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Thanksgiving Questions to Ask Your Grandparents (That Get More Than "Fine")
By Heirleaf · Published October 5, 2026
The Thanksgiving questions that get real stories from a grandparent ask about one thing they can picture: a dish, a stove, a car ride, a kitchen at six in the morning. "What was Thanksgiving like?" gets "fine"; "What happened to the leftovers in the days after?" gets a story about a cousin and a cold turkey sandwich.
Below are 20, grouped so you can pick two or three for the day, with a few tips on asking them at a busy table. You can print 15 of them on one page, no email needed.
We write questions for a living: our life story book is built on them, with rules like "ask for a scene, never a summary" and "never assume who was there". These follow the same rules, and none of them repeats our Christmas list.
Prints 15 of these questions, a good place to start, in large type on one page. You can also save it as a PDF from the print window.
The food
1. Which dish on that table would surprise people today?
2. What was on your plate that you refused to eat as a child?
3. What came at the end of the meal, and how was it served?
4. What happened to the leftovers in the days after?
5. What would you put on the table this year that nobody makes anymore?
The kitchen
6. What time did the cooking start, and who was up first?
7. Describe the stove that the meal was cooked on.
8. What did you learn to make for that meal, and who showed you how?
9. If you ever cooked the whole meal yourself, tell me about the first time.
Getting there
10. How did you get to where the meal was, and how long did it take?
11. What did you see out the window on the way there?
12. Who opened the door when you arrived, and what did they say first?
The day itself
13. Where were the children sent while the cooking went on?
14. What was on the radio or the television that day?
15. What, if anything, was said before everyone started eating?
16. What happened in the hours after everyone had eaten?
17. What did the house look like the morning after?
Other years
18. If one year the meal was very different, tell me about that year.
19. Tell me about a Thanksgiving you spent somewhere you didn't expect to be.
20. If Thanksgiving wasn't part of your childhood, tell me about the big shared meal instead.
How to ask at the table
Ask before the meal or after it, not during. The kitchen while something is in the oven, or the quiet hour after dessert, works better than the moment the plates are going round.
Ask one person, not the whole table. A question thrown at twelve people gets twelve short answers; the same question asked to one grandparent, with everyone else listening, gets a story.
Let the youngest ask. A question read out by a nine-year-old is hard to answer with "oh, I don't know". The printable on this page is set in large type, easy for a child to read aloud.
Follow the detail, not the list. If the answer to the stove question turns into a story about a neighbor, stay with the neighbor. "And then what happened?" is the best follow-up there is.
Not everyone grew up with Thanksgiving, or with the same people around the table. Every question here can be answered with "we didn't", and question 20 is there for the grandparent who grew up somewhere else.
For questions about the rest of their life, not just the holiday, there are questions to ask your grandmother and questions to ask your dad on their own pages, and a different set for Christmas.
If you want to record the conversation
Ask first, and say where the recording will go. Most people say yes once they know it's for the family.
StoryCorps runs the Great Thanksgiving Listen, which it started in 2015: it invites people to record a conversation with an elder, a mentor or a friend over the holiday, using its free StoryCorps App or StoryCorps Connect, which works in a web browser for conversations at a distance. The interview becomes part of the StoryCorps Archive at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
If a grandchild is doing the asking, StoryCorps sets an age limit: under-13s can't take part, and under-18s need a parent's consent.
If you want the answers to become a book by Christmas
Thanksgiving is a month before Christmas, and what you hear at the table can be the start of a gift. Heirleaf sends questions like these, one at a time, and your grandparent answers by writing or simply by talking. Nothing they say is rewritten, and their answers become a typeset book they can download and print. It's $49 in the US, paid once, with no subscription and no deadline.
You can read a whole sample book to see what it looks like; its narrator is invented.
Questions people ask
- How many questions should I ask at Thanksgiving?
- Two or three. One question that opens a story is worth more than a list that gets short answers, and the rest will still be there next time.
- What if my grandparent didn't grow up celebrating Thanksgiving?
- Ask about the big shared meal where they did grow up: who cooked, where everyone sat, what was on the table. Most of the questions above work for any feast once you swap the name of the day.
- Can I print these questions?
- Yes. The print button near the top of this page prints 15 of them in large type on one page, and you can save it as a PDF from the print window. You don't have to give us your email.
15 Thanksgiving Questions to Ask Your Grandparents
- 1Which dish on that table would surprise people today?
- 2What was on your plate that you refused to eat as a child?
- 3What happened to the leftovers in the days after?
- 4What would you put on the table this year that nobody makes anymore?
- 5What time did the cooking start, and who was up first?
- 6What did you learn to make for that meal, and who showed you how?
- 7How did you get to where the meal was, and how long did it take?
- 8Who opened the door when you arrived, and what did they say first?
- 9Where were the children sent while the cooking went on?
- 10What was on the radio or the television that day?
- 11What, if anything, was said before everyone started eating?
- 12What happened in the hours after everyone had eaten?
- 13If one year the meal was very different, tell me about that year.
- 14Tell me about a Thanksgiving you spent somewhere you didn't expect to be.
- 15If Thanksgiving wasn't part of your childhood, tell me about the big shared meal instead.
Turn these answers into a book to keep. heirleaf.com
Questions from heirleaf.com, free to print and share. Heirleaf turns the answers into a book: a life, word for word.