Thanksgiving Music

DJ Gobble in da' hizz-ouse!

It's always been particularly vexing how, when I discuss the lack of songs related to Thanksgiving, people are always so eager to mention Adam Sandler's Thanksgiving song.  Mentioning this song would be like being asked to list the classic Christmas songs and starting off with "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" or "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells."  The problem is that in the Christmas example, the person is probably trying to be funny. In the case of Thanksgiving, they think they're trying to be funny, but if you prod them to cite other Thanksgiving songs they'll likely draw a blank. This is because, sadly, a joke song is currently the best known song--among a very small list of songs--related to the holiday!

The situation isn't improving, what with the recent release of the viral sensation "It's Thanksgiving."  This autotuned dance/pop piece was produced by PMW Live, the same talent that brought the world 2011's "Friday."  If you were familiar with that work, then you already know what to expect from this.  It's something that so perfectly mimics the trappings of Top 40 music that one twists their mind trying to figure out if it's a parody or overly calculated product. 

Why does Thanksgiving get the shaft when it comes to music?  Is it just considered too specific a holiday, conceptually, to warrant songs?  After all, the 4th of July can co-opt anything vaguely patriotic, and Christmas can lay claim to any song involving good will toward mankind, but does something like taking stock of what one has in life and giving thanks just not spark creative spirit?  The "It's Thanksgiving" song managed to touch on that concept in its opening lines!  How can it be that effectively engineered to be bad can hit at the core of the holiday while legitimate songwriters pass it up?  Is the concept just not considered serious enough to approach, which is why a joke song remains the most well known one related to the holiday?  Or is it that nobody is willing to finance the endeavor, figuring that between the Halloween & Christmas playlists there's simply no more money to be made?

Below are some links to further explore the matter.

• Where are All the Thanksgiving Songs @ SparkLife
• Nicole Westbrook Goes Viral with "It's Thanksgiving" Song Video @ ABC News
• Top 10 Pop Songs for Thanksgiving @ About.com (This list actually has some solid recommendations, although it does unfortunately include the Adam Sandler song and a couple that are real stretches in terms of fitting the theme.)
• How am I Supposed to Write a Thanksgiving Songlist? How? @ Pajiba (Has a very unique interpretation on Thanksgiving music.)
• Songs for Thanksgiving @ Reflections of Pop Culture & Life's Challenges (A well thought-out list of songs, even breaking them up between the secular and more religious options.) 

But why should Thanksgiving be more popular?

Last year I spent time showing evidence that Thanksgiving was the least popular of the three major holidays during the fourth quarter of the year.  However I might not have clearly established why this was a problem in need of correcting.  Well, the reasons for needing to enhance Thanksgiving's position in the holiday pantheon are as follows.  Note that this is all very United States-centric; I don't care about Thanksgiving being in competition with the Emperor's Birthday in Japan or something.

1. Halloween and Christmas are essentially religious holidays.  Granted, the pagan origins of Halloween are heavily obscured in its observance these days, but not enough to the point that it doesn't court controversy.  Alternatives to Halloween are commonly offered up by Christians, this year there was a big push for Jesusween.   The thing is, Christians (including its  myriad variations) make up about 76% of the country's population.  Those outside of Christianity have their own alternatives such as Hanukkah for Jews, Kwanzaa for black people, and Eid al-Adha for Muslims.
2. Thanksgiving, being a non-religious holiday, is thus open to all Americans.  This makes it especially important as a holiday to encourage everyone to participate in given that one of the ideas America was founded on was to not endorse one religion over another.  It might be a little weird for a Jewish person to invite his Muslim neighbor to share in celebrating Hanukkah.  There are a lot of racial divides there.  However anyone should be able to celebrate Thanksgiving together.
3. Thanksgiving is distinctly American.  All of those religious holidays can be celebrated anywhere else in the world where there's a large enough concentration of people of that religion.  Even Halloween is celebrated worldwide, including China where it's called Teng Chieh.  Yes, the Canadians have a Thanksgiving, but it's at a different time (also considered the wrong time.)  The Japanese have one, too, but that's more akin to America's Labor Day (these days; it's timing is based on a harvest festival.)
4. Thanksgiving is an awesome holiday, emphasizing food.  Now that the touchy feely crap is out of the way let's consider that every holiday has its thing.  Valentine's Day is about kisses and stuff, the Fourth July has its explosions and marching bands, Halloween entails scares and candy.  Thanksgiving?  Any reasonable person will associate Thanksgiving with a feast (the unreasonable ones, in attempting to sound all deep, will wax poetic about spending time with family and reflecting.)  Food is awesome.  We, as living things, need food.  We don't need explosions in the sky or even candy.  As such, Thanksgiving is a holiday that focuses on something universal that everybody can agree to.
5. It's controversial.  Building on the idea of American Thanksgiving being uniquely American is the controversy around it.  On the one hand, people love to kvetch about how Thanksgiving marks the beginning of Europeans' encroachment on these lands and the eventual demise of the Native Americans.  On the other hand, it's the only major holidays that acknowledges the Native Americans.   Sure, there's a Native American Day celebrated on the fourth Friday of September, but when was the last time anybody even mentioned that (besides right now)?  Christians may have contend with some opposition to their views around Christmas, but that's something that affects the religion.  The controversy around the Native Americans becomes a distinctly American issue.

So there, five reasons why Thanksgiving deserves to be more important than Christmas and Halloween.  See my posts from last year for the evidence of Thanksgiving not being more popular than them.  Hopefully, we can fix this problem in 2012!