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Why Thanksgiving films are rare
Each year, like clockwork, Hollywood cranks out three to four features with a Christmas theme or angle. Thanksgiving, on the other hand, might see one or two films in a good year. Stack Christmas movies against Thanksgiving and you’d see a mountain compared to a molehill.
Both are national holidays celebrated by millions. So why the discrepancy? Part of it, I think, lies in thanksgiving’s transitive nature: Those of us who are religious have an object for our action. We give thanks to God. That gives the holiday a grounding in religious faith with which movie studios are reluctant to address.
Think of all the Christmas films you’ve seen and name the ones that deal with the theological meaning of the holiday. Any come to mind that address the Incarnation? The belief many Christians hold that Jesus would later die to reconcile humankind with God? Not in the Christmas movies I know. Those deal with what a materialistic, consumerist society knows of the holiday: Santa, gift-giving, love expressed through objects, families reunited or affirmed in a sentimental way.
Thanksgiving films largely address one aspect of the holiday, namely the convergence of scattered families, and usually mildly dysfunctional families at that for comic effect. You don’t see Thanksgiving movies centered on characters who express thanks for their health, safety, material comfort or spiritual blessings - even though those subjects are commonly addressed by truly thankful human beings at this time of year.
Hollywood lacks the language of thanksgiving. We shouldn’t be surprised. Feature films so often use sex as shorthand for love, which ends up cheapening both. Violence and action dominate human interaction in film, shortchanging those communications that take time, patience or complexity, however essential they might be to culture and civilization.
That’s the nature of the beast: We thrive on conflict in our stories and we want them solved in short packages of time. That’s what we’ll buy tickets for. A true Thanksgiving movie? Too wordy. Too squishy. Too conceptual.
Maybe the lack of Thanksgiving films is another thing for which to be thankful - thankful that the holiday’s essence can’t be easily commodified and commercialized, thankful that there’s something deep and mysterious and meaningful that happens when we contemplate, individually and collectively, the blessings of our lives.
Could a movie ever substitute for that?
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