The spirit of Thanksgiving

Dwarfed by the 400 pound yuletide gorilla that is Christmas, Thanksgiving is a holiday that never really gets its due respect.  Widely regarded as a preamble to the real holiday season, Thanksgiving has been bullied and demeaned by commercial interests until now, where it is merely the placeholder before Black Friday.  Unlike Christmas, whose murky backstory is hung with New Testament legend and pagan solstice leftovers, Thanksgiving's meaning is one very few bother to investigate. 

Nobody needs a monologue from Linus to explain what Thanksgiving is about. We learned about its origin in elementary school, and the imperialist fable of starving colonists breaking bread with generous natives only reinforces our collective guilt about that whole genocide thing.  Fortunately, Columbus Day is the holiday that bears the burden of our forefather's small pox blanket sins, but that still leaves Thanksgiving with a tale that no one, outside of a classroom play, is eager to retell.

Unless you count Disney's "Squanto: A Warrior's Tale," Thanksgiving does not have that much cinematic appeal.  Christmas movies are only outnumbered by the endless renditions of "Jingle Bell Rock" played ad nauseam throughout malls, but once you separate Christmas with the Kranks and the Santa Claus sequels (basically anything with Tim Allen) from the pile, you are left with more than a few bona fide classics.  Whether they star Santa himself, or just a plucky little girl, Christmas films invariably feature a quest for a Grinch's redemption followed by a self congratulating bout of holiday cheer.

The paltry pile of films featuring Thanksgiving are not enough to make a leftover sandwich.  If their scarcity was not already an insult, they further demean Turkey Day by presenting it as a background set for dysfunctional family melodrama.

The only true Thanksgiving classic, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (which, thankfully, the Alamo is showing this year) is not just hilarious, but it is the singular film that presents Thanksgiving as the wonderful reward at the end of a long journey, making all the hardship suffered, en- route, worth it in the end.

I have never lived in close proximity to much of my extended family, so growing up, Thanksgiving was a nuclear family affair, and not much of one, at that.  It was not until I left home that my love of T-Day began to grow like an expanding post-feast waistline.  Though I secretly dislike the term "Orphan's Thanksgiving," feeling that it demeans the importance of friendship, the Thanksgivings I have spent sans family have been the most memorable (well, depending on how much "holiday spirits" I imbibe) and the most fulfilling. 

Coming together with people you are not genetically obligated to spend time with makes the holiday a much more consensual affair.  Plus, almost every Orphan's Thanksgiving is a potluck, due to my peers reluctance to tackle an entire feast single-handedly, and thus the meal ends up as an overstuffed cornucopia of nostalgic classic (yams with tiny marshmallows!) and modern, tofu based alternatives.

Whether it is the tryptophan in the turkey, or the egg nog in my belly, I always finish off Thanksgiving with an immense, almost delirious, feeling of satisfaction.  It would be easy to blame it on that fourth plate of pumpkin pie, but I like to think that the warmth I am feeling is spiritual rather than gastronomical.  Surrounded by friends indulging in their food comas, we traditionally put on a classic Christmas film, for lack of a better alternative, and drift away in a stuffed stupor.  In that moment of full belly bliss, I feel like I understand the true spirit of Thanksgiving, more than any other holiday out there.  And for that, I give thanks.