Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:6pm. I don’t understand all these people who eat at 2. Even 6 feels early.

We eat dinner before 6PM on a normal day. For holiday meals we do the "late lunch" time slot, otherwise no one would eat any of the desserts. But most of our family gatherings wind down around 8:30-9, even before kids.

Welp, everyone does things differently and survives, right? We never eat dinner at 6pm on normal days. Our big holiday gatherings tend to wind down around 11pm (later if they're adults only). The kids who live in the hosting house go to bed about a half hour to an hour after their normal bedtime, and other kids either stay up or fall asleep on the couches or whatever.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:6pm. I don’t understand all these people who eat at 2. Even 6 feels early.

I get that 6pm even feels early. The problem with kids is that they need regularly scheduled meals. My kids are well behaved, but even 30 min off from their regular meal time and they're HANGRY and cranky. If I feed my kids a snack, then they won't eat the meal. Adults are fine changing their eating patterns around, but a 2 year old? Nope.

Yeah, my youngest (age 3) normally eats dinner at 5:30 but since there'll be appetizers he can be pushed to 6pm without a problem and will happily still eat the meal.

People may come at 2 for appetizers and hanging out, dinner served at 4pm

We can eat, spend decent time with family, and still clean up and get everyone out and all to bed at a decent hour.

My mother always does it at 4 pm and I hate it because we are too full to enjoy dessert. I'd rather eat at 2 and have dessert at 5 or 6.

Just DH and I we will eat 8-8:30.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:6pm. I don’t understand all these people who eat at 2. Even 6 feels early.

I get that 6pm even feels early. The problem with kids is that they need regularly scheduled meals. My kids are well behaved, but even 30 min off from their regular meal time and they're HANGRY and cranky. If I feed my kids a snack, then they won't eat the meal. Adults are fine changing their eating patterns around, but a 2 year old? Nope.

Fully agree. My kids are grown up now, so we do whatever works for our guests, but when they were little, 2 pm was basically an hour after they should have gone down for their naps, so a meal then was a predictable disaster. I didn't care if people wanted to eat then, but I was not open to suggestions that we should join them. Tried it a couple of times, always a huge mistake.

Anonymous wrote:6pm. I don’t understand all these people who eat at 2. Even 6 feels early.

We eat dinner before 6PM on a normal day. For holiday meals we do the "late lunch" time slot, otherwise no one would eat any of the desserts. But most of our family gatherings wind down around 8:30-9, even before kids.

Anonymous wrote:6pm. I don’t understand all these people who eat at 2. Even 6 feels early.

I don't understand the people who eat late. But as I posted early we go to a movie as a family after dinner. I love it as it's the only time my grandmas will go to a movie and it's always a family friendly something so the kids can go too.

Anonymous wrote:6pm. I don’t understand all these people who eat at 2. Even 6 feels early.

I get that 6pm even feels early. The problem with kids is that they need regularly scheduled meals. My kids are well behaved, but even 30 min off from their regular meal time and they're HANGRY and cranky. If I feed my kids a snack, then they won't eat the meal. Adults are fine changing their eating patterns around, but a 2 year old? Nope.

Probably around 4pm this year.

If it's my family, we'll eat at around 5:30 or so. DH's family eats super early, more like a lunch IMO. But, there is food swirling around all day so it really doesn't matter. We're hosting this year and have to serve dinner after the football game, whenever that is. So, I'm guessing 4??

6pm. I don’t understand all these people who eat at 2. Even 6 feels early.

I love 4 pm.

Schedule like this :

8/9 am, “big” breakfast at home - really just eggs, bagels, bacon, sausage, fruit salad

1 pm - apps! I love apps for lunch, kids can nap during this time, perfect.

4 pm - naps are done, dinner is served

5 pm - outside time if desired, a walk or playtime for the kids

6 pm - set out desserts, eat those and drink wine and turn on a Christmas movie!

That’s my perfectly timed thanksgiving day 😊 (which never goes perfectly according to plan lol)

The correct answer is 3pm

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate the late afternoon time slot. I think we’re doing around 1pm this year.

then what time will ppl leave?

Whenever they want? Some of the extended family will probably leave around 5, most of the kids will probably sleep over. My parents don’t serve alcohol, so that’s definitely a relevant note for timing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We do it at our regular dinner time, around 7:30.

I would chew my arm off before then. I've had two late dinners like that with my in-laws. Everyone drinks WAY too much, and fills up on crap.

4-5pm is ideal for our family, then we have time to have seconds a few hours later.

I'm the one you're responding to. I guess if we changed up our eating earlier in the day, it would be a problem. But we have breakfast and lunch at the usual time, maybe a slightly lighter lunch, so it's really not much different from a regular day, except dinner is obviously a bit bigger and more involved than usual. We don't eat seconds later on as it would be too late.