EMILY: Yes, it is Thanksgiving. And before you sift through the dozen or so excuses you always have on hand, let me have my say. You’ve missed two dinners and avoided my calls because you’re mad at us about what happened at Yale. But I want you and Rory at Thanksgiving this year.
We learn that this episode takes place more than two weeks after “Let the Games Begin”, and that Lorelai has been so angry with Richard over the Yale interview that she has refused to attend two Friday Night Dinners in a row.
Because Emily says, “I want you and Rory at Thanksgiving this year”, it implies that they don’t usually go to Thanksgiving dinner with Lorelai’s parents. The episode strongly implies that they usually spend Thanksgiving in Stars Hollow, dividing their time between Lane’s, Sookie’s, and Luke’s.
LUKE: Yup, it’s tough when the universe is against you. That’s like taking on the Manhattan Garbage Union.
Luke refers to the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association, called “New York’s Strongest”. Workers at New York City’s Sanitation Department are responsible for collecting trash, and for clearing the streets of snow during winter.
The strength of their union became apparent in February 1968 when they went on strike for nine days demanding higher wages, leading to 100 000 tons of trash on the streets, with piles of garbage everywhere [pictured]. The strike was ended when state governor Nelson Rockefeller agreed to the sanitation workers receiving a slightly higher wage than they otherwise would have, and further arbitration.
Martin Luther King’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech in Memphis that year was in support of the sanitation workers, and it inspired the sanitation workers in Memphis to launch their own strike, just days after the one in New York ended. The Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association claim Martin Luther King Day (16th January) as a holiday each year, in recognition of Dr King’s support for their cause.
There were other strikes by the sanitation workers during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, but they were usually resolved within a day or two, the city having learned its lesson that you have to take care of the people who collect your trash.
RICHARD: And I am shocked by your naïveté … Did you really have pictures of Norman Rockwell family Christmases dancing in your head? Lorelai had her chance for a family, she walked away from it. That was her choice.
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), painter and illustrator, most famous for the cover illustrations of idealised or sentimental American life he created for The Saturday Evening Post for five decades. His Christmas illustrations [pictured] are well known as iconic images of the Yuletide season, and still popular.
Richard also references the poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas”, attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, and previously mentioned as a classic work which has shaped the American view of Christmas. In the poem it says,
The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.
Richard mocks Emily’s hopes for Lorelai and Christopher to be together as idealistic and sugary-sweet as Christmas paintings and rhymes. He has never wavered from his position that Lorelai had one chance to have a husband and family, when she was sixteen, with Christopher, and that walking away from it was irresponsible. The idea that not marrying Christopher might have been the responsible thing to do, not to mention that stepping back from Christopher and Sherry now is the more moral choice, is something he cannot fathom.
This is the song which plays while Rory and Jess walk through the streets of New York to get a hotdog and then go to the subway. It’s a 1992 song by Yoko Ono, first released on Onobox, a comprehensive 6-disc collection of Yoko Ono’s work from 1968 to 1985. It included 20 previously unreleased songs, of which “O’Oh” is one.
The lyrics are about a couple enjoying the Fourth of July celebrations in Central Park together, so it’s a song about New York. Some of the lyrics are:
I never knew we could be so nice to each other
I never thought we’d be laughing together
I never knew life could be sweet and simple
I never thought that was possible
Not only does the song suit the setting they are in (although it’s May, not July, and a different park), but the lyrics are about how Rory feels about Jess. The surprise of finding that being with him is not only sweet, but simple – you can feel how easily the two of them get along, how effortlessly they laugh together.
Rory finally gets to meet Jess away from Stars Hollow, and he’s not surly, not bitter, not sarcastic – he’s sweet, he’s nice, he’s funny, in a way she never thought possible. She has taken any number of practical, physical, and emotional risks to come to New York to see him, and she gets the softest of landings, as Jess finally opens up to her, now that he’s received unexpected proof of how much Rory cares for him.
There is a real flipside feeling to the choice of song, because when Rory had her sweetest and most romantic experience with Dean (sitting in the car wreck on their anniversary), the song chosen to accompany it was by John Lennon. Now her sweetest and most romantic scene with Jess is accompanied by a Yoko Ono song. (Both songs have Oh in the title, also).
It is as if Jess and Dean are her Yin and Yang – Dean the Yang which complements her, and Jess the Yin which matches her. With Dean, there is an attraction of opposites; with Jess, an attraction of like minds, or twin souls.
LORELAI: Hey, no one told me it was casual Friday.
Casual Friday, a custom in some offices which allows for a more relaxed style of dress at work on certain Fridays of the year. It began in Hawaii in the mid-1960s, called Aloha Friday, with the idea that workers could wear traditional Hawaiian dress to the office on certain days. By the 1970s, it became acceptable to wear Hawaiian dress every day, but the idea of a more relaxed dress code on certain days spread to California, then to all of the US, and eventually throughout the West by the 1990s.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 