Pity the holiday between Halloween and Black Friday

Poor Thanksgiving; how far you've fallen. Used to be you were more than an excuse for people to stay home from work eating themselves into a more expansive pants size and drowsily watching the Detroit Lions get trounced by giant, helium-filled balloons shaped like popular cartoon characters.

Of course, things tend to blur together after consuming several pounds of tryptophan-saturated poultry, but I'm pretty sure last year's winning touchdown was made by Scooby-Doo on a play-action fake from Bart Simpson.

Used to be Thanksgiving was a time for family and friends to gather together and whisper snide remarks in the kitchen about so-and-so's new significant other, who had the audacity to bring a pasta-based side dish and has been exiled to the kids table as punishment.

Used to be Thanksgiving was a day to reflect on all we have to be thankful for, things like all-night Chinese drive-throughs, virtual whoopee cushion iPhone apps and robotic vacuums.

Then Halloween started getting all the attention and now, the last Thursday in November has been reduced to little more than The Day Before Black Friday. Poor Thanksgiving.

As if it weren't bad enough having to make do with October's pumpkin and scarecrow hand-me-downs while enduring the inevitable candy corn-candied yams comparisons.

But what's a respectable holiday to do? It's not as if an effort hasn't been made to jazz things up. Take the turkey, for instance. Gone are the days when the most variety you could expect from this old bird was light meat or dark. Now the turkey is like a piñata: You never know what's going to be inside. Eggplants and zucchini? Jalapeños and yellow rice? Pineapples? Waffles? Doritos? The possibilities are endless.

And let's not forget the ultimate (for now) Thanksgiving Frankenstein: the turducken. Finally we have an answer to the age-old question: If a turkey ate a duck that had just consumed a chicken, what would that turkey taste like? Answer: An exploded aviary whose smoking remains landed in a stuffing factory.

Kudos to the airline carriers of America for doing their part. Thanks to the industry's festive use of overbooked flights, overworked pilots and barebones in-flight service, traveling to grandmother's house is no longer a forgettable jaunt over the river and through the woods.

Rather, it's a quite memorable ordeal of missed connections, six-hour tarmac waits and overflowing toilets. If that doesn't elevate the holiday to the level of family legend passed down from generation to generation - "and then, the overhead compartment creaked open and out leapt ... a 20-pound tofurkey! Wahahaha!!" - I don't know what will.

Maybe Thanksgiving should stop trying so hard and just be itself. There's nothing wrong with passing out at 8 p.m. in front of the television after a day of food and football. After all, we need our sleep so we can be in line at Best Buy at 4 in the morning to pick fights with other demented shoppers intent on snagging the last "Beatles: Rock Band" game in the city.

It's a tradition that goes back almost as far as the 12 Days of Turducken Leftovers.