Thanksgiving Prices Fall Because the Green Agenda Lost

By Larry Behrens

Thanksgiving 2025 brings something America hasn’t seen much of in recent years: lower prices.

According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, the cost of a classic Thanksgiving dinner for ten people dropped about 5% this year, landing at $55.18. After years of grocery-store sticker shock, that’s welcome relief. And it stands in sharp contrast to 2022, when the same meal hit a record high of more than $64.05, the most expensive Thanksgiving in history.

Food prices don’t rise or fall in a vacuum. Energy is baked into every step of the supply chain — the fertilizer, the transportation, the processing, and the packaging. When energy costs drop, families feel it. And when energy costs spike, families feel that even more. That’s why Thanksgiving affordability is a story about more than turkey prices — it’s a story about American energy dominance.

Look at the gas pump. The national average gasoline price in November during the Biden years has hovered around $3.47 per gallon, compared to $2.68 during President Trump’s time in office. That difference is real money for families traveling for the holidays, and it shapes the cost of everything on the table. More affordable energy means more affordable food — it’s that simple.

And here’s the part the left hopes you forget: when Thanksgiving dinner hit its record in 2022, not a single Democrat feigning outrage about “affordability” today said a word. When gas prices shattered records and families were getting crushed at the pump, eco-leftists were buying silence in bulk. The same politicians who now pretend to champion kitchen-table economics didn’t care when American families were actually feeling the pain.

They claim to love the word “affordability” now, but while they are pretending to care, they might want to look in their own backyards because state-level green mandates and fuel standards still punish consumers unevenly.

Using AAA’s state averages, the five most expensive states for gas are all blue. The five cheapest are all solid-red.

When you look at where gas is most and least affordable, there’s a Grand Canyon-level divide. In states where the eco-left’s mandates and fuel standards dominate — California, Hawaii, Washington, and Oregon — drivers are paying the highest prices in America, averaging about $4.19 per gallon. But in states that embrace American energy instead of punishing it — places like Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas — the average price is $2.63 per gallon. You don’t have to be a political expert to see that there is a premium charge for filling up in states that embrace the green agenda.

That’s a $1.56 per-gallon penalty for living under eco-left energy policy. It’s not ideology — it’s math. And it means a family driving a few hundred miles for Thanksgiving in California is paying dramatically more than a family traveling the same distance in Oklahoma or Mississippi.

So as we gather this year, we have a lot to be thankful for. We live in the greatest country in the world. The Thanksgiving meal is cheaper. Travel is more affordable. And America’s energy workers continue to prove that when politicians get out of the way, the result is lower costs, stronger supply, and more green in our wallets.

This Thanksgiving, the green agenda lost — and American families won.

Larry Behrens is an energy expert and the Communications Director for Power The Future. He has appeared on Fox News, ZeroHedge, and NewsMax speaking in defense of American energy workers. You can follow him on X/Twitter @larrybehrens

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.