I'm just curious if anyone has seen a trend with Thanksgiving attendance in your households going down in recent years because your family members see it as the B-show and it's so close to Christmasmania anyway. Do out-of-town family members who you only see on major holidays boost attendance, or is it usually related more to the quality of the creative (e.g. available food and presents)?

It's always been strictly a national draw anyway. Christmas still draws worldwide no matter how boring the product is.

Thanksgiving is always the big draw. Christmas seems like that yearly tradition that a lot of people go to, but the food isn't as good. That damn turkey goes over everyone, I swear.

Interesting. I suppose you could argue that Thanksgiving's Wrestlemania is Christmas's Extreme Rules, as it's pretty much the same holiday, but loaded with gimmicks like trees, presents and music.

Thanksgiving isn't available on pay-per-view in my region.

Christmas is the Wrestlemania. As others said, it's over in most parts of the world, and crosses all generations from kids to old farts. People remember past Christmas like Hogan vs Andre, and base ones. One Thanksgiving is the same as another, with the only exceptions being disasters than end up winning Worst Holiday of the Year and become infamous for their shittiness. And the food gimmick: Turkey? Is there a worse Holiday Food Gimmick? It's not just that Christmas kicks its ass with a variety of potential main eventers, but the 4th chairshots with will 'Cue and Grilling.

 

Yeah... Thanksgiving is JTTS holiday.

Thanksgiving is easily the Summerslam (or recently Royal Rumble) to Christmas' Wrestlemania.

 

A #2 show but ahead of the rest of the shows.

Christmas always gets overbooked. Too many story lines that get wrapped up and not always in a satisfying way.

Christmas will always be treated as the bigger event of the two until Thanksgiving gets with the times. The days of a meal and vague notions of sharing and gratitude being enough to get people excited are long gone. Christmas is hyped far better, has far better production values (and Thanksgiving trails even Halloween in this regard), uses gimmicks more effectively, and provides far better payoffs than Thanksgiving. Christmas even has its own Undertaker, who rarely if ever appears outside of the Christmas season. At this point, the only people who prefer Thanksgiving are holiday purists who disdain all of the flash and gimmickry of the December event, and that's a small portion of the U.S. holiday crowd.

 

I'd go so far as to say that if Easter and Halloween ever went big-time and tried to appeal to everyone rather than just to their respective niche audiences, they could knock Thanksgiving down to fourth among U.S. holidays. They've been successful doing the things that Thanksgiving refuses to even try.

From what I can make out Thanksgiving is just a glorified Harvest Festival. (to my fellow Brits: ha ha, remember harvest festival in school? lol)

 

I was thinking about this before, but the US seems to have more "big name" holidays than here. You've got that Independence Day (*spits*), Halloween is a bigger deal over there. Easter seems to be a bigger deal. Labor Day.

 

Here we've just got Xmas and, well, "the summer" which isn't even a proper holiday. Other holidays are really fucking weak. Whitsun anyone? August Bank Holiday? May Day? These are rubbish holidays no one cares about. Some of them have interesting ancient pagan histories though.

 

Easter is a jobber of a holiday here. I think the UK only has one "drawing" holiday.

Mother's Day is the Royal Rumble. Simple gimmick, same thing year after year, monster draw:

 

Holiday Season Spending

 

Thanksgiving is a tough one since most of "Thanksgiving Weekend" spending is really Christmas & other stuff buying on Black Friday sales. Thanksgiving on it's own really isn't a big draw.

 

Valentine's Day has a great gimmick, almost like Wrestlemania Title Matches back in the day where you knew you would see something special and (after a certain point) a title change. With Valentine's Day the unspoken gimmick of course Getting Laid.

 

Easter is underrated. Surprised by that one.

 

Agree that Halloween beats Thanksgiving, wisely transitioning fans from seeing it as a Kids Holiday (Trick-o-Treat & Dress Up & "Candy! Candy! Candy!!!") to a Adult Holiday (Halloween Parties & Booze & Dope & "Hope I Score Tonight!!!") to a Parent Holiday (Your Children Dress Up & Trick-o-Treat & "I Need To Make Sure They Don't Eat All That Damn Candy!"). Brilliant booking by Holiday Creative, and Holiday Corporate has done a fine job of creating merchandise to sell.

Easter is a jobber of a holiday here.

I thought so too, since it means nothing to me at this point. But the sales... pretty mind numbing. We also should probably give it some extra points for having a gimmick beyond "Day off from Work/School", and selling stuff, and stuff our faces with food. I'm not religious, so that angle doesn't mean anything to me... but I'm willing to admit that it means a lot to a lot of people, and in ways that don't get accounted for in Traditional Capitalist Revenue Streams. It has that Old School Revenue Stream: go to Church, have that communal feeling, and give to the church.

 

John

I'm basically 1980s Flair on Christmas. We got a Christmas breakfast to attend at one end of the region with a pretty large audience (Crockett) and then at the other end of the city a smaller, but effective and vocal audience does dinner (Florida).

 

These days, WrestleMania is Christmas Eve. That's actually the huge draw, as the party can hit something like 40 people. The day after is like if they had Axxess after Mania, as opposed to before.

 

Easter is like Monday Night Raw, in a way. Back in the day, Raw wasn't the prime show. Same with Easter, as we never made it a big deal. It's actually increased in drawing power over time, both of them.

 

On the other hand, New Year's Eve has kinda become Survivor Series. Big deal for me before, not so much now.

I hadn't thought of that traveling part of Christmas. About half the time I'm JCP Flair: Christmas morning in SoCal with my parent, then jet flying across country to the DC Metro for Christmas night with my girlfriend.

Valentine's Day has a great gimmick, almost like Wrestlemania Title Matches back in the day where you knew you would see something special and (after a certain point) a title change. With Valentine's Day the unspoken gimmick of course Getting Laid.

Valentine's Day is the Royal Rumble. Moves shitloads of merch too. The big hit of the early year. Although I remember one time this girl drew number one, she had to go the whole hour and she was not so happy about that… I drew 27. I was gutted as most everyone had already come and gone.

Valentine's Day has a great gimmick, almost like Wrestlemania Title Matches back in the day where you knew you would see something special and (after a certain point) a title change. With Valentine's Day the unspoken gimmick of course Getting Laid.

Valentine's Day is the Royal Rumble. Moves shitloads of merch too. The big hit of the early year. Although I remember one time this girl drew number one, she had to go the whole hour and she was not so happy about that… I drew 27. I was gutted as most everyone had already come and gone.

 

I'm looking at that a number of ways...

Thanksgiving has a more fighting chance in Canada where the bookers give it more room to breathe.

 

I have to be honest, I can't stand the rest of the crowd at either anymore. Too many old time fans bitching about how great things were before all this modern shizzle. Really annoying chants about young people, off color race jokes, and complaining about medical problems instead of getting on with the show. This is just not my scene.

 

I only go for the food. I wouldn't be surprised if I drop both in the next decade.

In the UK, Thanksgiving is the In Your House PPV. We know its taking place in America but we dont get to see it.

Thanksgiving is very much like 'Mania in that you have to experience it live to truly appreciate how great it is. I made the trip for my first Thanksgiving 6 years, and I haven't missed on since.

 

Easter isn't really a jobber holiday either. It's a solid Summerslam-level event.