It's one of the most difficult holidays.

"Why?" you're asking. "What could those curmudgeons at Suck possibly find wrong with Thanksgiving, of all the God-given, warm-spirited, loving-sharing-caring holidays?" Thanksgiving not only carries with it extremely high expectations, but the possibilities for disappointment are almost endless (see Figure 1A).

"My expectations of Thanksgiving aren't that high!" you say, and you're exactly right. Your conscious expectations are low, but they're not so low that you'll do anything to raise them. Your subconscious expectations of Thanskgiving, however, are probably very, very high. Unless, of course, at Thanksgiving your parents would just order out for pizza and call it a day.

In which case you should consider yourself lucky that you don't have to carry around the memory of the perfect Thanksgiving for the rest of your life, never quite getting it right.

Because there are so many ways to screw it up ...