Charles Schultz and Peanuts have given us a multitude of holiday memories that warm our hearts, make us smile, and encourage us all to aim beyond the inherent difficulty of human relations. Most people who have an opinion on the best Peanuts classic tend to fall into two camps: It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown or A Charlie Brown Christmas. For many of us, it’s simply not Halloween or Christmas until we watch our preferred special. (I still think of them as specials, as we used to wait all year for its annual airing, stalking the TV Guide or newspaper TV listings, and I always develop a taste for Dolly Madison snack cakes when I see those opening credits.) I’m definitely a Charlie Brown Christmas fan: the theater where they rehearse the Christmas play has the same layout as my old junior high auditorium, from the chandeliers to the piano placement. As the first Peanuts special, the animation is janky, but the music is perfect, props to Vince Guaraldi.
But isn’t there another Charlie Brown holiday special on the calendar, sandwiched between these two classics? Oh right, there’s A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, IMHO one of the most annoying twenty-five minutes of animation ever created. I realize that may be a controversial position, and if you like it (or even love it) I am not here to yuck your yum.
A sweet cannibalistic scene from A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving - YouTube screen grab
Why does this film, part of a ridiculously small club of Thanksgiving media, bother me so much? My main beef: there’s so little Thanksgiving in it. The writers and animators spend much of the screen time ginning up comedy: the pesky beach chair, the Browns’ hoarder-level garage situation, the precocious Peppermint Patty preying on Charlie’s fear of conflict. There’s little of the food we want to see. I get it; these are kids who hold their own holiday feast outdoors, away from all muffled trumpet-noise adults. Snoopy—the beagle—sets the menu. Ridiculously funny? Maybe other kids envisioned toast and popcorn on their plates, but I’m looking for it all. (At least Patty is on my side too.) The turkey. The mashed potatoes. The stuffing, and cranberry sauce, and everything else. Maybe that makes me basic, so yes, give me the basics. A ping-pong table with crunchy bread, popped corn, jellybeans, and pretzels is so sad to me. I don’t get that warm holiday glow from this. Thanksgiving, to me, should be cozy, with the last of the yellow autumn leaves radiant against an overcast sky. In the end, the special gets to the point, and the kids enjoy a real Thanksgiving dinner, off camera, while Snoopy pulls out the meal we want to eat which he has hidden from the kids, only to have the moment disrupted by the very awkward sight of Woodstock committing cannibalism. A Charlie Brown Christmas gives me all the feels, while Thanksgiving has the opposite vibes of what I want.
I probably have this opinion because I actually like and enjoy Thanksgiving. In fact, it’s definitely my favorite holiday for food (though Christmas treats are a very close second, more on that in a future piece). I love the traditional menu—which I don’t vary too much, sorry to say to all the magazines and blogs offering updates and twists to the classics. I enjoy the lower stress threshold: have fun creating a beautiful tablescape, make the food, throw on a sweater or button-down, light the candles, and feast away. I’m also one of those weirdos with Welsh blood that adores rain, storms, overcast skies, and soft landscape palettes. This was helpful growing up in central New York. Thanksgiving makes me feel warm and comfy, without a ton of work, especially if it’s a gray day.
In another universe, I’m one of those people trolling Home Goods for cheap wall signs that say “Fall,y’all” in script, because I really am all about fall. In this world, however, I’m a New Yorker cannot cannot say “y’all” and I’ve already committed several décor sins including the one wooden sign we do have on display. Besides, I first learned I am ‘basic’ about autumn when pumpkin spice lattes were first released. I used to have one almost every weekday until I learned each grande had 400 calories and that after consuming one, my taste buds were blown out for the day.
I love everything about autumn. The clothes, the foods (now down to one PSL a year, usually on or around Halloween), the weather, especially classic autumn days when temps are in the fifties and there’s a light drizzle. In November, the loud shouts of crimson, orange and canary of the changing leaves fade to soft, watercolor, umber-tinged hues, as if nature is saying “Shh…” before bedtime. Relax, no need to be so ostentatious, it’s almost winter. Slow down, before that whirling dervish drag queen named Christmas comes to town with all her sparkle and jingling bells and exuberance. November, to me, is the most wonderful time of the year. Cozy for the win!
And I feel badly for Thanksgiving. It’s the Jan Brady of the fall holidays. A few weeks ago, my second grader decided that he needed make up to complete his Halloween costume, so I set forth to find a shade of Elphaba green. Corner drug stores? Nope, all Christmas already. Target? Same deal. The “seasonal” aisle of our supermarket: mid transition, with tinsel and panettone mingled with jumbo bags of Trick-or-Treat candy (can’t even say “chocolates” anymore; I commiserated with several parents on the skyrocketing price and decreasing percentage of chocolates). I found it only at Party City, which was still in spooky season mode, thankfully.
Many of my friends and family assume that I am a huge Nightmare Before Christmas fan. I’ve seen it dozens of times (including in the theater when first released), and I like it, but it’s not a true favorite, for a few reasons. In that movie, Thanksgiving is simply a turkey-shaped door seen in the forest, skipped, again, as Jack Skellington raids Christmastown for ideas.
