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#HotTake: Thanksgiving Is Overrated and Stupid

By Rebecca Pahle | Food Porn | November 22, 2016 |

By Rebecca Pahle | Food Porn | November 22, 2016 |


As 2016 draws to a close, I am embracing my identity as the Pajiba writer who offers up controversial opinions. As opposed to the Pajiba writer who offers up wrong opinions, which is TK. As long as I’m here, and as long as it’s the day before Thanksgiving and nothing much is happening, hell, I might as well go full-hog.

Or full-turkey.

Thanksgiving is dumb.

I get that the argument in favor of Thanksgiving is that it is a holiday built around food—and that it’s the day when you’re supposed to give thanks for the things you have, yada yada—but here’s the thing: Eating food isn’t a particularly noteworthy thing around which to build a holiday. “But Rebecca! It’s eating and vegging out in front of the TV all day!” Yeah? Welcome to my Sunday.

Amateurs.

Thanksgiving is a lot of hoopla for nothing much at all: You spend all day cooking, you eat a meal, and then you have a shit-ton of dishes to do. It’s over in like an hour. You get leftovers, sure, but those leftovers are mostly gonna be turkey-related, and turkey is drier, more tasteless chicken.

Cranberry sauce: Eh.

Green bean casserole: Eh.

Mashed potatoes made with a ton of butter and drowned in gravy: Excellent, but like fuck I have ever in my life needed an excuse to eat mashed potatoes whenever I damn well want to. I don’t need permission from Big Turkey to gorge on potatoes. Do you?

Hanging out with extended family? Sure, if you like arguing with that one uncle about politics. Especially this year.

But cooking! The act of cooking is fun! Good for you, buddy. I am glad that you like a thing, but my non-culinary-inclined, Thanksgiving Grinch ass is going to order a burger on Seamless. Christmas has the food and family togetherness and the giving and receiving of presents and better movies. “Christmas has gotten so over-commercialized and materialistic!” Oh, really? Thanksgiving is built on a legacy of colonialism and genocide. If we’re going there.

Thanksgiving is Christmas if it sucked.

Non-Americans: Let’s party.