More Conclusive Evidence that Thanksgiving is Unpopular

Popular culture, as the name implies, is the culture of the popular.  In the United States is takes on a bizarre, recursive relationship with the zeitgeist. The things people like are both reflected by and defined by popular culture.  One of the powerful elements of popular culture is media, and in the case of this article, movies in particular.  What's more American than going to the movies?

Let's take a look at what the movies have to say about Thanksgiving.

First up is a Moviefone article from last year, listing 21 of the "best" Thanksgiving movies.  Let's see, they have:

1. Planes, Trains, & Automobiles
2. Pieces of April
3. Dutch
4. Son in Law
5. The Ice Storm
6. The House of Yes
7. The Myth of Fingerprints
8. Home for the Holidays
9. Funny People
10. Hannah & Her Sisters
11. Brokeback Mountain
12. Scent of a Woman
13. Miracle on 34th Street
14. Tadpole
15. Nobody's Fool
16. Thankskilling
17. She's Gotta' Have It
18. Alice's Restaurant
19. Rescue Down
20. Grindhouse
21. The Big Chill

Did you notice something about the list?  How about the fact that you probably haven't heard of about half of them.  Another quarter were ones that you likely had to think very hard to even recall that there was a scene involving Thanksgiving.  Finally the last quarter were solidly "Thanksgiving Movies."  Heck, I saw Funny People and thought it was a very underrated movie but I was surprised to see it on the list because I couldn't recall a scene that took place during Thanksgiving.  Heck, Miracle on 34th Street, despite having a sequence set during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, is widely regarded as a Christmas movie due to its focus on Santa Claus.  In fact that's how most of this list read: like somebody struggled desperately to think of any movie anywhere with a connection to Thanksgiving, no matter how tangential, to produce a list of "Thanksgiving Movies."

Now, let's compare this to Christmas movies.  In fact, how about we compare it to just one particular Christmas movie.  How many times has A Christmas Carol been adapted to the big screen?  According to this Wikipedia entry, at least 22 times.