Sure, Thanksgiving may not be as much fun as the October and December holidays; there are no Thanksgiving carols, and the bench of thematic variations is nowhere as deep. We don’t go all out on decorations draping every architectural feature, and most houses don’t venture into strings of lights and yards full of inflatables (though lawn turkeys do exist). What are the traditional colors for this middle child of holidays, gravy brown? Cranberry red? Mashed potato white? I colored plenty of cornucopias as a kid, but I don’t recall my kids bringing home many Thanksgiving projects these days. Some of the other symbols are problematic now: the white pilgrims in Puritan dress and buckle-adorned hats breaking bread with Native Americans. The whole myth of communal thanks and peace as if one dinner cleared away bloodshed and disease. I do make one cultural exception to this: the final quarter of Addams Family Values, when Wednesday and Pugsley hijack their summer camp’s Thanksgiving play and burn the pilgrim village to the ground, is brilliant. Christina Ricci as Wednesday Addams as Pocahontas is the perfect middle finger to that racist, inappropriate mythology of Thanksgiving.
What endears Thanksgiving to me is the lack of rigamarole. At heart, it’s a special dinner with other people, whether “special” is just within your means or an over-the-top spectacle. You can make a big production of the feast, or the centerpiece, or both…or none of it (though I hope you try, even a little bit). I think tablescaping is great fun, as does my former podcast cohost Rob, who plans his themed tabletop décor for months (and no matter how fancy, you can also see the other diners as he keeps its profile low to encourage conversation about what you are thankful for). There’s a printed menu, and even if we don’t dine together, I have a spot on that list. I make a double batch of my “famous” cranberry sauce (which takes two days), and Rob’s family gifts us homemade cinnamon ice cream for our dessert course. It’s a little tradition we have, and it warms my heart more than boxes wrapped in shiny paper and ribbons. All I do is double the recipe. I don’t have to think about what to get them. It’s a no-brainer, almost an automatic function. Simple and honest, as Thanksgiving can be.
Of course, my Thanksgivings growing up were just as honest and real, though the overall tone was more about family dynamics and stress. Perhaps that’s why I long for simplicity in late November. My aunt Nancy frequently hosted Thanksgiving, and the adults sat around the leaf-extended table in her eat-in kitchen. We children, relegated to a centerpiece-free folding table in the den, squeezed behind the chairs to ladle up the standards (including marshmallow-topped yams, Stove Top stuffing, cranberry jelly with can ridges, and, our favorite part aside from dessert, the relish tray). Her house filled with the odor of the kerosene heater and Uncle John’s whiskey, and after a few vigorous activities we began shedding our “nice” sweaters and shirts. It took me a few years to extend my dessert palate beyond my mom’s chocolate cream pie to include pumpkin pie with Cool Whip, but I made (and went far beyond) it eventually.
As a teen, I developed an interest in the culinary arts, and produced a pumpkin cheesecake for the trip to Aunt Nancy’s, complete with a layer of sour cream and a few strands of orange zest in the center. My mom and I shared a smile as we ate our slices. And we had more the next day, as we came home with the leftover pie, missing exactly two servings. (If you don’t like my cheesecake, that’s fine, more for me.) Though she had not tasted my contribution, Aunt Nancy announced that I should become a chef. “You should go to culinary school! It’s expensive though so you better start saving up.”
After dessert, my brothers, cousins, and I would retreat to the bedrooms upstairs so that the adults could continue drinking and smoking, the volume of laughter rising higher and higher as beer cans popped and liquor bottles emptied. My parents were not big drinkers, but my mom fired up cigarette after cigarette after doing the dishes. That, aside from the chocolate cream pie (store-bought graham cracker crust, pudding mix, aforementioned non-dairy topping), was her main contribution to these overheated, crowded feasts. I must add that Mommy eventually applied some effort and came to be a competent, even adventurous baker; I chalk up her reliance on Good Housekeeping ad recipes to the era. Scratch baking, what’s that? This may be why I cherish my culinary traditions. From pumpkin cheesecakes to two-day cranberry sauce, I get a kick making food from scratch. The effort I put in triples back on me as that warm, satisfied, cozy feeling inside. Or maybe it’s the carbs.
These family Thanksgivings eventually transformed from slightly rowdy family gatherings to the tense bury-your-true-emotions visits common to so many families and exemplified by another movie classic, Home for the Holidays. If A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving misses the mark by a mile, Home for the Holidays hits too close, especially as you age. Holly Hunt’s Claudia navigates the obligatory trip home to deal with her relatives in their well-lived-in, claustrophobic dwelling, and awkwardness ensues. As the list of Thanksgiving movies is so short, this one ranks near the top for me. (What’s your entry on the list?)
As for those people whose holiday calendar matches Target’s, have fun. I took our Halloween lights down on November 1st and the Christmas ones cannot go up until Black Friday, at the earliest. My birthday is in early December, and as a child my mom insisted that we hold off on decorating for Christmas until after my birthday. She wanted to carve out a little space for me in the rush to Christmas madness. I still had plenty of combo birthday-Christmas presents, trust me. I followed that tradition for decades into adulthood. Now, as a family man, I’ve yielded to pressure (and vacation time) and our family is cleared to decorate any time after Black Friday.
This year, Bob and I are having a small family Thanksgiving once again, and we will make our favorite dishes, with enough left for sandwiches the next day, and enjoy some fantastic wine he’ll pick out while the kids beg for screen time. Maybe we’ll play games, or take the dog for a walk along the Hudson. I’ll make cranberry sauce and will trade it for cinnamon ice cream from our friends. The biggest tension will be what type of pie we’ll make, which is fitting because our family motto, written on a wooden pie box, is “Eat More Pie.” (That is the one wooden sign with script lettering in our house.) And what could be cozier than that?
Our family motto.
Song of the Week: Autumn Leaves by the Nat King Cole Trio
Happy Thanksgiving. Be well.
What was your favorite ConHalTon tablescape yet?