105 Funny Thanksgiving Quotes & Sayings (that you need this year!)

Happy Thanksgiving! We wish you a blessed and fabulous day of giving thanks this year. To get you ready for the great feast, the football, and the inevitable food coma, we’ve gathered the very best funny Thanksgiving quotes and sayings to entertain you until the Big Day!

Funny Turkey Quotes for Thanksgiving

1. “An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.” – Irma Bombeck (While not directly about a turkey, it hilariously implies the fate of the meal!)
2. “What did the turkey say to the turkey hunter? ‘Quack! Quack!’“
3. “Why did the turkey cross the road? It was the chicken’s day off.“
4. “I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.” (Again, highly relevant to the turkey meal!)
5. “A turkey is a large bird whose flesh, when eaten on certain religious anniversaries, has the peculiar effect of rendering the eater intolerably solemn for two hours.” – Ambrose Bierce
6. “Turkey: A large edible bird native to North America. If man had not domesticated it, it would have domesticated man, for its brain is larger than his in the ratio of its entire body to his.” – H. L. Mencken
7. “You can tell you ate too much for Thanksgiving when they ask you to unbutton your pants so you can fit on the couch.” (Implies the size of the turkey consumed!)
8. “My favorite part of Thanksgiving is the turkey. I love making it, cooking it, and especially eating it. And then, when it’s all done, I love taking a big nap.”
9. “What do you call a running turkey? Fast food!“
10. “The only thing that will be different this year is the turkey. It’ll be bigger.”
11. “Detente—isn’t that what a farmer has with his turkey—until Thanksgiving?” – Ronald Reagan
12. “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
13. “The turkey that every day greedily approaches the farmer who tosses him grain is not wrong. It is just that no one ever told him about Thanksgiving.” – Harry Golden
14. “Coexistence: What the farmer does with the turkey—until Thanksgiving.” – Mike Connolly
15. “I love spending Thanksgiving surrounded by all these great friends I met in the Best Buy parking lot.” (A funny post-turkey-dinner Black Friday reference.)
16. “What do you call a turkey on the day after Thanksgiving? Lucky!“
17. “I’m all about that baste life!” (A popular turkey pun/caption)
18. “What’s a turkey’s favorite Thanksgiving food? Nothing—it’s already stuffed.“
19. “We offered the turkey some dinner, but he was already stuffed.”
20. “The turkey looks a little under the feather this year.” (A play on ‘under the weather’)

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Family Quotes about Thanksgiving

1. “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
2. “After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.” – Oscar Wilde
3. “Thanksgiving, man. Not a good day to be my pants.” – Kevin James (Implies the family forces you to overeat!)
4. “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
5. “I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.” – Erma Bombeck

The Family & Survival Sayings

6. “Thanksgiving is a time to count your blessings, one by one, as each relative goes home.” – Melanie White
7. “We may not have it all together, but together, we have it all (and a whole lot of wine).”
8. “My family has two things in common: love for each other and love for matching stretchy pants.”
9. “This gang puts the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional every Thanksgiving.”
10. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the eons, it’s that you can’t give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it.” – Rick Riordan

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The Food & Conversation

11. “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
12. “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
13. “Every Thanksgiving I bring the champagne, because in my family we all know what our strengths are.” – Gloria Fallon
14. “Thanksgiving: Bringing out the best and worst in family cooks since 1621.”
15. “This family lets the gourd times roll on Thanksgiving.”

The Post-Meal Struggle after Thanksgiving Dinner

1. “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing! (Said every person after every Thanksgiving dinner ever.)”
2. “My favorite kind of exercise on Thanksgiving is a cross between a lunge and a lie-down.”
3. “I awoke this morning with the feeling that I had to catch up to my pants.”
4. “You know you’ve had a good Thanksgiving when you have to unbutton your jeans to put them in the laundry.”
5. “I’m thankful for sweatpants this holiday season.”

Funny Quotes about Leftovers

1. “Leftovers are proof that I love myself enough to eat twice.”
2. “What do you call the day after Thanksgiving? ‘Slam the fridge door repeatedly’ Day.”
3. “Black Friday is for amateurs. I’m taking on Leftover Saturday like a professional.”
4. “My Thanksgiving diet starts the Monday after next.”
5. “I may need an entire roll of aluminum foil just for my own plate of leftovers.”
6. “The main difference between a regular sandwich and a Thanksgiving leftover sandwich is that the latter requires elastic waistbands.”
7. “I’m pretty sure my Thanksgiving leftovers have been the main ingredient in every meal I’ve eaten since Thursday.”
8. “What do you call a Thanksgiving dinner that you eat the next day? A rerun.”
9. “My favorite way to eat leftover turkey is in a turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce burrito. Don’t knock it ’til you try it.”
10. “A clean fridge after Thanksgiving is a sure sign of failure.”
11. “What do you call a person who is happy on Monday after Thanksgiving? Someone who still has leftovers.”
12. “I love leftovers. It’s like having a free week of meal prep that you didn’t have to plan.”
13. “Why did the turkey leftovers need therapy? Because they were experiencing deep freezer burn.”
14. “Leftovers are proof that I loved myself enough to cook extra.”
15. “The real star of Thanksgiving is the Tupperware container holding all those glorious leftovers.”

