Thanksgiving Day in the U.S.A. has always seemed to me to be very the best holiday, the one where no one is trying to sell you anything at all—except, of-course, for dead, decapitated birds. But even there no hard sell is employed: they’re just laid out in front of you to take your pick. Frozen, fresh, hormone-free, hormone-pumped, antibiotic-free, crack-addicted, gluten-free, glutton-ready; but the big fat carcasses really just sell themselves.
What are the songs of Thanksgiving? Strangely, there are no popular songs which have taken hold. Rewinding through the fraying cassette tape of my brain, I came up with a Loudon Wainright song from the late eighties, simply titled “Thanksgiving.” (There’s a live performance on YouTube at this link.) Now Loudon can often be a laugh-riot, and sharp too, but this is one of his highly mawkish numbers, dwelling on the sadness of meeting the same family members every year and having the same old conflicts, and just getting older, and in essence being unhappy about everything. Continue reading “Thanksgiving”
