An ongoing holiday joke on How I Met Your Mother was born on this night in 2007 when the episode "Slapsgiving" first aired.
Nothing really new about that. Holidays are almost entirely about traditions, and those traditions frequently were started by those who continued to carry them out.
And so it was with this one, although there were several other things going on at the same time that tended to overlap with the holiday in typically How I Met Your Mother ways.
The tradition of the gang gathering for the holiday was initially the brainchild of Lily (Alyson Hannigan) who really wanted to celebrate her first Thanksgiving being married to Marshall (Jason Segel). Thus she wanted Robin (Cobie Smulders), Ted (Josh Radnor) and Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) to participate.
But there were complications.
Ted and Robin had been dating, but they broke up several months before Thanksgiving. In fact, by the time of Thanksgiving, Robin had started dating a man who was 41 but appeared to be much older to Ted (he kept seeing him as Orson Bean, who was nearly 80 when he appeared in this program).
It's safe to say Ted and Robin had some post–relationship issues.
A different kind of issue was obsessing Marshall and Barney.
How I Met Your Mother followers will recall "the slap bet" Marshall and Barney made the season before. If you haven't seen that episode, you should. It will make a lot of things make sense. But the bottom line was that Marshall was awarded five slaps to administer to Barney whenever he wished.
And Marshall had decided to use one at Thanksgiving, going so far as to post a slap countdown on the computer. Marshall clearly got a lot of enjoyment from taunting Barney, who dissolved into a nervous wreck.
Compelled by circumstances, Robin and Ted talked about their relationship and how awkward it had been. As a couple, they had a personal joke in which, whenever someone used a phrase that was preceded by a military rank (i.e., "general chaos") they would salute and say, in unison, "General Chaos."
Since breaking up, that hadn't happened, even when rather obvious opportunities presented themselves.
At Thanksgiving dinner, Barney was such a wreck that Lily — the slap bet commissioner — ruled that there would be no slap on the holiday. Barney was immediately revived and began gloating — and refused to stop, even when Lily instructed him to stop so Lily reversed herself and told Marshall to go ahead with the slap. He complied.
And Robin and Ted discovered that they could continue to be friends. When Bob used the phrase "major buzzkill," Robin and Ted saluted and said, "Major Buzzkill."
It was a well–written episode about life and love and all that stuff.
