Don’t Feel Bad If All You Bring Is Wine

Or ice cream. That works too.

This year, my Thanksgiving celebration will be small. I’m eating dinner at home with my sisters and a close friend. After we’ve fought with each other for an appropriate amount of time, we’ll bundle up and head to a friend’s house for dessert. When I asked her what I should bring for dessert, she assured me that they had it covered.

“There will be at least three pies,” she told me. “Just bring wine. It’s okay. Really, don’t worry about it.” I wrote “wine???” on my shopping list and assured here that I’d bring something. I worried because worrying is an essential part of my diet, along with peanut butter toast and wondering every day whether or not I’m doing the right thing.

When someone invites you to their home for dinner or even or dessert, showing up empty-handed feels wrong. If they put in the effort to make something that you will inevitably enjoy, it’s only kind to return the favor. For years, potlucks and the like filled me with a sense of dread. What if the salad I made isn’t enough? Do I look like cheap or worse, ungrateful, if I show up to a dinner party with a six pack and a wheel of Brie purchased at the fancy bodega on the way to the train? Am I being an ungrateful guest for not implicitly understanding what’s required of me when someone blithely, casually assures me that I don’t really need to bring anything at all?

Overthinking these things is a lovely way to spend an afternoon. But, after five years of hosting holiday dinners in my home for friends and family, I think I’ve finally come to peace with something that many, many other people have long ago: it’s okay to just bring wine.

By the end of the meal, there usually is no more wine. There’s maybe a half bottle of a red that no one realy likes tucked away behind a stack of dirty plates or a few Tecates from the summer way in the back of the fridge. Dessert is everyone’s go-to panic purchase for a dinner party of holiday gathering but all the wine or the beer or the cider bourbon punch is usually gone halfway through dinner. No one can physically fit more food in their stomachs by dessert; the one piece of pumpkin pie you pick at in a desultory fashion is mostly for show. Everyone knows the dessert left over after a big, abundant dinner is best consumed the morning after, with a cup of coffee in a silent home. Wine, on the other hand — or ice cream, if you want, I’m not picky — is always welcome.

It’s okay to just bring wine. Everyone will love it. Just bring the wine. Do it. Go to the store; get the wine; put it in a bag, show up. You’ve done your part and it is just enough.

Support The Billfold

The Billfold continues to exist thanks to support from our readers. Help us continue to do our work by making a monthly pledge on Patreon or a one-time-only contribution through PayPal.