Laughter Around the Table: The Best Funny Thanksgiving Quotes to Brighten Your Holiday

TL;DR: Thanksgiving can be stressful, but funny quotes can ease the tension and make your holiday more enjoyable.

Thanksgiving is supposed to be a time for gratitude and joy. But let’s be honest—it often comes with a side of stress. Between cooking the turkey, cleaning the house, and dealing with relatives, the holiday can feel overwhelming.

You might even find yourself wondering, “Where’s the fun in all this?”

It’s tough when you’re trying so hard to make everything perfect. You want everyone to have a good time, but it feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders.

The good news? Laughter can lighten that load.

Funny Thanksgiving quotes are the perfect solution. They remind us not to take things too seriously. A well-timed joke can break the tension, bring everyone together, and make your holiday truly memorable.

So why not let these humorous quotes do the heavy lifting this year?

What Are the Top 10 Funniest Thanksgiving Quotes You Haven’t Heard Yet?

1. “Thanksgiving is so called because we are all so thankful that it only comes once a year.” — P.J. O’Rourke

2. “For those of you who cannot be with family this Thanksgiving, please resist the urge to brag.” — Andy Borowitz

3.  “Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often.” — Johnny Carson

4. “You know that just before that first Thanksgiving dinner there was one wise, old Native American woman saying, ‘Don’t feed them. If you feed them, they’ll never leave.’” — Dylan Brody

5. “Thanksgiving — when the people who are the most thankful are the ones who didn’t have to cook.” — Melanie White

6. “Thanksgiving is a magical time of year when families across the country join together to raise America’s obesity statistics.” — Stephen Colbert

7. “Thanksgiving Day, man — not a good day to be my pants.” — Kevin James

8. “Thanksgiving is America’s national chow-down feast, the one occasion each year when gluttony becomes a patriotic duty.” — Michael Dresser

9. “Thanksgiving is a time to count your blessings, one by one, as each relative goes home.” — Melanie White

10. “Tomorrow is Thanksgiving! It’s the day you forget about all the fighting and division in the world and just focus on all the fighting and division in your family.” — Jimmy Fallon

Why Are These Hilarious Thanksgiving Quotes Guaranteed to Make You Laugh?

1. “What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?” — Erma Bombeck

2. “A new survey found that 80 percent of men claim they help cook Thanksgiving dinner. Which makes sense, when you hear them consider saying ‘that smells good’ to be helping.” — Jimmy Fallon

3. “Thanksgiving, the day where there’s never enough food. You can’t just have a turkey. No, there has to be a roast beef or a ham too. Or both. It’s the only day we have mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes.” — Lewis Black

4. “Having thanksgiving with the in-laws and apparently we’re all very thankful for our smartphones.” — HammBone

5. “Thanksgiving journal, Day 3: Have come to regard eating pie 3-5 times a day as normal. Wearing a bed sheet as a toga because nothing fits.” — John Lyon

6. “I love Thanksgiving traditions: watching football, making pumpkin pie, and saying the magic phrase that sends your aunt storming out of the dining room to sit in her car.” — Stephen Colbert

7. “The Thanksgiving tradition is, we overeat. ‘Hey, how about at Thanksgiving we just eat a lot?’ ‘But we do that every day!’ ‘Oh. What if we eat a lot with people that annoy the hell out of us.’” — Jim Gaffigan

8. “It’s not Thanksgiving until your backyard game of touch football ends with Grandma being put into concussion protocol.” — Unknown

9. “Thanksgiving dinners take 18 hours to prepare. They are consumed in 12 minutes. Half-times take 12 minutes. This is not a coincidence.” — Erma Bombeck

10. “I think the maternity pants are going to be making an annual appearance as my Thanksgiving pants!” — Carrie Underwood

11. “I had to buy another pie because I still have whipped cream left… I don’t make the rules.” — WhatserName

12. “If you wish to make an apple pie truly from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” — Carl Sagan

13. “Hope my relatives are getting along with the professional line sitter I hired to hold my place at the front of the Thanksgiving food line.” — John Lyon

