The 10 Saddest Places to Eat Thanksgiving Dinner

Image via Complex Original

Retail megastores have declared war on cranberry sauce, and polo-adorned hourly employees are the battlefield's casualties. While you sip on an post-feast crème liqueur, these unappreciated bastions of "Black Friday" are getting trampled by a pack of soccer moms in bloodthirsty pursuit of $349 Dell Inspiron laptops. The only thing an on-floor sales associate is feasting on tonight is a frenzied haymaker to the face while trying to breakup a fistfight over the last PlayStation 4.

This "Blackout Wednesday," avoid getting blitzed on Jameson shots and kicking out the windshield of a parked police car. Your visiting frat brothers will probably dig the steadfast display of machismo, but it could carry a weekend-long trip to the slammer. Sure, your aunt's turkey might be perpetually dry on Thanksgiving, but it's better than sharing a bologna sandwich with The Craigslist Killer.

If you have an 8 p.m. bedtime and training wheels, then sitting at the kid's table is a necessary reprieve from the wine-fueled divulging of family secrets in the formal dining room. Adolescent ears should not be subjected to the vitriolic blustering of your prejudiced grandmother, ever. That said, if you've finished driver's education and your dinnertime conversation involves LEGOs and the plot arch of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, then it's a sad day.

Like intrafamily brawls and smallpox blankets, Detroit Lions football is one of Thanksgiving Day's most glaring imperfections. Since 2001, Detroit vaunts a record of 1-11 on the fourth Thursday in November. For Lions fans, Joey Harrington and Jon Kitna leave a worse taste on Thanksgiving than Aunt Cindy's hot-dog cabbage casserole.

Thanksgiving, above all others, should be a day that's unequivocally free of lifestyle-based sermonizing. Just serve up some turkey, stuffing, and keep the statistics about America's crippling childhood obesity epidemic to yourself. But, some people use this annual celebration of face-stuffing as an excuse to passive-aggressively smite their loved ones. This is so sad.

TSA pat downs and baggage fees, as horrible as they are, take a disproportionate amount of travel-related flack. When it comes to flying, the real miscreants are wind-driven rain and snowstorms. Every year, vagabond travelers are stranded in airports for Thanksgiving dinner, which means feasting on two packs of Cheez-It Zingz from the vending machine instead of brined turkey breast.

When combined, cuffing season loneliness and the holidays can bear dreadfully sad fruit. And fruit, in this case, means burying your emotional sorrow between the prodigious breasts of an exotic dancer. Look, these girls are trying to work their way through college, but they don’t have their master’s degree in psychology just yet. Stay home so you can spare yourself the indignity of an uncontrolled cry session in the champagne room. These girls don’t need to hear another tearful declamation about your father no-showing to Little League games.

A melancholy shout out to the college students who will spend Thanksgiving Day watching four consecutive hours of The Walking Dead and feasting on a microwaved Hungry Man. It's amazing how the best years of your life can, often times, be the most pathetic.

Just...SMH. If you absolutely have to grab fast food on Thanksgiving, get your order to-go and wear a ski mask to conceal your face. 

One should not compromise Thanksgiving dinner to save, like, $90 on a 55" LED HDTV, even if it comes with a DVD copy of World War Z. Unless you're willing to coldcock a stranger for the last discounted iPad, you're better off staying at home and enduring another drunken, expletive-laden rant about Obamacare from your uncle. That's a lot less painful than waiting around in a cold parking lot for half-off Skullcandy headphones.