My cousin nearly got disowned for suggesting paper plates at Christmas dinner

Last year at my grandma's house, my cousin Lisa showed up with a stack of paper plates and said we should use them to save on dishes. My aunt Jean went ballistic, yelling that it was disrespectful to the china my grandma got as a wedding gift in 1962. Lisa tried to argue it was practical since there were 18 of us and only one dishwasher, but it turned into a 30 minute screaming match about tradition vs convenience. Has anyone else had a relative push for something practical at a family gathering and it backfired badly?

2 comments

2 Comments

tyler_bell9d ago

Brought a slow cooker to Thanksgiving once and my uncle acted like I insulted his grandmother's gravy recipe.

terry_lewis219d ago

My uncle Frank threw a FIT when my cousin showed up with store-bought rolls one year, so I get it. That slow cooker is basically saying "your family recipe isn't worth my time" when half the magic of Thanksgiving is the 6 hours of stove-top stirring and the nervous sweat over getting the roux right. You might as well have shown up with a can of store-brand gravy and poured it right over his grandmother's china, @tyler_bell. Traditions are fragile things and 30 years from now nobody is gonna remember the convenience, they'll remember the year you disrespected the gravy.