Thanksgiving is the most underrated holiday. This is not to be confused with "the best holiday." Thanksgiving, in fact, earns most underrated because no one ever expects it to be the best.
Think about Thanksgiving. All those extra portions you wish you could eat the rest of the year, but think better of? Jiminy Cricket is visiting family for the day, so everything goes. Annoying dinner guests? Tryptophan is a miracle drug--if they can fight through a coma, you might want to consider inviting an exorcist, too. You have to watch the Lions? View it as an exercise in schadenfreude: "take that, Michigan; produce Mitt Romney, will you?" The annual embarrassment of seeing the President pardoning a turkey? Think of it as the best argument for legalizing pot (it makes so much more sense when you're high). And, yes, the Black Friday nonsense and looming Christmas pressure hanging over everyone because Santa can't keep his bitch mittens to himself. But I'd wager that I'm not the only private sector employee who gets the day off just because his boss hasn't yet discovered that Black Friday deals can be found online.
You may have noticed that there's some significant qualifying and hedging going on here, but that's the point of comparative ratings. Especially as they apply to the expectations game. I'm not arguing that Thanksgiving is perfect; I'm not sure any healthy and fulfilled adult is. But no one in history has ever had their pristine perception of Thanksgiving shattered by having a bad one. Charlie Brown never worried himself into an hilariously premature ulcer about the corruption of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving wins because, like going to a Judd Apatow movie, you go in with middling expectations, you get what you expect, and you leave happy.
And consider the competition. Proceeding chronologically from today:
Christmas is clearly the most overrated holiday, so we can throw that out immediately. And I don't have a lot of direct experience with Chanukah, but being perennially stuck in Christmas' obese shadow doesn't help; you know why there was no Chanukah door in The Nightmare Before Christmas? Trick question: there was a Chanukah door. You just couldn't see it through the Elven black magic laid down by the fat man. As for Kwanzaa, you know there's a problem when Futurama has covered you better than anyone ever--and even that ended up having more to do with giant space bees than holiday send-ups.
New Year's is a fine holiday. Taking off the day after the celebration? Brilliant. And that move nearly gives New Year's the win. But the holiday is ranked about where it should be, given that the celebration has to cover for the disappointment of Christmas. New Year's does that job admirably, but it's a steep hill. Maybe if we could do New Year's as well as the Scots...
Then we get into the slushy soup of the late Winter holidays. MLK Day: good, if you get the day off, which I don't. Super Bowl: I'll admit that this one hasn't been the same for me since I had to endure that Packers-Steelers match-up a few years back, but when you consider that the best-played games of recent memory were the twin Giants-Patriots match-ups, it really underlines the bittersweetness of the day. President's Day: kind of a gip, even for those of us too young to remember when that was two holidays. Groundhog Day: who the fuck are you kidding?
Then we get St. Paddy's. Look, I'm half-Irish and (probably not entirely coincidentally) I like to drink. So I kinda get this one. But if you're the type to hit up an Irish pub on St. Paddy's, you're begging for an underwhelming night (you may also be a tool). They're all crawling with green-clad drunks making a mockery of Irish culture. And while a non-Irish bar is marginally better, it never feels right, does it? And then you're expected to show up at work the next day... hangover or no. That's called entrapment. There's a recent movement underway to get March 17th made into a federal holiday, which would be nice but, as with New Year's, shouldn't we aim for the day after?
And that would be a good time for another holiday, during the long Spring slog between President's Day and Memorial Day. Not that Memorial Day is much of a contender. According to my rigorous market research (hint: it's all about projection), if you're reading this blog, you're the type to take Memorial Day for granted and feel guilty about it, but not guilty enough to actually do anything. So you spend the last day of your three day weekend in a funk.
The Fourth of July: another very good holiday that tends to get rated exactly as it should. Unless something magical happens, which no one can fairly expect. So that one's out.
Labor Day: see Memorial Day, except apply this more broadly to an American public that's blithely ignored the systematic neutering of the labor movement. Honestly, I'm surprised Labor Day hasn't yet been moved to Black Friday, just to rub some salt in the wound. But that would screw with the beginning of the school year, which is exactly why the day never reaches public acclaim: kids get conditioned to know what's coming and that wiring remains intact through adulthood.
I've already covered one of Halloween's major pitfalls. The expectation-to-satisfaction ratio for Halloween often seems to approach Christmas levels.
And then Veterans' Day: see Memorial Day. Also, not a universal day off.
Which leaves us with Thanksgiving: the feast day smart enough not to promise you the world. It tampers down your expectations and apologizes for not having done better. It stands amidst the onslaught of the end-of-the-year holidays and does... alright. Enjoy today. If for nothing else then because at no point all year will your expectations be so thoroughly matched.
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