Beginning of Thanksgiving horror film essay

Monday 11/24/25

I just composed a 2600 word essay. It's ten AM. I've written 5000 words thus far today, which doesn't include the considerable amount of work on "Boom the Ball." This essay is brilliant, hilarious, sobering, unpredictable, and sure to induce multiple forms of tears. This had to be done today if it is going to run this year, but it may have to wait until next year. This is how it begins:

Before Thanksgiving became a speed bump on the capitalist road between Halloween and Christmas—because there’s not much to be bought and sold at Thanksgiving, save foodstuffs—the holiday was regarded as one of social morality. A holiday as checkpoint as to our level of decency.

In more recent times, Thanksgiving has served as a convenient backdrop—meaning, excuse—for people to take to social media and do the “Look at me, aren’t I a good and grounded person” act by listing what they’re grateful for, which just happens to be things that play well with the masses for the garnering of likes, which we all know are so vitally important and telling when it comes to who you are as a person, what you offer the world, your ability, your mind, how much better you are than someone who gets less likes, and the quality of your human soul.

These are the people who also love to itemize each and every last component of their self-professed healing journey, which a strange amount of them seem to be on ironically, considering the percentage of inhabitants of this earth who can’t wait to tell you what a great person they are. Who, then, is doing the damage? But there was a period when Thanksgiving stood as a day symbolizing what we can and should do for each other. People will remark that we are here—in the grand scheme of existence—to have fun, above all, which is pretty silly when you think about, not to mention self-serving. If we’re ranking reasons, though, I’d say right near the top you’d have to put helping people. Others. This is what the first Thanksgiving was all about, no?

I’ve been serious thus far—albeit with a twist or two of mordant levity—and that’s about to change, because I am here to provide a service in what may be a small way, but then again, is anything truly small if it helps us get through a day? I should say not. There are many who view Thanksgiving as a day—which stretches to several—to get through. We are fragile, in part because we’ve made ourselves so. Primed to be triggered. We hang just above the chasm that we may descend into, our single thread snipped, by some uncharitable comment, or, sweet heavens, an utterance of the truth, the monster of monsters of the twenty-first century.

Mix in unwanted political comment and blustery opinion, the prospect of adult children “breaking up” with their parents, their sibling, their aunt’s dog, whatever the case may be, and it’s little wonder that Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the season in which you are most likely to have die from a heart attack. Which is obviously abetted by gluttony and the quantities of alcohol you are apt to be pouring into yourself.

What a scary holiday! And you thought that was Halloween. So here’s what I’ve done for you, and feel free to make use of this most Christian offering again over the course of future Thanksgivings, because they aren’t going anywhere. I have watched the films that no one will confuse with the works of Jean Vigo—or Ed Wood, in some instances—that pertain to the horrors of Thanksgiving and may allow you to take the edge off of your day, should there be one, even if that’s in the “Fuck it, I’m so drunk, I’m actually going to watch this stupid movie!” sense which I find can be useful.

The best way of beating the blues is often to give into them for a few hours and combat pain with absurdity, which may or may not include accepting the absurdity of your situation, your family, and what I will call the entire human experiment as it tapers off. Or is doing so in my view, anyway. We’ll treat this compendium like a potential Thanksgiving day itself, with its hopes, reservations, fixed points, unpredictable aspects, food, booze, and leftovers. Okay? And remember: You owe me. I did what I did to myself for you.