hanksgiving after Thanksgiving, American families join hands in prayer with one eye closed and the other contemplating the centerpiece, the stuffed corpse of a golden turkey. Butterball's president licks his chops and rubs his paws together: "This year we expect to earn a gross profit of 1 billion dollars," he says to his blood-stained assistant, a butcher à la "Mickey Nox." The menu for the whole nation is based on Meleagris Gallopavo, the scientific name for the popular avis.
Contrary to popular belief, the first Thanksgiving dinner was not in 1621 at Plymouth, Massachusetts, but in 1619 aboard the Margaret. According to he People's Chronology, "the first American day of thanksgiving is celebrated on November 30 by thirty Englishmen aboard the ship Margaret which touches land at what will be Hampton, Virginia."
In 1621, William Bradford, the governor of Massachusetts, proclaimed three days of thanksgiving and prayer to celebrate with the Wampanoags, the neighboring natives, the first harvest at Plymouth Rock. The past bitter winter of 1620 had found the Pilgrims unprepared for the cold season and without enough food to last them through it. The surviving Puritans cultivated their new land to supply the colony with provisions to get them through the winter to follow. Their harvest was plentiful, and Pilgrims invited the Wampanoags to share their bounty.
Today, we dress up our kids in cute Indian-and-Pilgrim outfits to reinforce tradition, to reestablish the bond between the sexually repressed Puritan forefathers and the native sons and daughters of America, a bond later transformed into a bloody war.
The original Thanksgiving dinner menu, according to the Urban Legends Website, consisted of four wild turkeys, deer, fish, seafood, Indian corn, ducks, geese, swans and pumpkins -- but no ham, corn on the cob, popcorn, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. Puritans considered potatoes inedible; moreover, they didn't have yams, sweet potatoes or sugar.
The tradition gained popularity, and President Washington proclaimed November 26 of 1789 Thanksgiving Day. A turkey-killing spree took over the country during the 19th century, but Thanksgiving Day bounced erratically from date to date. The country couldn't claim a special day to celebrate the heartwarming dinner.
The editor of the now-obsolete fashion magazine Godey's Lady's Book, Sarah Josepha Hale, began a campaign in 1846 to perpetuate the gluttony tradition. By 1852 the determined Godey Lady had persuaded 30 of 32 states to celebrate Thanksgiving on the same day. Finally, in 1863, Lincoln awarded the country a government-sponsored holiday every last Thursday of November. This date didn't last long either.
The People's Chronology, under the heading, Economics, Finance, and Retailing, 1939, noted: "Thanksgiving Day is celebrated November 23 -- the fourth Thursday in the month rather than the last. Federated Department store chief Fred Lazarus Jr. has persuaded President Roosevelt that a longer Christmas shopping season will help the economy, the president has issued a proclamation, and within a few years most states will pass laws making November's fourth Thursday Thanksgiving Day>" In 1941, Congress approved Roosevelt's petition and therefore stretched the shopping season.
Today the shipping season stretches from Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas and to New Year's Eve. In 100 days we become indebted for the next 265. Our bank accounts slim down while the economy gets fat. We justify the enormous outlays by using a variety of feel-good terms to disguise our consumerism: sharing, giving, thanking and tradition. These times of contagious squandering supply the profit margin to offset the less commercial days shared by Cupid, the Easter Bunny, Mom, Dad and the Spirit of Independence -- important, but cheaper holidays.
And what's in it for us? One big hole in our pockets. There's no Thanksgiving Day for consumers or for turkeys. Not a single day when the buyer can cash in receipts or go shopping for free. There is not even a Happy Consumer Day card. And ironically, many a card has a poised turkey on its cover, a bird that looks completely oblivious to the turkeycide. The turkey, poor bastard, has become the bird martyr sacrificed on Thanksgiving as part of a national sharing.
Turkeys are bred to feed a meat-craving nation, a nation with no Humane Slaughter Act for birds. The royal birds are stacked in a windowless, disease-breeding shed where, if they survive cold, heat exhaustion and/or heart attacks, they finally endure their inescapable fate: the slayer. At the turkey farm, a processor debeaks and declaws the creatures without anesthesia. And you don't even want to let your dentist fill your teeth without NO2. Benjamin Franklin must be turning in his grave watching the cruelty imposed on the bird that he wanted to be the national symbol.
