I posted this just before Thanksgiving of 2003…
Having recently done a big "Bah, Humbug!" to Halloween, we now turn our attention to Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is no great deal to me, and really hasn't been since about the time I got out of school and it no longer yielded a four-day weekend. When you're self-employed, you're like the atheist who is dismayed at the lack of holidays in his life. We work when we have to work and taking four days off just puts us four days behind. Then there is this matter of parades. Once upon a time, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was a joy carried on both CBS and NBC.
One year, one channel was almost exactly a half-hour ahead of the other so if I saw a float I liked on NBC at 8:42 AM, I'd make a note and switch over to see it again on CBS at 9:12. The parade was festive and colorful and if it was freezing in New York, as it usually seemed to be on Thanksgiving Day, I could sit in sunny Los Angeles and watch other people shiver and exhale visible breath. But the last few times I tuned in to the Macy's festivities, they were only on one channel, they were truncated down to supposed highlights, and what was there was pretty much a marching infomercial for upcoming movies and TV shows, toy promotions and videogames. I suppose there was always some of that but it had gotten too prevalent and pushy for me to enjoy.
So what's left to love about Thanksgiving? Well, big family gatherings to eat turkey were fun in their way, but most of my family has passed away and when what's left gathers, it only reminds us of lost loved ones. Plus, eating turkey is no big deal. Since I cut way back on red meat, I dine on turkey two or three times a week, and I'm not the only one. Year-round turkey consumption in America is way up. Lately in the market, you find it in all sorts of forms — burgers and filets and ground turkey and turkey meatballs. Someone has even brought out a turkey-and-gravy soda. If they could figure out a way to get a potato and some carrots in there, they'd have almost everything I eat in one bottle. And everything I like about Thanksgiving.