I am a Thanksgiving turkey and I live to die for your holiday meal

Chickens?  Pigs?  Cows?  They get slaughtered all year for any old meal, but not me.  I’m special and I serve a higher purpose, so forget the various controversies surrounding the holiday over the centuries and belly up to the table.

I am a Thanksgiving turkey.  You might find me roasted, smoked, or fried at the center of the dining room table on Thanksgiving Day.  I might be stuffed in what has become something of the old-fashioned way or the stuffing might be served on the side.  Either way, I will likely be surrounded by other dishes that have become as much of the holiday tradition as I have, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and more, and of course a lot of gravy because sadly many people overcook me, leaving what should be my moist and delectable meat way too dry and requiring a good solid lathering before devouring.  For a tip on that, keep reading to the end. In the meantime, while Thanksgiving itself dates back to 1621, no one knows if even a wild variety of turkey was served when the pilgrims dined with the Wampanoag Indians that presumably chilly fall day, or three days actually.  It’s possible I was present in an earlier, scrawnier, and less tasty form, but historians believe that the meat served was mostly venison accompanied by fish, shellfish, and corn, which admittedly isn’t too shabby but is also no substitute for a good, solid, well-cooked drumstick.  In fact, all we really know of the of the original event comes from a pilgrim himself, Edward Winslow, who described it this way at the time, “Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deer, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governor, and upon the Captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.”

Whatever the case, the tradition – which wasn’t referred to as Thanksgiving at the time – struck a chord in the Americas and continued to be celebrated unofficially in autumn throughout most of the colonies and then states long before the country was truly born.  By the Revolutionary War, the practice was so common that your first President, George Washington himself, issued a Thanksgiving Proclamation at the urging of Congress on October 3, 1789, writing “Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor—and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me ‘to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.’  Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks—for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation—for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war—for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed—for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted—for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.”

Regardless, my prominent place at the table – the position of honor if you will – wasn’t yet agreed upon.  Though it’s likely some began to eat turkey during this period, it wasn’t for another fifty years that this crucial part of the modern tradition began to take a firmer hold.  The author Sarah Josepha Hale is generally credited with the trend, though some of her motivation for so fervently supporting my cause as dinner might well have been mistaken, believing I was served prominently in 1621.   Born in New Hampshire in 1784, Ms. Hale was widowed at a young age and turned to writing to earn a living.  In addition to penning the children’s classic “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” she included a detailed description of a turkey-centered Thanksgiving feast in her 1827 novel, Northwood, published various turkey recipes over the years, and mounted a campaign to recognize Thanksgiving as a national holiday in her magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book.  At the same time, Ms. Hale at least partially championed the turkey because she assumed it was a centerpiece of the original 1621 feast because edible wild turkeys were common in her New England birthplace.  In fact, turkeys remain the official game bird of Massachusetts today, though interestingly the bird was driven to extinction there in 1851 only to be reintroduced from a New York flock in the 1970s.  While only 37 of these wild turkeys were reintroduced, by 1978 there were estimated to be a thousand and as of today, there are somewhere around 35,000.  Back in Ms. Hale’s day, the cause was slow going, however.  Thanksgiving, among many more critical things, was caught up in the sectional divide between the North and the South that would ultimately lead to the Civil War.  Southerners, you see, objected to the idea that 1621 was the first Thanksgiving in the first place.  Instead, they placed the founding of the tradition in an earlier Virginia celebration that occurred in December 1619 when Captain John Woodlief and 37 other men landed at Berkley Hundred that December, after spending three months crossing the Atlantic in the Margaret, a voyage that was apparently brutal.  Beyond the regular claustrophobic quarters, lack of sanitary facilities, and constant vermin infestation on a small ship, they encountered several bad storms that threatened to kill them all and celebrated their arrival at the mouth of the James River by thanking God.

As a result, Southerners believed they were being slighted by placing the first Thanksgiving in New England in the lead up to the Civil War and long afterwards. Rather incredibly, the dispute continued all the way until 1963.  A year earlier, President John F. Kennedy, a Massachusetts man, had cited the Pilgrims in his Thanksgiving address which prompted Virginia State Senator John Wicker to telegram him that this was an error –  and he had the historical records to prove it.  Kennedy’s 1963 proclamation read differently, acknowledging the Southern version of events in addition to the Northern.  “Over three centuries ago, our forefathers in Virginia and Massachusetts, far from home, in a lonely wilderness set aside a time of Thanksgiving. They gave thanks for their safety, the health of their children, the fertility of their fields, for the love which bound them together and for the faith which united them with their God.”  Ironically, President Kennedy was assassinated just 18 days later.

