Shocking news here, so you'd better take a seat: I love Thanksgiving. It is, without a doubt, my favorite day of the year. I am a grateful person, and I enjoy this opportunity to thank anything responsible for the glorious food of the past year. Bring me a pie on this day, and I'll chase you around like Borat, trying to kiss you.
But seriously, how can you not love a day when the whole of US society fully expects—nay, demands—that you engorge yourself to the point of blissful discomfort? There are no distractions. No silly worship, no materialistic presents and the NFL games only aid in your consumption.
So, how the hell did a bunch of kooky, cultish Pilgrims pull off such a masterful invention?
Well, as you likely know, the first Thanksgiving took place in the Plymouth Colony in 1621. The Pilgrims gathered with the Wampanoag Indians (in a rare moment of equitable treatment) to celebrate the fall harvest. Seeing as my life boils down to food, I celebrate for similar reasons.
The Puritanical religion condemns excess, making Pilgrim life rather dull. But those Pilgrims were nothing if not sly, and they cleverly masked their gluttony as giving thanks to God.
The menu at Plymouth was a bit different than today—no Turducken. In fact, the Pilgrims ate geese instead of turkey. Stuffing a bird dates back to the Middle Ages, so that sloppy crap was probably there. While they had cranberries, sugar prices would have made the tart sauce we know today like liquid gold.
Both potatoes and sweet potatoes were absent, as well. It is worth noting, however, that sweet potatoes were considered a potent aphrodisiac. The Pilgrims were going for one sin at a time.
Corn was plentiful, but it was Indian corn, a coarse type which was ground for porridge and pancakes. How did we keep the stuffing, but lose the pancakes?
The Pilgrims depended on pumpkin and squash, but pumpkin pie was nearly 50 years off. Instead, the first feast included pumpkin stew and pudding. Apple pie also would've been absent, and dessert was limited to local fruits and nuts.
It wasn't until the 1800s that Thanksgiving took off as a national celebration. Menu records are scarce, but by 1877, Thanksgiving menus included turkey with cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie. These historical eaters already recognized the glory of the turkey-stuffing-cranberry leftover sandwich, as one Minneapolis restaurateur noted: ""All will agree that the turkey is better this time than it was the first.""
By 1946, GI's in WWII demanded 10 million pounds of turkey for the holiday feast. Fast forward to 2005, and troops in Iraq were treated to a Thanksgiving feast that included more than 32,000 pumpkin pies.
Today, the Thanksgiving menu is pretty concrete. With 91 percent of Americans eating turkey on Turkey Day, one-sixth of all turkeys raised in the United States will end up on a Thanksgiving plate.
To my dismay, stuffing is still around. It varies regionally, with cornbread in the south, oysters in New England and rice in Canada, but despite any attempts to jazz it up, it invariably boils down to soggy crap.
Rounding out the table is cranberry sauce (the perfect way to give thanks to the canning industry), sweet potatoes, gravy and anything/everything pumpkin or apple for dessert.
Despite my whining, I couldn't be more excited. I've been ogling Food Network's Thanksgiving specials for weeks now, and pumpkin spices have found their way into everything from my coffee to soup. It's a shame the Food page won't run on such a glorious day, but I hope you enjoy your food and company as much as I will.
I'll leave you with a bit of advice on handling ""food coma,"" courtesy of www.urbandictionary.com: ""To relieve the effects of food coma, one can unbutton their pants so their stomach can expand beyond normal parameters. Also, it is advised that a person take a short nap, followed by a large dessert."" Sound medical counsel.
