Christmas is better than Thanksgiving. It has more decorations, traditions, and for more than a month, every advertisement and shop window does its best to feel “Christmassy”. Thanksgiving is awesome, but we don’t start getting excited and count down the days to it from the start of November.

What Thanksgiving does have over Christmas is its food. Christmas has a tree, presents, lights, snow (some places), carols, special church services, special Lego holiday specials, ugly sweaters, clean and dirty Santas, more movies than are necessary, and more wacky traditions than are keepable. But Thanksgiving has better food.

The strength of Thanksgiving food is in its coordination. Christmas food is all over the map. It takes main courses like turkey and ham from Thanksgiving and then different families sprinkle almost completely random assortments of sides around them. At Thanksgiving, the sides are honed to taste great with the main course, and perhaps more importantly, to look great. There are few meals as photogenic as a heaping Thanksgiving plate with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, ham, green bean casserole and mac and cheese.

Thanksgiving food perfectly complements the fall decorations in a home. Fall is all about soft oranges and browns, things like pine cones and leaves on the ground and pumpkins on the porch. A Thanksgiving plate has all of those emphases, along with sides that add bright color to make a plate look not only savory, but sweet. The sweet potatoes, ham, stuffing, and casseroles bring the fall colors, and white meat turkey, cranberry sauce, and mac and cheese add character to the plate. 

Thanksgiving may give up a lot of glamour to Christmas. Some people may already have Christmas trees set up on Thanksgiving day. There may not really be such a thing as “Thanksgiving music”. Christmas may be the king when it comes to holidays. But Thanksgiving is the king of holidays when it comes to food.