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!

Courting Controversy

Let's talk about the elephant in the room in regards to Thanksgiving: Native Americans.

Some holiday curmudgeons insist that Thanksgiving doesn't warrant recognition because it celebrates a "story of murder."  The sentiment is held by many and observed in many ways.  Some celebrate an Un-Thanksgiving to recognize the deaths of Native Americans. History books are rife with guilt-laden accounts of how horrific the Europeans treated the Native Americans.

Okay, we get it, the Native Americans might have gotten a raw deal eventually.  Did that happen on Thanksgiving? No.  So why pick on this holiday?  Do you see anyone else doing similar things?

1. Do Jewish people protest the recognition of Oktoberfest because of Germany's role in the Holocaust?
2. Does ... everybody ... protest the celebration of Christmas because of the role Christianity played in oppressing native cultures the world over?
3. Do the middle eastern nations get angry when Americans celebrate our Independence Day?
4. Do Southerners get all pissed off every President's Day because of Abraham Lincoln's role in the Civil War?
5. How about French people being uppity when Cinco de Mayo comes around?
6. During the Cherry Blossom Festival are people going around kvetching about Pearl Harbor?

NO!

People need to stop raining on this parade.

Thanksgiving Eatin'

So what are the classic side dishes for Thanksgiving?  You've got your cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, bread stuffing, squash, and broccoli are the ones that immediately come to mind.  Here are three takes on Thanksgiving side dishes to whet your appetite, from the traditional to the healthy, and the ... disturbing.

The Food Channel has an article with links to recipes for all the traditional eating, from mashed potatoes to cranberry sauce.

The New York Times will have a series of articles focusing on vegetarian Thanksgiving recipes.  Their intent is to replace the turkey with foods that emphasize the harvest aspect of Thanksgiving by being based on ingredients that are grown.  I don't disagree with this idea, and admit that some of these recipes seem delicious, but to me it's more a collection of side dishes rather than entrees.

Finally, there's Flavorwire's list of "10 Absolutely Forbidden Foods." I wouldn't recommend this as a good list of ideas.  In fact, just reading the list might be very unhealthy for you let alone actually eating any of these things

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. 

Google as Proof of Thanksgiving's Lack of Popularity

The public has spoken; they think Thanksgiving is the least awesome of holidays in the 4th quarter according to the all-important awesome-o-meter.  The results are only made all the more indisputable when tested through Google Trends.

Why "UpGobble!"?

The UpGobble! movement derives its name from several sources.  First, there's the expression "gobble up" which means "eat a large amount of food quickly."  This is something that is done on Thanksgiving.  The word "gobble" is also a reference to the sound that a turkey makes.  Finally, the "up" is symbolic of promoting, which is what this group does.  Hence we are promoting turkeys, the symbol of the holiday.  The logo for the movement was designed to very literally depict this sentiment.