Perhaps no national holiday is as well-suited to theme-oriented movie-viewing – no one’s at school or work but it’s cold outside, and the day itself has little to recommend it beside being a big build-up to a mountainous meal of poultry and vegetables. Here're our suggestions, respecting the history but suggesting new kinds of family traditions...

King Kong (1933) Growing up a New Yorker in the TV never-never-land of the 1960s and 1970s, Thanksgiving meant one thing: giant apes. For some obscure reason a local broadcast station (back when we had local broadcast stations) would always air, year after year, King Kong, Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young from noon to dinnertime. In some households it was the Dallas Cowboys, in others it was the Macy's parade, but in certain homes the day was filled with images of black-&-white hand-animated gorillas rampaging through the respective jungles of Skull Island and midtown Manhattan. The then-brand new Empire State Building instantly acquired a legendary aura for millions worldwide who had never been to New York, while Kong's decimation of the Third Avenue El has become -- in our movie culture's subconscious, at least -- how the famed subway actually disappeared. This counterprogramming was so consistent it became an ersatz annual tradition for everyone we knew. Exactly why those anonymous, old-school TV programmers chose this very narrow subgenre of movies for this particular holiday is a mystery; Plymouth Adventure or Drums Along the Mohawk would've been more logical, if less captivating. But outsized, stop-motion simians? Whatever you say. Somehow today it makes sense, if for no other reason than because Thanksgiving, to kids, is often little more than a big meal. So, on a day that’s dependably gray, cold and somewhat dull, we were treated to grainy Depression-era urban camaraderie, holy-smokes wisecracker Robert Armstrong, foggy island-scapes, vertiginous cliffs (stalked by pterodactyls!), and horrific images of gargantuan chaos – escapism defined, best seen on the living room rug with a good November rain rasping outside. Annual traditions certainly tend to be asinine and arbitrary in America, and there’s no reason this one shouldn’t catch on again. The loud, exhausting 2005 remake might suffice in some households, since it as nearly as long as all three films combined.

Son of Kong (1933) See above. And try to not let that final image haunt your supper.

Heidi (1937) Another TV-scheduling conundrum, but by now an established tradition, for a Shirley Temple film that has nothing to do with Thanksgiving. (Maybe the local networks chose it because it heralded Christmas, with sleigh rides over the snow-covered Alps and Weihnachten in a wealthy Frankfurt home.) But the holiday spirit of appreciating one’s fortune and tenacious family bonds is all over this children’s standby; Temple, a little past her Captain January-cute days, was still a consummate actress and the reigning box office champ of the ‘30s. The orphan-&-grandfather love story is a lock only if you can stand some more sweetness and warmth after the candied yams and pumpkin pie.

Hans Christian Anderson (1952) For decades, this stiff-legged musical about the famed cobbler/fairy-tale spinner also served as local-station Thanksgiving counterprogramming in many states. If you know who Danny Kaye is, it might still fly.

Plymouth Adventure (1952) Hollywood’s only shot at the Mayflower story, and a pleasant mediocrity untempered by Spencer Tracy and Gene Tierney in their rapidly-aging phases, and an Oscar for best special-effects – which are spectacular.

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973) The third of the Melendez-Mendelson Peanuts TV specials, and the first mediocrity (too much Woodstock and Peppermint Patty, too charmless a script), although like the others it may’ve been imprinted upon you as a child like a goose’s southbound flight path, so you may not be able to resist it. All the same, is there a more eloquent portrayal anywhere of an American child’s November afternoons?

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) Woody Allen’s great, intimate comedy-drama about a sprawling, neurotic New York showbiz family, their failures, cross purposes, heartbreaks and hilarious obsessions, all of it spanning two Thanksgiving Day celebrations. And they’re not entirely unlike your Thanksgivings, either – spite, drinking, betrayal, boredom, speeches, chitchat and bustle, wrapped in a family’s unmistakable warmth. The film is segmented into brisk, poetically-titled chapters, scored with a mix of old show tunes and Puccini, and armed with brave performances (Oscar-winning and otherwise) from Allen, Mia Farrow, Barbara Hershey, Dianne Weist, Michael Caine, Max Von Sydow, Maureen Sullivan and a sadly semi-Alzheimer-ish Lloyd Nolan. It’s one of those rare, grown-up films – even from Allen – that summons a palpable sense of healing, joy and resilience without for a moment pandering to the audience’s sentimental wishes or surrendering its sometimes harrowing relationship with the real world. You can tell the Woodman was happy in the 1980s – the movie glows with affirmative energy.

Avalon (1990) The third of Barry Levinson’s Baltimore films is also the most ambitious, tracing the arc of a Russian immigrant family from 1914 into the ‘60s, a tumultuous arc punctuated by Thanksgiving dinners – get-togethers that are fraught with generational hostility and growing pains. It’s an ebullient film, but the course of the holiday celebrations allows Levinson to make a strong critical statement about modern life – as the years press on, the family dissipates and fragments, and the ever-present television slowly takes pride of place, instead of conversation and family intimacy. Armin Mueller-Stahl, Aidan Quinn and Elijah Wood constitute the three levels of father and son.

Home for the Holidays (1995) Taken from a bitter New Yorker story, this hostile, lower-middle-class dysfunctional-family comedy can’t be anyone’s idea of a yearly ritual, unless you’re gay and your family isn’t, and unless your folks still live in Baltimore. But give it a shot once, if you’re priming for a trip to the tension-filled homestead – the tasteless wrangling eventually climaxes with a beautiful scene of quiet rue involving lost single mom Holly Hunter, her grumpy father Charles Durning, and a reel of old 8mm family home movie. If this movie seems to you less calibrated outrage and more docudrama, you have our sympathies.