Why Thanksgiving will never be as popular as Christmas

It's not that it doesn't involve presents.
It's not that you just don't get that many days off for Thanksgiving.

It's because there are no Thanksgiving songs.

But wait, you say. What about that cluster of hymns in the hymnbook about giving thanks? Okay, there are serious hymns we could sing (come to think of it, how come we never sing Count Your Many Blessings for Thanksgiving?), and I guess there was a whole CD or two done by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. So there are songs.

But there aren't any fun ones. Ever since "Jingle Bells" and "Over the Meadow and Through the Woods" got stolen by Christmas, Thanksgiving has gotten the shaft from the record companies.

Of course, there's not a whole lot to work with. At Christmastime, we can sing songs about snow even if the last time it snowed in the area was during the Ice Age. So then we have songs that have nothing to do with Christmas like "It's a Marshmallow World in the Winter" and "Let it Snow" and "Suzy Snowflake" and of course "Frosty the Snowman." But during Thanksgiving, there isn't the expectation of snow. It might, or it might be in the 60s. The only thing we can be reasonably sure of is that most of the leaves will be on the ground. I suppose we could try and bring "Sticky the Twig Man" or "Fiona Fallen Leaf" into vogue, but I just don't think it will take root in our hearts.

Another problem is that there's no Santa figure. Although Americans are really good at popularizing a pre-existing character, I don't think we're very good at making up our own. (Punxsatawney Phil doesn't count.) And since Thanksgiving is an American holiday, we simply don't have a character to celebrate. It just doesn't seem right to have Squanto or Samoset riding on a sled to deliver the Thanksgiving dinner in the middle of the night. So instantly we lose hits like "Samoset is Coming to Town" or "I saw Mommy kissing Daddy under the Massasoit statue at BYU."

But the real reason there aren't popular fun songs about Thanksgiving? No cute animals! Christmas is full of animals. They deliver the presents, they are the presents (always as pets, of course), and they even help out with the first Christmas, such as the donkey that Mary rode.

There is only one purpose for the animals on Thanksgiving. To be eaten. You just can't anthropomorphize something that will have been in your esophagus by the end of the day. I'll show you:

Gertie the red-winged turkey
Had a very shiny beak
And if you heard him gobble
You would even hear it squeak.

All of the other turkeys
Never really noticed it
They were too busy munching
On their favorite corn and grits.

Then one foggy Wednesday eve
Farmer Brown did say
Gertie with your beak so bright
Won't you be my meal tomorrow . . .

I can't even finish. It's just too sad. Poor Gertie.

This is not to say, of course, that people haven't tried to make popular fun Thanksgiving songs. This is what kindergarten in November is all about. But successful ones? That would end up on the radio instead of Top 40 hits? I've yet to see the day.

But in the meantime, here are some really, um, nice attempts that people have made.

and of course, the one that might actually make it big,

. . . Maybe we should just not worry about songs til after Thanksgiving.