It's easier to plan for the table arrangements than for the controversial conversations bubbling up from the pop culture. For starters it might help to brush up on the controversy surrounding the new movie of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." The old fogies and other purists at the table are likely to express outrage at the ending in the American version, when Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy kiss passionately in post-coital ecstasy and he murmurs, "Mrs. Darcy, Mrs. Darcy," with sentimentality as soupy as the first course. Jane would never have written such vulgar voyeurism into a novel, and the ending ought to render the movie an X-rating, not for vulgarity but for ignorant revisionism. Jane Austen was so fastidious about the reality of experience as she understood it that she wouldn't describe a conversation between two men if a woman had not been in the room to overhear it. The new ending for American viewers differs from the British version. The father of the Bennets in England says he's quite willing to see suitors for his other two daughters: "If any young men come for Mary or Kitty, send them in, for I am quite at leisure." That's the old Austen spirit.

 This year, Madonna is less controversial than Jane Austen since she has been more than a little chastened by the experience of parenthood. (Wait until the daughter gets to junior high.) The pop star's new album is more moralistic than wicked, following her latest incarnation as a student of Jewish mysticism and stern mother who writes books and won't let her children watch television for fear of corruption. Now that her money is made, the blonde ambition that forever pushed the envelope of siren sexiness is gone, gone, gone. Here's Madonna with spiritual longings. In her new CD, "Confessions on a Dance Floor," she reflects on her quest for fame in a celebrity culture, asking plaintively, if somewhat disingenuously, "Will any of this matter?" There's something for almost everybody in her retro sound as it indulges in the nostalgia of disco, pop and electronic music. In fact, the old and the young may want to dance to it after the feast. Or they may not.

 No matter the conversations around the table, family talk is filtered through the lens of emotional history. What's said is not always the same as what's heard. Linguist Deborah Tannen, in her book "I Only Say This Because I Love You," tells of a mother who attends the first Thanksgiving in her daughter's home. In the kitchen the mother says, "Oh, you put onions in the stuffing?" The daughter, who suddenly turns into a teenage version of herself, snaps angrily: "Why do you have to criticize everything I do?" Mom, looking shocked, says, "I just asked a question." (Sound familiar?)

 We'll consume calories by the truckload on Thanksgiving, but it's the wiser parent who refrains from suggesting that a child not take a second helping of pumpkin pie. More than one teenage daughter has fled the table, crying, "So you think I'm fat?" Better to take another serving for yourself, along with this wish for a Happy Thanksgiving.