Ideas For Improving Thanksgiving

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  1. Cancel it. The best possible outcomes of Thanksgiving are (a) getting to spend time with your family, and (b) eating a lot of food. Nothing more needs to be said about (a), and I couldn’t give a damn about eating a lot of food. According to medical doctors, (a) food makes you fat, and (b) eating food makes the existence of all life on earth possible. Nothing more needs to be said about (a), and according to (b), food makes The Real Housewives of Miami possible. And have you seen that show? I mean; Jesus. …In conclusion, cancel Thanksgiving immediately.
  2. We could end the list right there, but let’s continue with some actual suggestions.
  3. Make Thanksgiving a “sexy” holiday like Halloween is now. Girls dressed as sexy Pilgrims and Indians, sexy turkeys, sexy green bean casserole, and sexy giblets.
  4. Here’s a preferred turkey-cooking method for Thanksgiving. Preheat the oven to 475° Fahrenheit; gently separate the turkey skin from the turkey, and rub melted butter between the turkey skin and turkey meat. Place turkey in oven; after 20 minutes, reduce heat to 250°, cooking at 20 additional minutes per pound. Remove turkey from oven, and throw out turkey, and get yourself some real food, like chicken or anything. Turkey sucks.
  5. Hide presents inside the turkey instead of stuffing. Stuffing is like bread that’s just gotten back from a tour of duty in Vietnam. Yuck. And all holidays should have presents in them. I’m lucky in this regard, in that my family is totally closed-off and repressed emotionally. We have an impossible time saying “I love you” under any circumstance, so we use presents to express feelings at every opportunity. We give each other presents for Easter, for instance. We’d probably give each other presents for Veteran’s Day and Martin Luther King Day if simple issues of tact and human decency didn’t forbid such things.
  6. Assign children to separate “canned cranberry sauce” and “fresh cranberry sauce” families at birth, to prevent future squabbling. Really; wars have been started over less.
  7. Do not put me at the “kids’ table,” even if there are only two actual kids and you need to move some people from the main table. I have a master’s degree = I am probably no longer a kid, even if I do have a “youthful glow” and enjoy playing “Super Mario Bros. 3.”
  8. I was going to say something about avoiding political arguments, but now we are all One Nation, Under Obama, so no worries there. Political arguments have been HANDLED, and thank you, Barack.
  9. Someone needs to invent a Thanksgiving song if I’m going to take this holiday seriously. All real holidays have songs, by which I mean that Easter, Christmas, New Year’s, Halloween (“The Monster Mash”), and to a far lesser extent Hanukkah have songs, and therefore qualify as real holidays. Thanksgiving has no songs and needs some immediately. I am not good at coming up with songs, but I just invented one called “Gobble, gobble, gobble,” which should do just fine. Sample lyrics: “Gobble, gobble, gobble!/ Let’s not squabble, squabble, squabble!/ Let’s just agree/ That Thanksgiving Day/ Is a shining bauble, bauble, bauble/ of a holi-daaaaay.” (Note: I have never tried to invent a song before. If you invent one, I recommend picking a word that something else rhymes with. Nothing rhymes with “gobble.”)
  10. I already do not want to watch a professional football game between the Lions of Detroit and the Bears of Chicago, and this cannot be part of any holiday, watching TV like that. Let’s just sing a few more verses of “Gobble, gobble, gobble,” in cyclical “round”-type-format, instead. Giving up and watching TV is a clear admission that a holiday is terrible, let’s all face it.
  11. Sweet potatoes should not feature mini-marshmallows on top unless you enjoy hearing me complain about that for a long time.
  12. I just remembered the one part I enjoy about Thanksgiving: outlining your hand with a marker and then making a turkey drawing out of that outline. I don’t even have a cynical joke here. As a kid, I couldn’t draw, and the whole process made me feel highly Competent and Artistic, and as an adult, I still can’t draw, and the hand-turkey still makes me feel Content and Good.
  13. “Turducken” is not a word. And John Madden’s turkeys with ten drumsticks have never been funny. Is John Madden still alive? Remember before Google existed, when you could innocently wonder aloud something like “Is John Madden alive,” and not have someone be like, “Uh… Google?” in response. Those were better days.
  14. Turducken makes me visualize a horror movie turkey eating a duck that’s eaten a chicken. Is this what I’m supposed to be doing and does anyone else do this?
  15. Uh… Happy Thanksgiving I guess.

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