Meanwhile, Ms. Hale remained undeterred in her quest a century before.  Despite the slow going, she spent fifteen years lobbying Presidents to make Thanksgiving a national holiday.  At 74, the Civil War itself gave her the opportunity, mostly because there were no Southerners in Congress during this horrific period to object and President Abraham Lincoln was responsive to the effort.  Being a canny politician in addition to a great political thinker, he believed the country needed some light in the darkness of one of our most desperate hours.  Five days before his own proclamation on October 3, 1863, he received a letter from Ms. Hale, which many historians believe prompted him to action.  Thus, in the midst of the bloodiest conflict in United States history, one of our greatest leaders urged the citizens of this great country to be thankful for our blessings, officially declaring a national holiday for the first time.  “The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.  In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union…It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

Still, the story of the national holiday and the turkey doesn’t quite end there.  While Ms. Hale was successful, it was a couple of decades before turkey became the traditional fare.  Southerners didn’t really start getting on board until 1882 when Georgia’s August Chronicle wrote, “We dare say most of the Thanksgiving will take the form of gastronomic pleasure…Every person who can afford turkey or procure it will sacrifice the noble American fowl to-day,” but like many of our customs and traditions, there was a more practical side than purely gastronomic pleasure.  Namely, that I am relatively cheap compared to beef or pork while significantly larger than my popular feathered cousins such as chicken, duck, or pheasant.  This made me both economical and easier to prepare for large gatherings.  Interestingly, economics also played a role in the holiday itself in the 20th century, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought to change the date to wrack up retail sales during the Great Depression.  In 1939, he declared the holiday a week earlier than usual, but the move was met with derision, becoming known as “Franksgiving” instead of Thanksgiving. In the aftermath of the kerfuffle, he agreed to move the holiday back to Lincoln’s last Thursday of the month by 1942, but Congress wasn’t in the mood to continue allowing the tradition to be subject to the whims of the executive.  They actually passed a law choosing the fourth Thursday in November and Roosevelt was essentially forced to sign it on December 21, 1941. It continues on this date to this day along with the traditional turkey feast. but like almost everything else in the country since, the tradition has grown in both size and controversy.  Americans consume around 46 million turkeys on Thanksgiving alone, averaging one to two pounds per person, which is quite a few birds if you don’t mind me saying and this alone has generated at least some of the controversy.  As vegetarianism and veganism have increased in interest or fashion over the years, so has a willingness to shame people for cooking me for Thanksgiving dinner.  People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, for example, regularly runs campaigns claiming “Image if you were the one being stuffed for Thanksgiving dinner,” and “We’re lucky turkeys would never do this to us—you don’t have to do it to them, either,” apparently unaware that turkeys are not vegetarians by any means. I eat mice, lizards, frogs, and just about anything I can fit in my mouth and should I be the size of my dinosaur ancestors, that would almost certainly include humans.

The other controversy is more complex, yet perhaps more typical at the same time.  Though Thanksgiving is celebrated by about 90% of Americans and there is a Canadian version a few weeks earlier as well, some claim it is disrespectful to the Indians to do so, both because the celebration occurs on stolen land and because the celebration itself is stolen.  In fact, protestors have been gathering at Cole’s Hill above Plymouth Rock since 1970 to counter the holiday with a “National Day of Mourning.”  “Since 1970, Indigenous people & their allies have gathered at noon on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US Thanksgiving holiday. Many Native people do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims & other European settlers. Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the theft of Native lands and the erasure of Native cultures. Participants in National Day of Mourning honor Indigenous ancestors and Native resilience. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection, as well as a protest against the racism and oppression that Indigenous people continue to experience worldwide.”  In other words, PETA is mourning for me and others are mourning for Native Americans, but you?  You’re probably going to eat me anyway, however you like me prepared, and you know what?  I’m alright with that.  Beyond being a bird and not being equipped with a big enough brain to understand my lot in life, I can think of worse ways to end up than as the centerpiece of one of America’s most important holidays, uniting family and friends from around the country and the world to share a meal together.  Chickens?  Pigs?  Cows?  They get slaughtered all year for any old meal, but not me.  I’m special and I serve a higher purpose.  At the same time, can you please make sure to brine me properly?  If you soak me in water, salt, and a little sugar the night before, I promise I’ll taste much better.  It’s the way I was meant to be prepared, trust me.