A woman who cancelled her annual Thanksgiving dinner in response to her little sister's demand to enact a mandatory "Family Code of Conduct" for attendees now questions if she made the right choice.
The 32-year-old has hosted Thanksgiving for the past five years. "It's always a little messy and chaotic," she admitted, "but that's part of the charm, right?"
This year, however, her 29-year-old sister reportedly offered to "help bring some order" to the holiday. "At first, I thought she just meant coordinating who would bring what dishes or helping with cleanup," the woman explained in a Reddit post.
That's why she was "baffled" when her sister brought over printed copies of a "Family Code of Conduct" to hand out.
The post summarized some alleged "highlights" from the document:
- A rule against 'overlapping conversations' at the dinner table, with suggestions for taking turns like 'a respectful debate club.'
- A 'ban on political or controversial topics,' with her as the final arbiter of what was too heated.
- A dress code of 'smart casual' because 'holiday photos should reflect well on the family.'
- Assigned seating that she claimed was based on 'optimal personality compatibility.'
"When I laughed and said, 'You can't be serious,' she accused me of 'not taking her efforts to improve family dynamics seriously,'" the poster claimed. "I told her I wasn't going to enforce a code of conduct at my house and that if she wanted to micromanage Thanksgiving, she could host it herself."
The sisters proceeded to argue, and now the whole family is upset by the disruption to their collective Thanksgiving plans. The woman wanted to know if she was in the right to stand her ground, or if she should have let her sister "run the day to keep the peace."
Overall, Reddit users supported her decision not to host and found the "Family Code of Conduct" extreme if not ridiculous.
Most agreed it was "her house, her rules," and would have similarly told the sister to host the dinner herself, though some wondered why she didn't just continue with her original plan and tell her sister she didn't have to come.
Commenters were staunchly opposed to any Thanksgiving dress code that didn't include stretchy pants, and happily volunteered their own family's Thanksgiving antics, like silly themes or making a game of a mean grandmother's bad behavior. There were also suggestions of how to have fun at her sister's expense, like gifting her a gavel or decorating the house with "North Korean style propaganda."
"My brother and I would make it a point to see how fast we could break all the rules and what the 'consequences' would be," one mischievous Redditor offered.
Others wanted more information to better understand the sister's perspective, curious if there was a relevant medical diagnosis or problematic family member fueling her authoritarian aspirations.
"Do you have that one uncle who's going to spend the meal ranking nationalities of immigrants by how much they're destroying America," a user inquired, "and this is really just about him?"
The only outright support for the sister's restrictive code of conduct centered on the "no politics" rule, with many hoping to avoid political discussions at their own Thanksgiving dinners this year. But one clever Redditor piped up with a creative solution for even this common holiday bugbear.
"If you want to keep people from getting too fussed about politics at family gatherings, you need to have a nerf gun. This way, when Auntie Margo, Great Uncle George, and Third Cousin Vinnie are about to get into a heated, three-person argument about current events in the Canary Islands, the most politically neutral member of the family can shoot them with the nerf gun until they hush."
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