Do you know the Thanksgiving tale of Jeremy Squirrel? Of course you don’t! Unless you happened to catch a rather unusual Hanna-Barbera holiday special in 1972, there’s a good chance this little squirrel has been missing from your Thanksgiving memories for decades.
His story is The Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn’t, an animated special that imagines Thanksgiving might never have happened without one very determined woodland creature.
The special opens in what was then the modern day: 1972. A family is sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner when, outside their window, a father squirrel explains something humans have apparently left out of their history books. Thanksgiving owes its existence to his family’s ancestor, Jeremy Squirrel. The story then travels back to Plymouth Colony in 1621, where Jeremy’s adventure supposedly helped save the historic harvest feast.
That morning, a young Pilgrim boy named Johnny Cooke and a Native American boy named Little Bear head into the forest. The two get into an argument over who is the better tracker, and their competition takes them farther into the wilderness than either intended. Before long, they are lost and facing the dangers of the forest, including its wild predators.
With the boys missing, the situation threatens to become a disaster. A search party could disrupt the gathering, and a tragedy could put the peace between the colonists and Native Americans at risk. Jeremy Squirrel decides to take matters into his own paws. He organizes the forest animals into a rescue mission, guiding the boys back to the colony just in time for the feast. Without Jeremy’s intervention, the Thanksgiving gathering might never have happened.
Jeremy was created by Ken Spears and Joe Ruby, the writing team best known for creating Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! The duo wrote the special for Hanna-Barbera Productions, with studio founders William Hanna and Joseph Barbera directing. Veteran voice actor Hal Smith provided Jeremy’s voice. Smith was already familiar to television audiences as Otis Campbell on The Andy Griffith Show, among many other roles.
There may have been bigger plans for the little squirrel than a single holiday adventure. Retrospective accounts of the special describe Jeremy as an attempt to create a recurring Thanksgiving character, something that could become an annual mascot in the same way Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman had become familiar faces at Christmas. The idea was to give Thanksgiving a memorable fictional hero of its own, and the special’s modern-day framing device helped establish Jeremy as the forgotten figure behind the holiday.
That ambition apparently never paid off. The Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn’t did not become a regular part of the annual holiday television lineup, and Jeremy never established the kind of lasting presence enjoyed by the better-known Christmas characters. Some retrospective reviews point to the special’s relatively dry human characters, familiar recycled Hanna-Barbera animation, and the sheer oddity of a talking squirrel helping shape events in 1621 as possible reasons it failed to catch on. Those explanations are critical interpretations rather than a documented account of the studio’s decision-making.
Jeremy did not disappear completely, however. Accounts of the special’s later life describe it as a classroom favorite, sometimes shown on 16mm film before school vacations. It also received a nostalgic second life through reruns on Cartoon Network and Boomerang during the 1990s and 2000s. That exposure may have helped keep the special alive for viewers who remember seeing it as children, even if Jeremy never became a Thanksgiving household name.
For a holiday with no single fictional mascot quite like Santa Claus, Rudolph, or Frosty, Jeremy Squirrel was an unusual attempt to fill the gap. The Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn’t gave him a heroic family legend, a rescue mission in colonial America, and a place in a version of Thanksgiving history that humans apparently forgot to write down. More than 50 years later, the special remains a curious piece of Hanna-Barbera holiday history, and Jeremy is still waiting for the recognition he believes he deserves.
There was never an official Jeremy Squirrel toy or holiday merchandise line. Despite the reported plans to turn Hanna-Barbera’s little woodland hero into a Thanksgiving mascot, The Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn’t never developed into the kind of annual merchandising opportunity enjoyed by Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or Frosty the Snowman.
The special never generated the toy and book tie-ins that often helped keep other holiday characters in the public eye. There are no known official Jeremy Squirrel coloring books or promotional cups. One explanation offered by retrospective sources is that the special never secured a lasting network presence or a large enough audience to make a licensing campaign worthwhile. Its direct-to-syndication distribution may also have made it harder to promise toy companies the kind of recurring exposure that could justify manufacturing costs. The reported merchandising plans appear to have fizzled before they got off the ground.
Jeremy’s commercial afterlife was limited to the special itself and its home-video releases. The cartoon circulated on 16mm film reels used by schools during the 1970s and 1980s, before eventually reaching official Warner Archive DVD releases. Those copies are the closest thing to an official Jeremy Squirrel collectible.
So if you happen to spot a Jeremy Squirrel holiday pin or plush at a flea market, don’t assume you’ve uncovered a forgotten Hanna-Barbera product. It would most likely be a custom or fan-made item, perhaps inspired by the nostalgia surrounding the special’s later Cartoon Network and Boomerang reruns. Jeremy may have been intended to become Thanksgiving’s answer to Frosty, but he never got the merchandise aisle to go with it.
