Here Are The Soap Opera Thanskgiving Traditions We Still Miss

Thanksgiving is a time for family, friends, food, and favorite traditions. While The Bold and the Beautiful, Days of our Lives, General Hospital, and The Young and the Restless continue to make new memories for their fans, we’re taking advantage of the holiday to look back on some of the celebrations past from soaps we’ve lost over the years.

Cut It Out

For the last few decades of the show’s run, it wasn’t a Thanksgiving on As the World Turns unless the Snyder family was hunkering down to carve the old Hubbard squash. Enjoy this complete episode from 1994, and your glimpses of the Hughes, Stewart, Snyder, and Walsh families… along with a very young Jason Biggs, long before he got up close and person with an American Pie.

Children’s Table

The Martin family was there for the first episode of All My Children, and they were there for the last. (They even made an appearance in the short-lived Prospect Park reboot.) In 1992, another Pine Valley stalwart, the one and only Erica Kane (Susan Lucci), was missing, presumed kidnapped. She was really getting drunk with Edmund (John Callaghan), to make Dimitri (Michale Nader) suffer. And while Erica was calling Brooke (Julia Barr) to apple pie, the rest of the town was getting together to eat some, along with turkey and stuffing. Relive the festivities here.

Fight On

On some shows, sworn enemies can put their hatred aside for the holidays and pretend to make nice while breaking bread. Yeah, One Life to Live‘s Nora (Hilary B. Smith) and Lindsey (Catherine Hickland) weren’t playing that. This Thanksgiving started with barbs flying…and then devolved into a food fight. Watch it now — and try not to feel hungry.

For God’s Sake

Guiding Light has much more religious roots than many other soaps from then on or now. The original was a metaphor. Reverend Rutledge always kept a lamp burning in his window, the guiding light that would bring lost travelers home. With such theological roots, was it any wonder that, every year, Springfield celebrated the holidays with a heartfelt prayer? A round-up of some of their most memorable ones is here.

Out of This World

Finally, there was Another World and Mac’s (Douglass Watson) annual toasts. Mac may have been just your average small-town millionaire. Watson, however, was a highly regarded Shakespearean actor (so highly regarded that, rumor has it, Marlon Brando insisted on having Watson’s role cut down in their movie version of Julius Caesar because he was outshining the nominal star). So when Mac gave a Thanksgiving toast, you felt it right down in your bone marrow. Don’t believe us? Check it out! (And decide if Brando was right to feel threatened.)