Ah, the holidays are coming.  It doesn’t matter what holiday, there’s going to be a sale to celebrate it, a parade to commemorate it, a special computer search engine page to recognize it, and fireworks to cap it off.  Except  Thanksgiving.

Poor Thanksgiving has gotten squeezed out.  In the real world it seems that Thanksgiving is the signal to begin work on our Christmas projects.  Christmas decorations go up the weekend after Thanksgiving, Christmas cookies get baked and frozen the weekend after Thanksgiving, Christmas card lists are reviewed and amended the Sunday after Thanksgiving, Christmas party invitations are sent the day after Thanksgiving, and Christmas shopping starts at midnight Thanksgiving evening. 

But in world of television and movies, Thanksgiving is holding its own!  Steve Martin and John Candy celebrated the lengths that one will go through to be with family on Thanksgiving, even driving halfway across country alternately in a burned out car and the trailer half of a tractor-trailer combination.   If it weren’t for Thanksgiving we might never know how enamored Al Pacino became with hoo-hah and that it’s ok to want to punch out your dinner guest.  You will never forget WKRP’s Mr. Carlson covered in feathers declaring in all seriousness, “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”  And it’s ok to admit that you wish every year that you could be sitting down to a feast of toast and popcorn if Snoopy is serving it.

They tell us that Thanksgiving is for families and friends to gather, to be thankful they are still friends and family.  It’s a time to reflect on the year’s accomplishments, vacations, fun weekends, and all that went into getting almost all the way through another year.  Isn’t it funny that one of the most enduring images of the most American of holidays is as dysfunctional as mistaking turkeys for birds of flight?

Thanksgiving isn’t a time to celebrate another year travelled on the perfect path to great successes.  You want perfection, go to New York and watch the faux musicals re-enacted on 34^th Street.  You want a celebration, be at our table.  There’ll be talk about the failures, the never ending projects, the worked weekends, and all that we still have in front of us before this year is over.  And our most endearing image will be of everyone as loving as Charlie Brown is to his friends always wanting to do something special for them, always failing but always part of the inner circle. 

Welcome to our table of love and dysfunction!  It’s ok.  They really do go together.  If it wasn’t for the one, we’d never try to extend ourselves risking the other.  And if it wasn’t for the other, we’d never truly appreciate the one.  They go together like friends and family, joy and happiness, and toast and popcorn.  There’s always room for more, there’s always enough love for extras, and there’s always just enough wrong to give real thanks for the right.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?