The Polite Thanksgiving Guest - 12 Tips

Your cellphone should be set aside for face to face communication with others and taking occasional photos. Keep your phone out of sight unless it’s needed. If you get a personal call, step into another room or go outside to take the call.

Twelve Tips for Being a Welcome Thanksgiving Guest

1. Don’t enter a home asking for the television remote, video controller or the wifi password. You’re there to visit and socialize. Instead, greet your host &/or hostess and thank them for having you. 
2. Holidays already bring unexpected surprises. Never show up with an “extra” guest or friend in tow unless you’ve politely discussed the matter with your host/s.
3. If you are “bringing a dish,” and you know the host’s or hostess’s taste in tableware, bringing an actual dish with your food as a hostess gift is a thoughtful touch. Ex: Your sister collects old, blue and white transferware. You spot unique bowls she’d love online and on sale. Pick a pretty style for her to keep and bring your famous cranberry sauce in it, ready to serve. 
4. If you aren’t already helping out in the kitchen, ask what you can do to assist. Many hosts & hostesses don’t want help in the kitchen, but may need help in making sure guests’ glasses are on coasters, guests’ coats are hung up or that children aren’t underfoot. Some hosts and hostesses need help with setting the table. Offer to make yourself useful.
5. If your hosts have the big game on, parade or holiday marathon, go ahead and watch. Just don’t ignore others or let it monopolize your attention.
6. Your cellphone should be set aside for face to face communication with others and taking occasional photos. Keep your phone out of sight unless it’s needed. If you get a personal call, step into another room or go outside to take the call.
7. Ask where you should sit at the table, unless your host instructs you to, “sit anywhere.” If there are place cards, sit where the host/s have placed you. It is the rudest of gusts who will rearrange place cards at someone else’s table.
8. Never criticize the food or how it’s prepared. If you don’t care for something, simply pass on the dish, or pass it on to the next guest without comment.
9. Keep political opinions and other hot topics out of your conversation. Regardless of your passions or opinions, seasonal get-togethers are not the time for division, especially in someone else’s home.
10. Don’t expect to take home leftovers, even if it’s the norm in your family or circle. Food prices have skyrocketed the past few years and some families have started asking guests to chip in on the cost of the meal. Leftovers may only be up for grabs if you’ve contributed monetarily to the meal. 
11. Holidays can be a lonely time for people, even those attending large gatherings. Be polite and try to chat with anyone who looks like they need some kindness sent their way.
12. Don’t overstay your welcome and always thank your hosts when you leave.

Contributor Maura Graber has been teaching etiquette to children, teens and adults, and training new etiquette instructors, since 1990, as founder and director of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette.  She is also a writer, has been featured in countless newspapers, magazines and television shows and was an on-air contributor to PBS in Southern California for 15 years. Along with teaching and giving talks on old flatware, she is an etiquette consultant for the HBO – Julian Fellowes’ series, “The Gilded Age”

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Holiday Dinner Hosting Etiquette

Etiquette and Talking Tofu:

Welcoming the Vegan or Vegetarian Holiday Guest

Thanksgiving can be torture for folks who don’t eat meat. So, if you want to make a vegetarian feel like part of a holiday crowd, never, ever ask:

1. You don’t mind if there is some beef stock in the soup, do you?
2. Is this, like, a spiritual thing?

3. How do you get your protein?

4. Do you need to leave the room when we bring out the turkey?

5. Does your mother know about this?

6. Isn’t that tofu dish we made special for you interesting?

7. Wasn’t Hitler a vegetarian?

8. Can’t you just pick the meat out of it?

9. Do you have anything against dessert?

10. Why are you a vegetarian?

By David Colker, Los Angeles Times, 1991

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Some Thanksgiving Courtesy

“Courtesy goes far beyond the dictates of etiquette, for the generous, perceptive heart has its own codes. The man who never saw a salad fork or held a tea cup may be more instinctively courteous than a nobleman. Courtesy is a facile tool that can smooth the most difficult situations, as I discovered one Thanksgiving.” 

