Ray St. Louis
11/22/08
BETWEEN THE LINES
Thanksgiving gets no respect.
Oh sure, it gets a couple of football games, a big parade with inflated cartoon characters, and lots of gorging on
turkey with all the fixings. But that’s about it.
Where is all the hype? Where the weeks of commercial exploitation as the holiday draws near?
I started having this thought, this feeling of pity for the Rodney Dangerfield of holidays, the day after Halloween. I
was in a big chain drugstore buying toothpaste when I noticed they were taking all the Halloween stuff down and
replacing it with Christmas stuff.
My immediate thought was “What about Thanksgiving?”
Shouldn’t Thanksgiving get its moment in the commercial sun? Shouldn’t its message of togetherness and
universal gratitude get its opportunity to be cheapened by waves of advertising meant to induce tsunamis of
consumerism like other holidays?
Okay, that last sentence was a little over the top. But that’s kind of the point. Thanksgiving needs to be more over
the top. It needs pizazz. It needs a massive make over.
You see, part of the problem is that Thanksgiving is too tied in with notions like brotherhood, goodwill and family
togetherness. You know, like Christmas used to be, before it became commercially viable.
Moreover, Thanksgiving has no tradition of gift giving, hence no gift buying.
What Thanksgiving needs is less thanks and more giving.
What Thanksgiving needs is its own version of Santa Claus.
With a strong central figure to inspire the exchanging of gifts, Thanksgiving could begin to live up to its promise as
a holiday cash cow while injecting a slumping economy with some much-needed juice. But what would this central
figure be?
Perhaps something like The Great Turkey.
Think of it as the Easter Bunny with wings. Except, of course, the Easter Bunny doesn’t get its head cut off and
feathers removed, then roasted in an oven and consumed by millions of American families every year. So I guess
that idea is out.
How about something like Father Pilgrim? Kind of like Santa in black.
Right. Even as I type it, I know that it’s wrong. Pilgrims have too much of a reputation for frugality to ever inspire the
kind of shopping orgy Thanksgiving needs to become.
No, we need something new. Something bold and sassy. Something that says “IN YOUR FACE, HALLOWEEN AND
CHRISTMAS!”
Surely, somewhere in the historical tradition exists a figure that sums up the Thanksgiving spirit while also lending
itself to commercial exploitation.
Someone like….Squanto.
Squanto, you may or may not know, was the Native American man who was kidnapped as a youth and taken to
England where he learned the English language and European ways. Years later back in the New World, he
helped the Pilgrims survive their first winter in Plymouth.
They had arrived too late in the year to plant, so they had no crops for food. Squanto gave them the “gifts” of the
best places to fish as well as the best techniques. Plus, he showed them how to make their homes warmer, giving
them the “gift” of insulation.
You see how this works? We turn Squanto’s acts of kindness into acts of gift giving and we’re well on our way to
creating a marketable Santa-like figure for Thanksgiving.
Then we write a few Squanto songs, give him a colorful costume, and stick him in a few parades.
Throw together some Squanto Thanksgiving TV specials with famous people and Las Vegas showgirls. Slap his
image on lines of Squanto Thanksgiving cards and rolls of Squanto Thanksgiving wrap.
Hire a bunch of unemployed men to dress up in Squanto costumes and sit in malls so kids can sit on their laps, tell
them what they want for Thanksgiving, and get their pictures taken.
Voila! Another holiday-inspired commercial feeding frenzy to boost a slumping economy.
Of course, the whole idea might be a little politically incorrect. Native-Americans might not like the commercial
exploitation of one of their own, although that never really stopped enterprising Americans before (see Buffalo Bill).
Yeah, we might be opening a can of worms here, so scratch that idea.
Problem is nothing else comes to mind. Perhaps the whole idea of Thanksgiving is averse to gross commercial
exploitation. We may be stuck with a holiday that simply celebrates family togetherness and counting one’s
blessings.
Which in itself is a pretty good thing, when you think about it.
The only drawback is we have to put up with all that Christmas stuff right after Halloween.