20 Uncontroversial Thanksgiving Day Talking Points For Your Difficult Family

Avoiding the topics of politics and religion around the Thanksgiving table is as noble as it is difficult, especially if you are in a family that loves to fight about things. Here is a list of things to discuss that are not The War On Christmas, Where We Are Building Our Mosques, Donald Trump, or The Systematic Destruction of the American Family By Barack Hussein Obama – all things you can argue about, albeit jovially, and without insulting the personhood or dignity of any person or group of people.

1. Achieving the perfect potato texture – can it be done, and how?

2. Infinity scarves – can they still be pulled off, even after all these years?

3. What are we all thankful for?

4. Ancient grains – how old can they be, really?

5. What are those funny looking oblong seeds you find in italian sausage?

6. The game where one person describes how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and the other person tries to make a sandwich while being overly literal about following those instructions, to hilarious results

7. Look at the nice shape of those clouds up there!

8. ALDI: overrated, underrated, or properly rated?

9. We stopped halfway through the circle talking about what we are thankful for. Let’s pick it up, again.

10. Why do fast food restaurants have commercials in markets where there are no franchises?

11. *Dad monologues about how he’s really come around to eReaders*

12. We can all agree that Tom Petty is a talented musician, can’t we?

13. Look again, everyone! The cloud has changed its shape.

14. Succulent: an inappropriate word for a plant, or the perfect word for a plant that is, itself, inappropriate?

15. What if the green your eyes perceive and the green my eyes perceive are, like, different?

16. Robber Barons: capitalism gone too far, or heroic opportunists?

17. Let’s pass around that gif of the Puppy With No Front Legs, because even 19th century industrialism is too heated and divisive a topic for this family.

18. Our sports team is the best.

19. Sequential comparison of 2015 turkey to all turkeys from 1977 – 2014.

20. The cloud is gone, and there is a new cloud to look at.