Let's Talk Turkey . . .

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Just a few thoughts about Thanksgiving. I've been thinking alot about the origins of Thanksgiving over the past week, since once again some colleagues at work asked me to explain the meaning of this purely American holiday. In the beginning, if I understand correctly, the giving of thanks in question was that of the pilgrims, early American settlers from Europe who were thanking the local Native Americans in New England for having helped them survive the first few very hard winters in the "new" world.
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And Oh, how we continued to thank the Native Americans over the next few hundred years : Massacres, broken treaties, stolen lands, pillage, plunder, deportation, prison camps, reservations. In a word, Genocide. Genocide on a massive and murderously terrifying scale.
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In fact, what we Americans are really thanking perhaps, is we are thanking ourselves for having been so fabulously clever and sophisticated to have succeeded in becoming the dominant and domineering owners of a vast and rich land, at the expense of those who it rightfully belonged to. They have been brushed aside as mere savages. A footnote in American history books. A disagreeable subject not to be broached at polite dinner tables.
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I for one am sorry for all of that. It happened before I was born, but I am still sorry for that. I would be thankful, on this day of thanksgiving, for anyone who may see this to give a minute of silence to remember what was, and what is no longer. To remember what was destroyed to create this shining nation of freedom... America.
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Now, let's talk turkey. Or turkeys, to be exact. One turkey I have been thinking about since September, when I saw it dead on a road in central Pennsylvania, south of Dubois, north of Indiana. Roadkill is another of my pet peeves with "modern" society. We go racing about in our motor cars like Mr. Toad in the Wind and the Willows, proud, arrogant, careless, and we churn over everything in our path, including millions of animals every year. I always think of their last moments of life, the panic, the pain, the horror. For some it may be a quick end. For others perhaps not.
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This particular turkey seemed to be sleeping in the road. Roadkill rarely looks so peaceful. I don't remember ever seeing a turkey so close up, certainly not one which still had its head, legs, claws, and feathers in any case. I'm not sure that I'd call it a beautiful bird. But it was a bird who lived, and who met its end on the cruel yellow stripes of a country road.
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In America today, where the population is approximately 310 million people, living in roughly 115 million households, according the US Census Bureau, there may be about 15% of the population living in poverty who cannot afford to put a turkey on their dinner table for Thanksgiving, as is the tradition, and maybe another 15 or 20% who do not do so for cultural or dietary reasons, which leaves about 80 million households. If we suppose then that many families get together at the holidays and share a turkey, perhaps we can cut that number in half. Which would imply that roughly 40 million American households will have a turkey in their oven today, getting roasted to a glorious golden brown, giving off mouthwatering odors of roasted turkey.
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That means that in the past days, 40 million turkeys went to slaughterhouses all over the nation, and lost their heads, feathers, innards, claws. Quite a sobering thought, that. An annual massacre of millions of turkeys. So that we can give thanks. Thanks for being alive. Thanks for having food to eat. Thanks that so many turkeys made the final great sacrifice for our Thanksgiving pleasure.
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