The Bird Is the Word

A bird on the table is worth four in the air

My usual Thanksgiving dinner of 12-to-20 guests is canceled this year due to you-know-what and the state directive to restrict dinner companions to those "with whom you've been with throughout this pandemic.” That would be myself and two vegans. Um…yeah. My dis-invitations to the usual suspects went out a few days ago. I still plan on consuming the usual poultry and accompaniments by myself largely for reasons of sensory nostalgia, but the turkey will be a small one. 

As a kid, Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday. Oh, the playfulness surrounding Halloween made October 31 a close second, but back then (as now) the license to gorge on a full-blown feast tipped my scale of good things toward the 4^th Thursday in November – despite how it subsequently tipped the bathroom scale. Besides, the holiday always falls within a few days of my birthday (sometimes on it), and there always has been enough Narcissus in me to regard the holiday as a sort of extension of that. 

Thanksgiving feasts were common in the American colonies as harvest festivals – first by the Spanish and French in the 16^th century and later in the English colonies. A Thanksgiving (by that name) held in Virginia in 1607 preceded the “first” one in Plymouth colony by 14 years, though the latter eventually caught on as the mythic origin story. The holiday was celebrated sporadically in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. It was first declared a US national holiday by George Washington as a one-off event in 1789. This was the first year of his Administration under the new Constitution. He made no mention of the Pilgrim story. Rather, the holiday was for Americans to give thanks for “an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.” Thanksgivings were declared intermittently in subsequent years by presidents and state governors. In 1863 in the midst of the Civil War Abraham Lincoln made the holiday permanent. FDR gave it one final tweak: he fixed the holiday on the 4^th Thursday of the month instead of, as previously, the last (some Novembers, of course, have five) as an economic measure in order to extend the Christmas shopping season. 

As a kid I cared nothing about any origin myth. As an adult I don’t care more. It was always about food, friends, and family. It was convivial. Unsurprisingly, the ancient Roman term for such an event was convivium. One festival called Mercatus Romani was held in late November and was accompanied by convivia; “mercatus” means “commerce” and accordingly the festival involved street markets and seasonal shopping, which has a modern ring to it too. 

Yet, the roots of Thanksgiving-like late-autumn banquets are far older than the Romans. There is something deeply atavistic about a ritual blood sacrifice at this time of year – in the modern version, commonly a turkey. One may point out that only the bird is sacrificing anything since the rest of us get to eat the critter, yet even this aspect of sacrifices has deep origins. Hesiod in Theogony (c. 700 BCE) tells how the already age-old practice came about of people placing bones on altar fires for the gods while keeping the meat for themselves. When humans’ relationship with the gods was still unsettled, Hesiod tells us, in order to decide how a sacrifice should be divided between people and the gods an ox was slaughtered and divided into two portions. Prometheus (who had a soft spot for humans – go figure) made the division. For one portion he stuffed meat and fat in the ox’s gross, slimy, ugly stomach; for the other he sewed up the ox’s bare bones prettily inside the skin. He then let Zeus pick between the two. Zeus picked the pretty pile. He was irate at having been tricked into choosing bones but he didn’t go back on the deal. (There is more to the story involving fire and the punishment of Prometheus, but let’s not get sidetracked.) I won’t be offering up leftover turkey bones on an altar. They’ll be tossed in the woods for the delectation of the local wildlife (the remains are always gone by morning), but that is an offering of sorts to Nature. 

In any event, while the upcoming November 26 may be shy on conviviality, the date is arbitrary anyway. My current thought is to do a “Thanksgiving in February” (or whenever) for the usual crowd when vaccines and growing herd immunity make that feasible… and not likely to prompt a visit from the police. Turkeys beware. 

A Vegetarian Option