite the boyfriend. It never happened. And the pie turned out okay too.

Awry?

Sounds like yours were more often a-rye.

Woolley:

I am sorry. My Thanksgivings and Christmas holidays were always spent watching my father and mother argue about when the turkey was cooked. Laughable at worst and we all chuckled as my dad was the better cook.

At least the hunt was good with your brother! Remember that part of it

Bob:

I have extra tukey this year and a place at a table for you in Michigan with my wife, myself, and a friend. You are welcome to join us in Michigan in place of Dougies. My children are gone and at their respective places and my one son is in prison for something he did not do.

We could have a Fray Thanksgiving!

Your offer is most kind, and I'm sure I would vastly enjoy Thanksgiving with you and yours, but, alas, I have accepted an invitation to be with friends for the holiday.

I have enjoyed Thanksgiving for years now with various old friends who might as well be family, but better than the family I was dealt. I do have one sister whom I love dearly, but she came out of our family history trusting no one, not even myself. Sad.

Best wishes for a great holiday, and greetings to your wife and friend. May your son be released very soon, that he may rejoin his loving family.

Bob

Thanksgiving is not really thanksgiving. If it was I suspect we would have some type of cooperative celebration that incuded the American indian nations. Thanksgivng has been sucked into the endless vortex of excuses to get shit faced that we now call Holidays.

Reasons to drink:

1.) Full moon

2.) No full moon

3.) Birthday

4.) Mid-life Crisis

5.) Graduation Party

6.) Failure to Graduate

7.) New Job

8.) Job loss

9.) Wife is out cheating

10.) Wife is home waiting for you.

et cetera.............

Gee these are all sort of sad.

I searched my memory but just can't recall a really bad or way out, wild event where a holiday or any Thanksgiving went awry ..I guess I am very grateful for that reading some of these.

We had a pretty Traditional Thanksgiving Holiday... going to Grandmas' House every year, when I was a kid.

We would go to my mom's mom house. My Mom's sister was married to my dad's biological brother so we werre pretty close with them and their kids.

On my dad's side, they were WW2 Vets as well as being in the restaurant/bar business together with three of his other brothers ,so the family gatherings we had were pretty big and loaded with great food and lots of beer and the adults drank lots of what they called 'hi-balls' for mixed drinks during Christmas season and summer parties..but Thanksgiving was always a bit more subdued and calm. We always had fun ,big gatherings at holiday times..

My mom's mom was a Danish born mother who had five kids two boys who had served in WW2, as well.

I just remember riding in the car to grandma's every year singing "Over The River and through the Woods, (to grandmother's house we go" the traditional Thanksgiving Day song and being happy if there was a pretty, thin sheet of snow of the ground in my small, Upstate, NY town, because the snow made it seem more festive for the Holiday.

We always waited for my Uncle Bob to return from one of his yearly, deer hunting trips up in the Adirondacks, with his rowdy, pointer ,hunting dog, "Jipper' .

We all sat down to a traditional Turkey dinner with all the trimmings.

Adults at Grandma's pretty, cherry wood ,dining room table with white linen tablecloths and crystal ,water goblets and the kids table in the kitchen where we had lots of fun silly food fights and laughs.

The women cooked, baked and washed the dinners after, but rarely drank..they might have some port wine in a little sherry glass.

But, the men all drank and smoked Lucky Strikes and had lots of bottles of Carling Black Label Beer after dinner and watched sports and talked ..the women might have glass or two of beer, too..but I never once witnessed any craziness or abuse during any of our family holidays..just lots of happiness, chatter, fun.

Guess I was lucky.