Trivia

The episode won an Emmy Award for Best Writing in Drama.

First appearance of Dr. McIvers, played by Rance Howard. In this episode he's introduced as the hospital's head of surgery. In subsequent episodes, he's one of the country doctors serving Waltons Mountain.

Despite the plot being about Thanksgiving, the school play in this episode is about the true story of Pocahontas rather than Squanto. The real Thanksgiving Story is about the historical events of the Pilgrims arriving on the Mayflower to their new home in present-day Massachusetts. They received assistance from Squanto the only surviving Patuxet tribesman. He was introduced to them through the Abenaki chief Samoset.

This is one of the very few episodes that does not end with a night time shot of the house with the family members all saying goodnight to each other.

The phrase "la di da," used by Mary Ellen in the kitchen scene, has its' origins in British slang as "lardy-dardy," which can be dated back to the 1850s, at the height of the Victorian era. It is not, as has been suggested, an anachronistic error referencing the film Annie Hall (1977), in which Diane Keaton's title character uses the phrase frequently (and subsequently made "la-di-da" a late-1970s catchphrase). This episode predates the movie by 4 years.