14. “I like football. I find it’s an exciting strategic game. It’s a great way to avoid conversation with your family at Thanksgiving.” — Craig Ferguson

15. “Did you nap after eating the Thanksgiving meal? Or did you pass out like you were shot by a tranquilizer gun?” — Jim Gaffigan

16. “Serious Thanksgiving question: when a family member’s telling a tragic story and everyone’s crying, how long should I wait before taking a bite of my pie?” — Beth Likes Pie

17. “Finally, a Thanksgiving without a drunken uncle. Just me, my nieces and nephews, and my bottle of Jack Daniels.” — Conan O’Brien

18. “I got to go home for Thanksgiving and sit at the adults’ table. That’s ’cause, you know, somebody had to die for me to move up a plate.” — Andre Kelley

19. “It’s not too much food. This is what we’ve been training for our whole lives. This is our destiny, this is our finest hour.” — Lorelai Gilmore, Gilmore Girls

20. “Every Thanksgiving I bring the champagne because in my family we all know what our strengths are.” — Gloria Fallon

21. “You know, maybe this will be a good Thanksgiving. Just us and the kids. You cook and I’ll watch football with my pants open all day.” — Ray Romano, “Everybody Loves Raymond”

22. “I approximated the Black Friday experience at home by hurling myself into a wall a number of times and then ordering online.” — Kumail Nanjiani

23.  “In honor of Hanukkah falling on Thanksgiving, I am going to spend dinner feeling guilty about everything I have to be thankful for.” — Conan O’Brien

24. “Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.” — Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

25. “Note to self: when they ask you what you’re thankful for, don’t just list off your prescriptions.” — Emily Lime

Looking for Short, Funny Thanksgiving Quotes? Have You Seen These?

1. “An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.” — Irv Kupcinet

2. “Real ballplayers pass the stuffing by rolling it up in a ball and batting it across the table with a turkey leg.” — Tom Swyers

3. “I’m looking forward to seeing pie this Thanksgiving more than members of my own family.” — Damien Fahey

4. “I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.” — Erma Bombeck

5. “Thanksgiving is a lot like Christmas, except you don’t get any presents for holding in your familial rage.” — Unknown

6. “Here I am 5 o’clock in the morning stuffing bread crumbs up a dead bird’s butt.” — Roseanne Barr

7. “You can tell you ate too much for Thanksgiving when you have to let your bathrobe out.” — Jay Leno

8. “I suppose I will die never knowing what pumpkin pie tastes like when you have room for it.” — Robert Brault

9. “I’m from Canada, so Thanksgiving to me is just Thursday with more food.” — Howie Mandel

10. “Thank you, the day after Thanksgiving, or as the makers of sweatpants call it, ‘the busy season.’” — Jimmy Fallon

11. “I love spending Thanksgiving surrounded by all these great friends I met in the Best Buy parking lot.” — John Lyon

12. “It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without a little emotional scarring.” — Friends

13.  “Thank God I can start calling this my ‘holiday weight’.” — Just Bill

14. “After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.” — Oscar Wilde

15. “My cooking was so bad my kids thought Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor.” — Phyllis Diller

16. “Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie.” — Jim Davis

17. “There is no such thing as fun for the whole family.¨ — Jerry Seinfeld

18. “I haven’t even finished eating all of my Halloween candy!” — Sally Brown, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

19. “If you think about a Thanksgiving dinner, it’s really like making a large chicken.” — Ina Garten

20. “Thanksgiving: Bringing out the best in family dysfunction since 1863.” — Unknown

21. “Cut my pie into four pieces, I don’t think I could eat eight.” — Yogi Berra

22. “It’s Thanksgiving, and we should not want to be together, together!” — Rachel Green, Friends

23. “It’s not the minutes spent at the table that put on weight, it’s the seconds.” — Unknown

24. “Leftover pie is the only thing I’ll be fighting for on Black Friday.” — Jawbreaker

25. “If you start drinking now, Thanksgiving could be a lot of fun.” — Conan O’Brien

What Makes These Turkey Day Quotes So Hilarious?

