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The funniest holiday of the year

Posted at 12:46 PM on November 23, 2011 by Bob Collins (9 Comments)
Filed under: Surveys and trivia

Question: Is there a funnier holiday than Thanksgiving? What is it about the holiday that popular culture finds so appealing when it comes to dropping a punch line?

For example, this video, thanks to the Twitter, is making the rounds on the InterTubes today...

The West Wing episode fulfills all fantasies of the local online scribes -- the elusive local connection. In this case: Fargo. Of course, we had to check to see if there's such a place as 11454 Pruder Street in Fargo. There isn't. But the fictitious Joe Bethersonton, the phony name President Barlet used when calling the butterball hotline, has a Facebook page.

Our pal, David Brauer, however recalls the beauty of Thanksgiving humor with this classic bit.

Then, there's the kissing family Thanksgiving from Saturday Night Live:

The show, Roseanne, adequately captured the oddity of the season, in which people get up at 5 a.m. "to stuff bread crumbs up a dead bird's butt."

And the TV show, Friends, regularly made Thanksgiving an annual comedy festival. In one episode (not embeddable, but here), the characters walked around with turkeys on their head.

Let's see President's Day do that.

Comments (9)

That is hands down one of my favorite West Wing bits. Thanks for reminding me of it. Have a very happy Thanksgiving Mr. Collins.

Posted by Derek | November 23, 2011 1:01 PM

Looking forward to trying to pressure cook a whole turkey (not for thanksgiving, since I'm going to my parents, but afterwards with one of the frozen turkeys I got on sale).

Though every time I think of it, cooking a turkey in ~40 minutes (thus not needing to get up at 5am) reminds me of the line from the Simpsons (not a thanksgiving episode I'm afraid) "It'll flash-fry a buffalo in 40 seconds." "40 seconds!? Oh, I want it now!"

P.s. I've been reading up on how to cook turkey's, I hear if you brine them in salt water (starting tonight) you can have a fully cooked turkey in about 2 hours instead of the 5-8 that would require you to wake up at 5a.m.

Posted by jon | November 23, 2011 1:16 PM

jon, I brine my turkey every year, and it takes a normal time to cook. Although, I have brined my turkey since I first started cooking Thanksgiving dinner 10 years ago, so I wouldn't know the difference.

Posted by vjacobsen | November 23, 2011 1:43 PM

"Looking forward to trying to pressure cook a whole turkey"

Pressure cooker's -when improperly used-can blow up in one's face, or in this case jon's face.

Posted by This is NOT lucy | November 23, 2011 3:43 PM

Dear Newscut friends, please spend some time this holiday weekend studying up on the use of the apostrophe. Thank you.

I brined a fresh turkey once and didn't care for it. It changes the meat to be more like deli sandwich meat. To each his or her own!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Posted by Bonnie | November 23, 2011 6:41 PM

Bonnie,
Misspellings and added grammatical features happen all the time here on the magical pages of NewsCut. I personally have been first hand witness to added letters or missing letters to my posts.
The mystery lies somewhere between submission and actual post. I don't know what is worse this or a cyber stalker.

Posted by This is NOT lucy | November 23, 2011 6:55 PM

Thanks, This is NOT Lucy! We'll blame it on Bob and his team. And I feel much better about some of my past posts! One of my favorite books is Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

Posted by Bonnie | November 23, 2011 7:30 PM

We're about to have the serial comma debate, aren't we?

Posted by Bob Collins | November 23, 2011 8:02 PM

I can live with the excessive serial comma. It is, or "it's" the misuse of the possessive and the plural that drives me up the wall. And I'm ( I am ) an accountant for pete's sake.

I am eternally grateful for the strong women who were my teachers at Central School in Fairmont Minnesota.

Posted by Bonnie | November 23, 2011 9:59 PM