Thanksgiving jokes by Red Skelton – during his opening monologue on The Red Skelton Hour, jokes about Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving dinner, cooking it, and eating it. From the episode, Climb Upon My Knee, Dummy Boy.
Thanksgiving jokes
- There were two turkeys waking across the barnyard, and one turkey says, “I can lick any turkey in the barnyard! Put up your gobble! Put up your gobble!” One of them says, “Why are you acting so tough anyhow?” He says, “Kid, it’s Thanksgiving. Who wants to buy a tough bird?”
- I don’t want to complain, but last Thanksgiving we had a three pound turkey. 3 pounds. It looked like a parakeet with a weight problem. I haven’t seen anything so pitiful since Phyllis Diller tried out for the Bunny Club. Can you imagine a three pound bird going through the line? It was half turkey and half Twiggy.
- I look forward to Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving isn’t just a day, it’s a feeling. It’s something you never see, but you know it’s there. Like Howard Hughes.
- You know Thanksgiving was the first credit card dinner? The Indians were invited over by the Pilgrims, and they’ve been paying for it ever since!
- I was reading a book about the Pilgrims. This one Pilgrim, he met this girl in the morning, proposed to her in the afternoon, they got married that night. That’s what you call Pilgrim’s progress!
- There was one Pilgrim named John Smith. You don’t hear much about him any more …. Oh, you see his name on hotel registers a lot.
Thanksgiving dinner
- And the nudists have something to be thankful for at Thanksgiving dinner: napkins!
- I remember, every Thanksgiving we used to go to my Grandmother’s house, and Granny had a great method of what to do with leftovers. She threw them out.
- I love to watch women at Thanksgiving dinner. They eat the turkey piled up on the plate, the salad, the soup, you know, the stuffing, and the roast potatoes, the gravy, the hot rolls, the butter, the corn on the cob, and the mince pie, the apple pie, the pumpkin pie. And then, when the coffee comes, they drop one Sacharin pill in it. That does as much good as Mickey Rooney on a basketball team!
Cooking Thanksgiving dinner
- People come to me and say, “Is your wife, Little Red, is she a good cook?” Well, let’s put it this way. Every Thanksgiving, I carve. Not the turkey, the gravy!
- I’m kidding, my wife’s a good cook. But she’s one of those cooks that adds wine to everything. Yesterday we had potted roast.
- You know, people who cook with wine, it’s hard to explain to a cop that you’re driving under the influence of lamb chops!
- And one year she baked the turkey with so much wine, when we opened up the oven it says, “Close the door, there’s a draft in here.”
- One year I was invited to Carol Burnett’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. You know, I don’t want to say anything about her teeth, but boy …. It’s the first time I ever saw drumsticks back away.
- Two seagulls, Gertrude and Heathclifif, they were talkin’. “Did you know that the Democrats don’t buy hen turkeys for Thanksgiving?” She says, “No …” [to the audience] That’s what she said, with surprise. “No, I didn’t know that. Why don’t the Democrats buy hen turkeys?” “Well, how would it look, to go around basting a Lady Bird?” [Editor’s note: President Johnson’s wife was affectionately known as Lady Bird Johnson at the time]
- This Thanksgiving, we didn’t have turkey. It was so expensive, we just baked money. We had roasted money with Truman’s picture stuffed in it. (Clem and the Married Life)
- My little boy Richie was talking to Valentina about the turkey. “You oughta see that turkey. He is the meanest I ever seen. He took the axe away from Pop three times. I don’t think he was dead, because I opened up the ice box, and there he was without any feathers on, with two stalks of celery doing a dance.” [pantomimes a fan dancer](Clem and the Married Life)