1. “Thanksgiving without tension is like a Thanksgiving without turkey. It can be done, but it is not the norm.” — Mary Schmich

2. “The turkey. The sweet potatoes. The stuffing. The pumpkin pie. Is there anything else we can agree so vehemently about? I don’t think so.” — Nora Ephron

3. “If there’s a better way of showing thanks than eating a large bird followed by pie, I’d like to see it.” — Jake Vig

4. “If you stand in the meat section at the grocery store long enough, you start to get mad at turkeys. There’s turkey ham, turkey bologna, turkey pastrami. Someone needs to tell the turkey, ‘Man, just be yourself.’” — Mitch Hedberg

5. “A lot of Thanksgiving days have been ruined by not carving the turkey in the kitchen.” — Kin Hubbard

6. “Turkey: A large bird whose flesh, when eaten on certain religious anniversaries, has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude.” — Ambrose Bierce

7. “The Thankstini: A fun and delicious new novelty drink I invented. Cranberry juice, potato vodka, and a bouillon cube. Tastes just like a turkey dinner.” — Barney Stinson, How I Met Your Mother

8. “Cooking tip: Wrap turkey leftovers in aluminum foil and throw them out.” — Nicole Hollander

9. “Coexistence: What the farmer does with the turkey — until Thanksgiving.” — Mike Connolly

10. “We’re having something different this year for Thanksgiving. Instead of a turkey, we’re having a swan. You get more stuffing.” — George Carlin

11. “There’s always something to be thankful for on Thanksgiving. Even if it’s just not being a turkey.” — Unknown

12. “You can’t have Thanksgiving without turkey. That’s like the Fourth of July without apple pie or Friday with no two pizzas.” — Joey Tribbiani, “Friends”

13. “Turkey for me, turkey for you. Let’s eat the turkey in my big brown shoe.” — Adam Sandler, The Thanksgiving Song

14. “I heard about a trend where, this Thanksgiving, people made tiny turkeys. You may know them by their other name: chicken!” — Jerry Seinfeld

15. “Thanksgiving would be better if the pilgrims had shot a lobster and the Indians brought French fries.” — C’est la vie

16. “It took me three weeks to stuff the turkey. I stuffed it through the beak.” — Phyllis Diller

17. “I can’t cook a Thanksgiving dinner. All I can make is cold cereal and maybe toast.” — Charlie Brown

18. “If your in-laws are coming for Thanksgiving now is a good time to start brining the turkey in your tears.” — Rick Aaron

19. “Most turkeys taste better the day after; my mother’s tasted better the day before.” — Rita Rudner

20. “Once people are finished, tell them your signature Thanksgiving Bloody Mary gets most of its’ flavor from raw turkey gizzards.” — Martin Munson

Can These Funny Thanksgiving Quotes Make Your Holiday Even Happier?

1. “Happy Thanksgiving. Let’s regret our eating decisions this Thanksgiving as much as Native Americans regret trusting white people.” — Unknown

2. “Happy Thanksgiving! This year I’m thankful that your family is so annoying you’re checking Twitter instead of talking to them.” — Stephen Colbert

3. “Happy Thanksgiving!!! Or as I like to call it: Cheat Day.” — Hugh Jackman

4. “My Thanksgiving wish is that every time someone says they ate so much they’re going to explode, they actually do.” — Guy Endore-Kaiser

5. “Happy Thanksgiving! May the calories be abundant, and alcohol be plentiful in order to avoid talking politics with relatives!” — Felicia Day

6. “I’m thankful for each and every one of you. Now stop hiding in the broom closet reading tweets and get back with your family.” — Ellen DeGeneres

7. “Happy Thanksgiving and good luck masking your eating disorder this Thanksgiving.” — Unknown

8. “Happy Thanksgiving. Let’s eat enough to feed a third-world family for a month.” — Unknown

9. “May your stuffing be tasty. May your turkey be plump. May your potatoes and gravy have nary a lump. May your yams be delicious and your pies take the prize, and may your Thanksgiving dinner stay off your thighs!” — Unknown

10. “Make sure to bring up politics at Thanksgiving this month to save on Christmas gifts.” — Unknown