Thanksgiving food, ranked

Julie said we should rank Thanksgiving food from most to least important, so here we go:

1. Gravy is the most important Thanksgiving food. This is, I know, a controversial choice, but hear me out. It is the very essence of the festive roasted turkey, combined with stock I made earlier in the week. It tastes like celebration and preparation. I serve it piping hot and it binds together the holiday flavors so that they are harmonious and still distinct. It's also a pain to make, so its presence on the table proclaims THIS IS A SPECIAL DAY.
2. Pie is the other thing that says HI IT'S THANKSGIVING. Pumpkin and pecan, forever and ever, with piles of whipped cream.
3. Mashed potatoes are the most important non-dessert solid food (or, okay, semi-solid). Hot, fluffy, buttery, perfect -- I missed them keenly yesterday. NEVER AGAIN, my friends. Last-minute mashed potatoes or bust.
4. Stuffing is next. I make cornbread stuffing because I am a child of the South, and because my youngest son loves it. "Will there be enough stuffing?" he always asks plaintively. "There's not usually enough stuffing." Don't tell my grandmother, but I have started making my cornbread for stuffing with a leetle bit of white flour. It holds together better when I am combining it with the veggies and herbs.
5. Okay, I guess we have to put turkey somewhere in the top five. If the turkey somehow fell over on the kitchen floor during its resting time, and the dog licked it all over before I noticed, I wouldn't be too very sad. It's fine. It's pretty. I'm no longer intimidated by cooking a turkey (note to Future Jamie: big turkeys are juicier with convection and the faster cooking is useful on a busy day), but the drippings are the bit I'm most attached to. Can't have truly excellent gravy without drippings.
6. Cranberry sauce is next. You need that color on a plate that is mostly ecru/beige/gold/orange, and the tartness is pleasantly bracing. (If you ever have Thanksgiving dinner at our house, be sure you take small bites of the cranberry sauce. It's pretty assertive.)
7. Sweet potatoes have somehow twinned themselves at our house, and now we have a sweet version (pineapple, pecans, warm spices, a little orange juice, and an astonishing amount of butter) and a spicy version (chipotles in adobo, lime juice, whipping cream). 
8. Second-string Thanksgiving desserts: always cranberry cake, usually key lime pie.
9. Everything else can be tied for ninth place. We usually have a couple of green things (often roasted Brussels sprouts, maybe some kind of creamed spinachy thing, maybe some kind of salad), maybe some beets, maybe some kind of bread. This year Pete made the most gorgeous loaves of sourdough AND sourdough rolls. They were beautiful, and at the same time they are not a sine qua non for me at the Thanksgiving table.

Huh, I am still tired from making that much food for that many people yesterday. Maybe tomorrow I'll come back and add some links. Please share your own rankings in comments, or post a link to your own site if you decide to blog about it. Just one more day of NaBloPoMo!