At Least Food Network Shows Thanksgiving Some Love
Chris Morgan
Monday, November 25, 2019
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I’m a Thanksgiving fan. It’s my second-favorite holiday behind Christmas. However, it basically gets subsumed by Christmas culturally. We hop from Halloween to Christmas ads and Thanksgiving gets short shrift. This is lame. There aren’t many Thanksgiving movies, or TV episodes about Thanksgiving, at least compared to Christmas. There is one beacon of hope, though. There is one place you can go to get your Thanksgiving fix. I speak of Food Network.
This tracks logically. Thanksgiving is a food-forward holiday. What do we do on Thanksgiving? You probably watch football. I certainly do. I’m from Detroit, so watching the Lions lose is an annual tradition. Maybe you watch a parade? In the end, you eat. You eat a bunch of food. Maybe some turkey if you aren’t vegetarian. Some pumpkin pie perhaps? Cranberry sauce from a can? Since Thanksgiving is so much about food, naturally Food Network goes all in.
While other channels are focused on Christmas already, it’s nice to turn on the Food Network and see a little turkey logo on the corner of the screen. They have actual Thanksgiving programming on already. Food Network loves its competition shows, and they have a Thanksgiving challenge show going on right now. There will be Thanksgiving-focused episodes of their regular shows. I believe I heard they are showing a Thanksgiving-related Good Eats. I am waiting for the Thanksgiving episode of Chopped, plus the reruns of prior Thanksgiving episodes of Chopped.
There will be cooking-related shows as well. Usually on Thanksgiving, or right before it, they will run a show where a bunch of Food Network personalities get together to cook Thanksgiving dishes. It’s to help you own with your own Thanksgiving meal. Early on Thanksgiving Day, you can tune into Food Network and see, like, Bobby Flay or Geoffrey Zakarian helping you prepare stuffing. Ted Allen will probably be around. Then, after you finish your dinner, you can probably catch a rerun of some Thanksgiving episode of one of their competition shows.
Most networks skip Thanksgiving. Food Network revels in it. I, for one, appreciate that deeply. It’s the one network on the same page as me for the second-best holiday of the year.
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