A lot of the times, Thanksgiving is overshadowed because it’s sandwiched between Halloween, when everyone gets candy, and Christmas, when everyone gets presents. However, it’s worth noting that there are some things about Thanksgiving that make it stand out. Sure you get junk food and gifts on other holidays, but you know what? Junk food will give you diabetes. Plus, gifts are just material objects that will bring you no sense of happiness. Most of the time, you just get socks anyways. Still not convinced? Here are a few reasons why you need to get hyped about the upcoming turkey-tastic holiday.

Thanksgiving food is the superior holiday food. Take mashed potatoes: no one would ever dream of putting plain potatoes in their mouth because that’s disgusting. However, if you blend them until they reach a consistency akin to baby food, they suddenly become delicious. A more daring chef may even add a bit of salt and pepper now and then to give the food a bit of a kick, but this is unnecessary- everyone knows that the only spice that white people use is pumpkin. The only food that actually has taste is the cranberry sauce, and it’s so sour, you may as well just douse your entire dinner in a bucket of lemon juice since it’s easier and cheaper than making the sauce. The bland tastelessness of the food perfectly complements the bland tastelessness of the jokes your secretly-a-white-supremacist uncle makes after he’s had one too many glasses of wine. It’s a match made in heaven, where you won’t be seeing that uncle any time soon. 

While the women spend hours preparing the many delicacies for Thanksgiving dinner, everyone else spends hours parked in front of the sofa to watch the game. The Thanksgiving football game is tradition. It is required that the family gather around the TV to watch the men play catch for six hours. It is Sacred Family Bonding Time (the bonding occurs telepathically because everyone is too involved in the game to be talking to each other). God forbid we watch a movie or play charades or employ any other method of entertainment. No. The football game is what our ancestors watched while having dinner with the Native Americans and it is what your grandchildren will watch after you are dead because People Come And Go But Football Is Forever.

However, the bonding time may be useful for you to actually get to know the people what have come to dinner, because most of them are people you’ve never seen before in your life. Everyone also arrives for dinner about three hours before anyone’s started cooking. At around three in the afternoon, the door-bell rings and your aunt walks in. Your white supremist uncle walks in. Your dead grandfather’s best friend walks in. Your veternarian’s intern who always gets way too attached to other people’s pets walks in. Come to think of it, you haven’t seen your labradoodle Tyrone since last Thanksgiving. Don’t you remember me? They ask, I met you 15 years ago, when you were about a day and a half. Since they’ve all arrived so early and have nothing to do, everyone resorts to the beloved holiday tradition: insulting the kids about literally every single thing you can think of. Trying to avoid the impending emotional abuse isn’t an option either- if you try to remove yourself from their line of sight, they’ll just start ranting about how cell phones are making kids antisocial. Okay, boomer