Did you ever watch those holiday specials when you were a kid? You know, “The Smurfs Christmas,” “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,” “A Very Chipmunk Valentine’s Day,” “The Berenstein Bears and Arbor Day.”
I don’t know if they still do those things nowadays. “The Simpsons” does a Halloween special every year and has a Christmas episode. The one Sunday ended with a Thanksgiving feast and the melody to the hymn “Prayer of Thanksgiving.” But “The Simpsons” holiday offerings aren’t the same as any of the earlier specials.
The impression that whoever makes these holiday specials seems to want to convey is that these holidays are always in jeopardy. Somebody always needs to “save” the holiday. “You saved Christmas, Papa Smurf!” “You saved Halloween, Charlie Brown!” (Well, Linus probably), “You saved Arbor Day, Papa Bear!”
Who is out there endangering all these holidays? Who is out there plotting and scheming to ruin annual, festive traditions? Did the Grinch leave such an impact on western civilization that every holiday needs to be jeopardized by someone?
Homer gave a tongue-in-cheek run down on one Simpsons’ Christmas?”OK, that’s eight [Christmases] I ruined, three I saved, two were kind of a draw?”
But why is no one plotting and scheming to ruin Thanksgiving? Why is this holiday left out in the cold? It seems like it would be pretty easy to steal Thanksgiving: take the turkey, dump some crude oil into the cranberries and donate all the pumpkin pie filling to food banks.
But no animated villain is out there doing it.
Then you wonder, why would someone want to steal Thanksgiving? You hustle and bustle to spend time with all your relatives for a couple of hours or days, stuff yourself well beyond reasonable capacity, then rush out to get the jump on Christmas shopping amidst a whole horde of your furious, over-fed fellow citizens.
I don’t think anyone would want to steal this holiday. It’s a lot of stress.
But then again, I think it would be impossible for a villain to steal Thanksgiving, and I don’t think we need anyone to save it. I think Thanksgiving is staying put.
Thanksgiving is a holiday where we over-eat in recognition of our gratitude for the fact that we don’t have to worry about food on the 364 other days of the year. Virtually no one reading this column (I imagine) understands genuine hunger. Going hungry in the United States, even for the impoverished, is not the same as going hungry in Afghanistan.
Thanksgiving is the most American holiday we have?but it’s also the most universal. Harvest celebrations are as old as eating. No one can take away Thanksgiving.
Not even Homer Simpson.