Photo via flickr

The right time to eat Thanksgiving dinner is 4pm.



This gives the host enough time to prepare all the things they left until the last minute like the tossed salad no one wants and the cranberry sauce no one eats. It gives them enough time to decide at the last minute to make a green bean casserole because they’ve had a panic that there’s not going to be enough food.




4pm allows those people who decided to wait to travel until Thursday—you know, the ones who were so smart they got their entire brood up at 4am to sit in traffic all day—enough time to get there.



Noon is too early.

Noon is lunchtime, not dinnertime, and it’s Thanksgiving dinner. Noon is also too early because this is everyone’s first day off since summer and they are still having jammy time at noon.




2pm is also too early.

We’re going to have a late breakfast around noon and we’re not going to be hungry at 2.



6pm is too late.

By 6pm everyone is bored and they have run out of things to talk about and they are either drunk or hangry or both. Those people who watch football will be watching football no matter what time you serve dinner so don’t worry about them. They’re going to eat in front of the TV or make you blast it ruining the part where you go around and say what you’re thankful for.


8pm is criminal.

There is no way anyone’s food is going to digest before they go to bed, and the people who only come home once a year want to go see their high school friends at the bar by that time. All their high school friends ate at 4, which is the right time, so everyone’s already caught up and then you get there and feel weird, like these are my friends, the people who really get me, but somehow we’re out of sync. You have your own life now, you have a whole life separate from these people you tell yourself, but it still feels kind of lonely.


There is only one correct time at which to eat Thanksgiving dinner and that time is 4pm.