Thanksgiving Myths

I first posted this on my web site back in 1996. It is time for a good recycle. :-)

And now for the interval of mandatory joyfulness we call the Holiday Season. Let the lies begin!

Lie #1: Thanksgiving is the start of the Christmas season.

The holiday season used to begin when Santa appeared at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving parade. Now it begins well before Halloween, when the Hallmark stores display "collectible" mass-produced extruded plastic ornaments - Star Trek vessels, Barbies, Bugs Bunnies, Failed Third-Party Candidates, all hanging from green nooses like Lincoln assassination conspirators.

Lie #2: There are no Thanksgiving songs.

There are a few songs, but they just haven't caught on. The essence of Thanksgiving is communal gorging on decapitated birds, which does not lend itself to bouncy tunes. An accurate Thanksgiving song would go like this:

Harvey the Red-Beaked Turkey
Had a very shiny beak
And when they swung the axe blade
How he struggled and he shrieked
All of the other turkeys faced a future likewise bleak
Like Harvey, the other turkeys
Would be dead by late next week.

See? No fun at all. You could sing "O Butterball" to the Tannenbaum tune, or "Old Cold Coleslaw" to "King Wenceslas." ("Good dish old cole slaw sat there, once again uneaten...") or "O Slipp'ry Knife" to "O Holy Night." Let us sing:

O slippery knife, you slipped while I was carving
Now I am swearing while my wife calls the doc.
O slippery knife, you skidded off the breastbone
Now I am faint, and I'm going into shock.
I now regret those hours at the whetstone
I now suspect I've lost at least a quart.
Press on the wound! Cut off the circulation!
Oh knife so sharp; Oh knife, my tendon's shorn.
(Etc.)

The public has wisely resisted the very concept of Thanksgiving songs. Accept them, and you know they'll show up as mall Muzak in August.

Lie #3: In today's society, more and more men are helping with Thanksgiving dinner.

No. In my childhood, duties were clear. Mom cooked the bird. Dad carved it. I spanked the can of cranberries until a glistening gelatinous barrel plopped on the plate, wiggling uncertainly like a belly dancer who spies her pastor in the audience. I'm certain there are men who get up at dawn to help their wives shave the basil, or debone the gizzard, or whatever it is gourmets do to impress each other. Although David and I handle ourselves in the kitchen well, the majority of males avoid the kitchen, because they know they are as useful as porcupines in a balloon store.

Lie #4: The holidays have become too commercial.

The first people to complain about commercialization were the Three Wise Men, who argued bitterly about whether it was necessary to bring gold, frankincense AND myrrh. One of the Wise Men probably noted that they seemed to put up the Star in the East earlier every year.

Lie #5: Holiday meals contain a substance that puts you to sleep, a natural sedative called " tryptophan."

This is a myth. The sedative is actually called "conversation."