Butterball's Website (Butterball=the #1 turkey slaughterers of America for 45 years) has charming caricatures of turkeys dressed for the occasion in gala outfits. This pioneer in the turkey-processing market offers a wide variety of Thanksgiving and Christmas bird by-products, from a frozen cadaver to neatly sliced lunch meat. The web site also features a recording of the fowl bird singing something like the animal's last song or maybe an interpretation of Bob Marley's Redemption Song.
In 1994, 2.74 + nine 0's pounds of turkeys were processed in the U.S. according to the Department of Agriculture. Butterball boast that "Americans feast on 535 million pounds of turkey on Thanksgiving!" Ninety percent of the U.S.A. population eats turkey on Thanksgiving Day; 50 percent eats the domesticated bird on Christmas. North Carolina breeds 61 million turkeys annually. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) estimates that of 300 million of turkeys slaughtered every year -- more than Americans living in the U.S.A. -- 40 million are killed to be the grace meal on Thanksgiving Day.
The turkey is part of the All-American meal. Every president has encouraged the kill-a-turkey tradition. Except maybe Bill. Clinton might break away from tradition this year; he is considering having a meatless feast with Hillary and Chelsea, who is plagued with Butterball's worst nightmare -- vegetarianism. PETA gloats over the first daughter's organic rebirth.
Today, new companies have targeted the vegetarian market. They have introduced turkey alternatives to eat during Thanksgiving, a fake, inanimate, pathetic-looking soy-based roast stuffing with gravy, "Tofurkey" and "Unturkey." The cranberry chestnut-stuffed "Save the Turkey®" and "TofuTurkey" with rosemary herb gravy have also invaded the vegans' market. Present your guests with one of these turkey imitations and never expect to see them again, at least at your dinner table. Clearly, it is impossible to strip Americans of their turkey centerpiece at Thanksgiving tables. Every November ... Fall ... Pumpkins ... Turkeys.
Not every Native American craved to gobble a gobbler. The Cheyenne thought that eating the most wanted bird would curse them with cowardice. The Apache wouldn't eat the timid bird nor use its feathers for their arrows. Butterball's Online Turkey University says, "Southwestern Indians revered the turkey ... Northern tribes felt the turkey was a friend of man and could battle evil spirits." These beliefs are long forgotten.
In Southwestern Pennsylvania many folk hunt their own fowl. Man vs. Nature. At least the cold-blooded killers aren't making Butterball any richer, nor are they torturing turkeys before killing them. Yet hunters run the risk of getting shot by any Joe Smock who gets a hunting license. But there are so many damn turkeys running around the Pennsylvania woods! Due to the success in breeding birds, hunting is now permitted during the fall in Pennsylvania. Roughly, out of 100 fall hunters, 19 walk out with a dinner turkey. Moreover, the population of bred wild turkeys increases as the demand for the succulent bird rises. The unstoppable plague of turkeycide.
Since 1621, for 378 years, we have obsessed over the Turkey Banquet and its leftovers. Families say grace for whatever they have to be thankful for without any ode to the beautiful bird, slaughtered mercilessly so we can pass out after a tryptophan OD. Companies such as Butterball and Perdue invest a considerable portion of their considerable earnings into breeding more turkeys, because every year we eat more fowls.
And I get to watch my family, accomplices of Butterball, licking turkey juice off their fingers, and later, before their post-feast snooze, witness them opening the first button of their trousers to ease the pressure of a stomach full of fat, carbohydrates, protein, sugar, starch, beer and wine -- most of what will be their aorta's new wallpaper. They sit on easy chairs, stuffed like turkeys, to snore and watch TV, the second national pastime after eating. The morning after Thanksgiving, they all ask for forgiveness sitting on their toilets.
This Thanksgiving, if you manage to prepare a stuffed casualty of the Turkey Industry or skin the feathers of a hunted soul without guilt, be thankful for the delicious martyr or for physically surviving your encounter with armed Americans in the woods. Say a little prayer to thank the pilgrims for contributing to our bankruptcy, and after devouring the best-seller bird, offer a prayer or two over the remains of the carcass centerpiece. It might bless you with its offspring for Christmas.
