Creeva’s World 2.0

A Thanks­giv­ing Funny

In a few days, all Amer­ica will be cel­e­brat­ing the hol­i­day of Thanks­giv­ing, or as it is known out­side the United States, “Thursday.”

Fam­i­lies sep­a­rated for months or years will reunite, and shortly after­wards they will remem­ber why they sep­a­rated. In a dark­ened gym­na­sium, Richard Sim­mons will run his rev­enue pro­jec­tions and con­sider buy­ing a small Caribbean island.

Through­out the nation, those wretched souls con­demned to the pub­lic school sys­tem will breathe a bit eas­ier, eager in their antic­i­pa­tion of four days surcease from education.

(The stu­dents are pretty happy about it, too.)

Yet run­ning through this gai­ety is an under­cur­rent of bewil­der­ment. In this deca­dent age we live in, far too many of our unlet­tered coun­try­men think Ply­mouth Rock a music style from the ‘70s, or the Mayflower a pot­pourri ingre­di­ent. Accord­ingly, in the best tra­di­tions of jour­nal­is­tic pub­lic ser­vice and over­ween­ing arro­gance, my col­umn this frosty morn shall be ded­i­cated to answer­ing your ques­tions about Thanksgiving.

Q. Gosh, you’re right. I, the aver­age reader, am dumb as a post. What exactly are the ori­gins of Thanksgiving?

A. Thanks­giv­ing is, of course, a hol­i­day invented by gro­cers and farm­ers to allow them to sell huge quan­ti­ties of dis­gust­ing “tra­di­tional” foods that no one in his right mind would eat oth­er­wise, such as squash. The aver­age squash is a tri­umph of min­i­mal­ism wherein Nature man­ages to con­vert mud into a plant with­out both­er­ing to change its taste and tex­ture. Attempts to improve the mud-like fla­vor of squash by the addi­tion of del­i­cate sea­son­ings and spices have pro­duced dishes that taste, at best, like del­i­cately sea­soned and spiced mud. A mas­ter chef, faced with the neces­sity of mak­ing a palat­able squash dish, would throw in his funny hat and become a short-order cook at Denny’s.

Q. That’s quite a con­spir­acy the­ory. Where do the Black Heli­copters fit in?

A. They trans­port the squash.

Q. I should have guessed. But seri­ously, what are the ori­gins of Thanksgiving?

A. The first Thanks­giv­ing was a cel­e­bra­tion of grat­i­tude by a group of early Eng­lish set­tlers known as the Pil­grims. The Pil­grims were Sep­a­ratists who had come to the New World to prac­tice their reli­gion with­out gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence, and since the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobacco, and Firearms did not exist at the time, they were allowed to do so.

Unfor­tu­nately, the Pil­grims neglected to acquire a few skills (such as ele­men­tary agron­omy) before set­ting off on their voy­age, and as a result they nearly starved. The local Indi­ans, who at the time were prac­tic­ing their ancient sus­te­nance meth­ods of hunt­ing and fish­ing, took pity on the Pil­grims and taught them to farm the native flora. In a dis­play of appre­ci­a­tion, when the first har­vest was taken in, the Pil­grims held a huge feast and invited the Indi­ans over for din­ner, after which they all fell asleep on couches while watch­ing football.

Q. OK, but when did Thanks­giv­ing become a national holiday?

A. Thanks­giv­ing Day was adopted as an annual hol­i­day by New York State in 1817, mark­ing the first offi­cial cel­e­bra­tion of Thanks­giv­ing as a reg­u­lar event, and the last time a New Yorker said “thank you” for any­thing. In 1863, Pres­i­dent Lin­coln appointed a national day of thanks­giv­ing, and every sub­se­quent pres­i­dent has fol­lowed suit.

Q. Speak­ing of turkeys, is it true that Ben Franklin thought the turkey should have been our national bird instead of the eagle?

A. Ben Franklin was indeed a pro­po­nent of the turkey as our national bird. Since he was a mem­ber of the Hell­fire Club at the time, though, his motives were some­what suspect.

It must be kept in mind that the mod­ern domes­tic turkey bears lit­tle resem­blance to its feral ances­tors. The wild turkey is a cun­ning and elu­sive sur­vivor, a chal­leng­ing quarry for the most skilled of hunters. Farm turkeys, on the other hand, have been selec­tively inbred for gen­er­a­tions in an attempt to improve fla­vor and increase breast meat pro­duc­tion. These efforts have had numer­ous side effects on the birds in ques­tion, includ­ing reduced intel­li­gence, dif­fi­culty in main­tain­ing bal­ance, and the cre­ation of the Spice Girls.

Q. Is there a final mes­sage you would like to give to your read­ers on this Thanks­giv­ing Day?

A. Enjoy your Thanks­giv­ing din­ner. You can have my squash.