Every November, I begin my annual campaign to convince people that Thanksgiving is not just my favorite holiday but the best holiday. It is, after all, the only one that has the good sense to revolve around carbohydrates, sweaters, and a socially sanctioned level of gluttony. Other holidays demand things of us. Like costumes, fireworks, and pilgrimages to overcrowded malls. Thanksgiving just wants us to show up, wear pants with an elastic waistband, and stay long enough to argue about football or the state of the gravy.
But the heart of Thanksgiving is, of course, the table. Not just the eating, though let’s not undersell the joy of cramming mashed potatoes and stuffing into one unholy forkful, but the ritual of gathering. The beautiful futility of setting out mismatched folding chairs, balancing platters on side tables, and pretending we don’t see the dog circling like a shark. There’s something oddly comforting about sitting across from people you see too rarely, or perhaps too often, and watching everyone slowly surrender to the haze of food and tryptophan. It’s the one time of year when staring at a pie for twenty minutes feels like legitimate conversation.
Oddly, the cinematic scene that best captures this ritual isn’t some sepia-toned family drama or even Norman Rockwell’s overly earnest Freedom from Want. No, the closest cousin to Thanksgiving, at least in spirit, lives inside Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. You know the one. It’s the dinner at the Maharaja’s palace.
Spielberg presents us with a buffet of horrors disguised as delicacies. There are live baby snakes erupting from the belly of a larger snake, beetles slurped like oysters, eyeball soup with floating spheres of doom, and finally, the pièce de résistance, chilled monkey brains, artfully served in their original packaging. It is absurd, terrifying, and, if we’re being honest, a little hilarious.
And is that not, in its own grotesque way, the essence of Thanksgiving? A table groaning with food, some dishes beloved, others feared. A host you cannot offend. Guests trying valiantly to hide their reactions as they poke at Aunt Susan’s infamous Jell-O “salad,” a neon green horror that jiggles as though possessed by the spirit of the seventies. Willie’s shrieks and Short Round’s grimaces are practically documentary footage of every American dining room the moment someone admits they’ve never liked pumpkin pie.
The brilliance of that scene, and of Thanksgiving itself, is that horror and comedy are not opposites. They’re siblings. Both rely on surprise, timing, and the involuntary noises people make when confronted with something they’d rather not swallow. Spielberg knew this, and so do we, every time we politely shovel one more spoonful of stuffing onto our plates because “it would be rude not to.”
Of course, Thanksgiving doesn’t end with the food. There’s the slow, communal collapse into couches, the ceremonial unbuttoning of pants, the attempt to feign interest in football while silently calculating how long you must wait before dessert. It’s a holiday that ends not with fireworks or champagne, but with a symphony of snores, groans, and relatives announcing, “Never again,” even as they reach for another slice of pie.
So yes, Bon Appétit. Pass the gravy. And if the stuffing starts wiggling, just smile politely, chew bravely, and remember, Spielberg prepared us for this moment.
