Beach Boys: Everybody’s having turkey, across the USA…
Sinead O’Connor: Nothing compares 2 Turkey
Queen: I want to eat eat my TURKEY LEG, I want to eat my leg…
Van Halen: I’m hot for turkey
KISS: I, want to watch football all day, and have some turkey tonight
Parliament/Funkadelics: One nation under a groove, gettin down just for the turkey meat
The Ramones: I wanna be tryptophanned
The traditional Shaker song Simple Gifts (“Tis the gift to be simple, tis the gift to be free…”) is often associated with Thanksgiving, though it isn’t actually about the holiday or anything directly related to the holiday.
Another subject altogether, but there aren’t any Thanksgiving movies of note, either.
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
It’s the set up, tho, and not really the theme.
A quick search on IMDb of the word “Thanksgiving” in the title brings up a lot of made for TV movies, but nothing of note. The only one I actually remembered on the list was the Charlie Brown one.
Maybe Grandma Got Run Over by a Turkey?
Thanksgiving movies - that oldie with Spencer Tracy and Gene Tierney, “Plymouth Adventure”. And for some reason, more times than I can fathom, a 1937 thing with Robert Young and James Stewart, “Navy Blue and Gold”, 1937, naval academy and The Big Game (football).
zzzzzzzzzz…
a couple more movies:
Home for the Holidays - starring Holly Hunter and Robert Downey, Jr.
Pieces of April - an indie film with Katie Holmes
One time I heard a Thanksgiving-themed parody of Linkin Park’s “One Step Closer” (the song that goes, “everything you say to me/takes me one step closer to the edge/'cause I’m about to break.”) The parody went something like, “I just put the stuffing in the bird/and it’s about to bake.” I can’t seem to find any reference to this song on the internet. It was probably a locally-produced thing that was only played on that one radio station.
We watched a cartoon every year called “Mouse on the Mayflower”. It was cute, at least in my memory!
The song Home, written in 1931 by Peter van Steeden, Harry Clarkson and Geoff Clarkson is a Thanksgiving song. It was introduced that year the night before Thanksgiving on several radio shows by different singers. Geoff Clarkson was only sixteen years old when he helped write this song. It was recorded by Ruth Etting, Louis Armstrong, Mildred Bailey, The Dorsey Brothers and several others. The Andrews Sisters sang it in the 1944 movie musical Moonlight and Cactus.
I haven’t been able to find a version of this song on-line, but I can send an MP3 of the Ruth Etting recording to anyone who asks.
It’s the Most Fattening Time of the Year.
"It’s the most fattening time of the year
With that pumpkin pie filling
and everyone swilling down eggnog and beer
It’s the most fattening time of the year
It’s the lip smackingest season of all
while your shopping you’re cheating
impulsively eating that junk at the mall
It’s the heav-heaviest season of all
There’ll be turkeys for basting
and stuffing for tasting
and giblets and gravy will flow
there’ll be cookies that mom baked
and leftover fruit cake from a christmas a long time ago."
Etc., etc., etc.
There’s the Ballad of the Nikey Turkey.
I love it! Is this an original panache45 composition?
And Plymouth Adventure is just started on TCM.
No, my chorus sang it several years ago. Here are all the lyrics. (I think the version we performed had more verses.)
This morning in church we sang Come Ye Thankful People, Come.
I just love this song. I sang it the other day to Suburban Plankton and Ledzepkid because they said they didn’t know any Thanksgiving songs. When I was a child we would do a canned food drive at my church and the Sunday morning before TG all the children would walk into the sanctuary singing this song and bringing the food donations to the front of the church.