The holiday season, with its sparkly presents and jingling bells and commercially manufactured joy, generally comes with the stress of having to spend extended amounts of time with family members you’d rather not see (like your homophobic Uncle Bob). But Thanksgiving—for me at least—has developed into a tradition that I share with my college friends, which is why it's become my favorite holiday of the year.

Every year we try to gather over the long Thanksgiving weekend to cook a feast together, collapse on the floor in a post-dinner stupor while watching cheesy movies, and generally catch up about our lives. Since we live all over the country and some of us live in Europe, getting together once a year is a big deal, and something we all look forward to.

Thanksgiving isn’t the time for complex and multilayered movies like The Hours or High Art. While you’re digesting that second or third helping of stuffing, you don’t want your brain to be taxed by trying to figure out what’s up with Virginia Woolf’s weirdly lesbian relationship with her sister, or Ally Sheedy's downward spiral. There will be plenty of time for that in the new year after you’ve made your resolution to be a more politically active and culturally sophisticated dyke. For Thanksgiving, I recommend that you stick to movies that will aid digestion.

The Thanksgiving-themed What’s Cooking? (2000) is perfect for playing while the turkey is roasting. Written and directed by Bend It Like Beckham’s Gurinder Chadha, What’s Cooking tells the stories of four Los Angeles families, including the Seeligs, a Jewish family with a lesbian daughter, Rachel (Kyra Segwick). When Rachel brings her girlfriend Carla (Juliana Margulies) home for the weekend, her parents ask her to pretend that she and Carla are just roommates so that the rest of the family doesn’t find out. What ensues is a comical, sometimes difficult, and ultimately truthful Thanksgiving dinner as Rachel and Carla come out to their family, including their homophobic Uncle David.

Another Thanksgiving-themed movie with a queer twist is Home for the Holidays (1995), directed by Jodie Foster. Claudia Larson (Holly Hunter) comes home for Thanksgiving to discover that her gay brother Tommy (Robert Downey Jr.) has a new boyfriend, Leo Fish (Dylan McDermott). What’s great about this film is that the family’s interactions perfectly capture the tensions, squabbles, and love that are typical in many families’ holidays. In addition, the fact that Tommy is gay is nothing new; he’s just one part of the family, and his sexual orientation isn’t a big deal.

Once you’ve finished your Thanksgiving dinner and have retired to the living room to recline on any horizontal surface available, it will be time to pop in a few movies that you can watch while lightly dozing. For the past couple of Thanksgivings I’ve found myself entranced by the cheerleaders of Bring It On (2000) and the Britney Spears road-trip flick Crossroads (2002)—although I have to admit I fell asleep during that last one (I did wake up to watch her little song-and-dance number halfway through). These aren’t Oscar-worthy films, but given the amount of tryptophan running through your system, you won’t want anything too challenging.

For the cheesy gay-girl romantic in you, I recommend Better Than Chocolate (1999), which the New York Times succinctly described as a “giddy, occasionally dopey but extremely good-hearted comedy.” In this sexy little Canadian romance, 19-year-old lesbian bookstore clerk Maggie (Karyn Dwyer) meets and falls in love with bohemian artist Kim (Christina Cox). In keeping with our family theme, Maggie’s mom and brother come for a visit, and although initially Maggie tries to keep her lesbian relationship a secret, it all comes out well in the end.

The flawed but endearing lesbian friendship flick Everything Relative (1996) is another good choice for the post-turkey movie fest. In this movie, a group of mostly lesbian college friends get together in Northampton for a reunion 20 years after graduation. (Let’s guess which college they went to.) These women have gone in varied career directions, but they all share the common bond of college friendship and yes, many of them have slept with each other. While the fashion and acting and dialogue might be less than stellar, Everything Relative has its own nostalgic charm—especially if you’re hanging out with your mostly lesbian college friends over Thanksgiving.

After the sappy but loveable Better Than Chocolate and Everything Relative, you might actually be ready for something a little more edgy. A great option this year is the teen-flick satire Saved! Starring Mandy Moore as Hilary Faye, a super-Christian popular girl at American Eagle Christian High School, Saved! also features Heather Matarazzo (The Princess Diaries) as Tia, and Mary-Louise Parker (Fried Green Tomatoes) as the mother of Hilary’s friend Mary (Jena Malone). Mary’s boyfriend Dean (Chad Faust) fears that he might be gay, and in order to save him from damnation, Mary decides to have sex with him, believing that Jesus will restore her virginity. Unfortunately, Mary gets pregnant, and Dean gets sent to the Mercy House for “degayification.” (Think a shorter version of But I’m a Cheerleader.)

I’m not sure what movies my friends and I will watch this year, although I’m personally pushing for a rerun of Bring It On (remember Eliza Dushku with that key dyke accessory, the chain wallet?). But I know that in the end what’s most important is not the films we nap through, but the time we spend together.

Cheesy as it may sound, Thanksgiving does give us the opportunity to reconnect with the people we have come to know and love—in other words: family, however you choose to define it.

AfterEllen.com will be on hiatus through Thanksgiving weekend. We’ll be back on Monday with more insightful, culturally sophisticated commentary on queer women—and probably a few extra pounds.