Dieting & Guilt on Thanksgiving

1. “I’m on a 30-day diet… so far, I’ve lost 15 days.” (Perfect for the day after!)
2. “A lot of people are getting stomach aches this holiday season because they are keeping all the stuffing inside them.” – Craig Ferguson
3. “On Thanksgiving Day, we get together with our family and feast until we’re forced to unzip our pants.” – Unknown
4. “Thanksgiving: When is it safe to say that I ate the equivalent of a small turkey?”
5. “Tryptophan is not a thing. The food coma is caused by excessive family and pie.”

Thanksgiving Captions for Instagram

The Punny Food Shots (Great for a picture of a dish)

1. #SquashGoals (Perfect for showing off a side dish)
2. It’s all gravy from here.
3. “Hit me, gravy, one more time.”
4. I yam what I yam.
5. Let the gourd times roll!
6. Casse-rollin’ with my homies.
7. This turkey is poultry in motion.
8. Talk turkey to me.
9. Nobody puts gravy in the corner.
10. I’m thankful for my resting pie face.

The Sarcastic & Relatable Family Feast Captions for Instagram

11. Feast Mode: Engaged.
12. Relationship Status: Stuffed.
13. My diet starts Monday… The one after next.
14. Warning: Food coma ahead.
15. I came, I saw, I gobbled.
16. Calories don’t count when Grandma’s cooking.
17. We’ll worry about the Christmas tree later. Today it’s all about the poul-tree.
18. Petition for a new Thanksgiving dress code: Sweatpants.
19. FACT: You can’t answer your family’s questions if you always have food in your mouth.
20. I just finished cleaning the house, so if you’re looking for my family, they’ll be in the backyard until Thursday. (For the host)

Quotes & Jokes from the turkey’s perspective

1. “Why do we call it Thanksgiving? We’re the ones getting eaten, it should be called ‘Thanks-taking!’“
2. “My only goal this week is to survive until Friday. Wish me luck!”
3. “I tried to get invited to the vegan table, but they said they were having ‘tofurkey’ instead. Traitors!”
4. “They say I’m the star of the show. I prefer to think of myself as the ‘main sacrifice.’“
5. “I heard the family arguing about politics. I’m just hoping they forget I’m here.”
6. “I’m thankful for one thing: the oven’s temperature setting. It’s too hot for me to care anymore.”
7. “I have a sinking feeling about this whole ‘big feast’ idea.”
8. “My disguise as a large chicken didn’t work. Maybe next year I’ll try being a glazed ham.”
9. “This whole ‘free-range’ thing? Turns out it was just a lot more running for my life.”
10. “I thought I was safe when the farmer said he was a vegetarian. Turns out he just doesn’t eat meat… except for once a year.”

It’s a hard life being a turkey on Thanksgiving

1. “I knew I shouldn’t have been practicing my dance moves. Now the family is talking about the ‘Turkey Trot.’“
2. “My biggest fear isn’t the oven; it’s being compared to the size of my cousin, Butterball.”
3. “Why do people insist on stuffing me? I already have enough problems with low self-esteem.”
4. “They call this a ‘holiday.’ For me, it’s just ‘The Day I Fly South (to the Dinner Table).'”
5. “I’m considering forming a band. We’ll only play the drumsticks.”
6. “Does anyone else think ‘All About That Baste’ is a really unsettling song?”
7. “I tried hiding in the pumpkin patch, but all the squash kept yelling, ‘Watch out for the knife!'”
8. “My lawyer told me my chances of survival were ‘slim pickin’s.’“
9. “This whole process is completely illogical. If they’re so ‘thankful,’ why do I have to die?”
10. “If I had known my fate, I would have changed my name to ‘Beef Wellington.’“
11. “I’ve been in a foul mood all week, and frankly, I don’t care about my table manners anymore.”
12. “They keep asking me how I feel. The answer is: ‘stuffed up,’ and not in a good way.”
13. “I’m practicing my best impression of a chicken. Hopefully, they’ll settle for chicken nuggets this year.”
14. “My life flash before my eyes, and honestly, it was mostly just me gobbling.”
15. “I hear the pilgrims liked me well enough. But then again, they were a bit (Pil)grim themselves.”

This blog post was originally written on 1 October 2020 and last updated on 14 November 2025.