More Than Etiquette 

Often people think of courtesy as a synonym for etiquette. Yet courtesy goes far beyond the dictates of etiquette, for the generous, perceptive heart has its own codes. The man who never saw a salad fork or held a tea cup may be more instinctively courteous than a nobleman. Courtesy is a facile tool that can smooth the most difficult situations, as I discovered one Thanksgiving. 

I had been invited to dinner by a friend who lived in a mountain village in New Hampshire. There was all the nostalgia of the season, even to a horsedrawn sleigh from the station and a ride through snowy woods to the farmhouse. As the family gathered around the fireplace before dinner we heard a car pull up, then a knock at the door. But it wasn’t an expected guest. It was Uncle Jonathan, whom no one had seen for eight years and no one wanted to see. His arrogance and selfishness had estranged him from everyone in town, including his family. 

Some of the family bridled and there were exchanges of angry glances. His sudden appearance could have been tensely embarrassing, but no one was so rude as to question his presence there or make him feel awkward or unwelcome. After dinner as we sat in the firelight, he offered a pathetic little excuse for his coming. “I was just passing by (on a wooded path that led nowhere) and since it was Thanksgiving, I . . . I . . “We're so glad you came,” his sister said. “Really?” The bravado suddenly left him. “I was so lonely,” he admitted humbly. Then, embarrassed, he rose, a big man forlorn as a lost child. As he started toward the door, I begged the family silently, “Do something, say something. This calls for more than etiquette or he'll be lost forever.” 

He was putting on his coat when his eldest brother detained him. “No rush, Jonathan. Why don’t you stay on at least through Christmas?” Courtesy had saved the day. The traditions of graciousness had kept open the lines of communication so that the family’s problems were smoothed out, and eventually solved. Empathy, imagination, tact, are all ingredients of courtesy which the dictionary defines as “gracious politeness . . . a considerate act or remark.” But Ralph Waldo Emerson penetrated to the very heart of the word when he wrote, “Love is the basis of courtesy.” – By Elizabeth Byrd, in The Madera Tribune, 1965

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Etiquette and Giving Thanks

Sending gratitude and Thanksgiving greetings to all of our Etiquipedia Etiquette Encyclopedia readers

Thanksgiving Quotes 

• “Many of the guests will eventually leave the table to watch football on television, which would be a rudeness at any other occasion but is a relief at Thanksgiving and probably the only way to get those people to budge." Judith Martin (Miss Manners) 

• “There can be no etiquette prescribed for the players in a football game ... But the people who are watching the game must observe a certain good conduct, if they wish to he considered entirely cultured. For instance, even though the game becomes very exciting, it is bad form to stand up on the seats and shout words of encouragement to the players. But many, who claim to be entirely well-bred, do this very thing!” - Lillian Eichler 

• “We recommend that no one eat more than two tons of turkey - that's what it would take to poison someone.” - Elizabeth Whelan, on the levels of toxins and carcinogens in holiday meals, U.S. News and World Report 

• “We, thine unworthy servants, do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving-kindness to us, and to all men; We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life but above all for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.” - from The Book of Common Prayer 

• “For the hay and the corn and the wheat that is reaped. For the labor well done, and the barns that are heaped. For the sun and the dew and the sweet honeycomb. For the rose and the song and the harvest brought home Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving!” - Unknown 

From The Coronado Eagle, 2003

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

A Thanksgiving Etiquette Tale

Circumstances alter cases in matters of etiquette... At the end of the Thanksgiving dinner a few days afterward, Edith was observed looking hopelessly at a last bit of pudding on her plate.

It’s Not So Easy, Edith

Circumstances alter cases in matters of etiquette, as well as in the more important affairs of life. Little Edith, visiting in the country, was much interested in an old lady, who, when a plate of fruit was passed her at an evening party, replied: “Thank you, I don't care for any now, but I should like to put an apple in my pocket to take home.” At the end of the Thanksgiving dinner a few days afterward, Edith was observed looking hopelessly at a last bit of pudding on her plate. “Can't you finish it dear?” asked a sympathetic auntie. “No.” replied she, with a sigh, “Not now, but I should like, if you please, to put it in my pocket to eat this evening.” — Youth’s Companion, 1891

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia