On farms across the nation, gobbling and clucking sounds have yielded to an eerie silence. This past weekend, Americans attempted to escape the nation's recent inundation of violence by participating in the annual tradition of turkey genocide.
For many students, Thanksgiving involved traveling long distances to congregate with family and friends, which can actually end up being about as stressful as a multiple-choice physics exam. This year, I had the pleasure of flying out of Chicago O'Hare, one of the nation's busiest airports.
As if the masses of students returning home and the hordes of excited grandmothers taking a break from their basting duties were not enough, I had to deal with excessive security measures at the airport this year. Nothing says holiday spirit and family togetherness like being subjected to a full cavity search after the dental floss in your carry-on arouses the suspicion of the highly trained security personnel.
Although the long journey home had its drawbacks, it was a small price to pay to participate in one of the many American traditions that involves the intake of obscene amounts of food. Quite clearly, American society places great value on finding several events throughout the course of the year during which it is completely acceptable to consume piles of food so large that they may be seen on satellite photos and some topographical maps.
Of course, the true spirit of Thanksgiving involves considering the blessings you have been given and sometimes even involves the cheesy tradition of going around the table and forcing each person to give thanks. Unfortunately, many people take the easy and greedy way out, giving thanks that they have the opportunity to ingest stuffing as if they were Homer Simpson eating a box of doughnuts, while the majority of the world barely has enough food to survive.
While savoring the abundance of the American lifestyle is right in line with Thanksgiving tradition, I decided to focus my gratefulness on more pressing issues this year. For instance, we can all give thanks for the \Girls Gone Wild"" videos and most of us can give thanks for the fact that we've never gotten hit in the leg by a punted football to end the season's most important game.
Believe it or not, Thanksgiving does have a purpose beyond the decapitation of helpless fowls and relishing your exorbitant material goods. Over the long weekend, the holiday offered students the chance to escape the pressures of college life and catch up with important people in their lives.
While visiting with family can be an enjoyable experience, it seems that the exact same stories are told at the dinner table every single year, most of which involve extremely embarrassing moments from my childhood. One might think that, in so many years of family history, something would have occurred that is more worthy of conversation than the time I peed myself at a bar mitzvah in 1984.
Although attending school far away from home has supplemented the significance of Thanksgiving by allowing me to get together with old friends, I noticed that my friends are beginning to fall into a similar pattern of retelling humiliating tales from the past. This year, my friends were sure to remind me of the tree-humping incident in seventh grade.
I guess reliving embarrassing moments is as much a part of Thanksgiving as the bloated feeling you get after dinner. I just wish I could remove this piece of turkey from between my teeth, but airport security confiscated my dental floss.
