“So… where ya going for Thanksgiving?” If you’re annoyed this week by that question, what you may not realize is that the inquiring minds are not simply asking to be polite nor masking the real question, “Can I come to your house, eat your food, ruin your football watching, and sleep over?” Instead, they are asking the question as part of the 385-year tradition, deriving from the very first question the Pilgrims asked the very first group of wild turkeys they spotted. It was a rhetorical question for the turkeys as well.
After that first ill-fated meeting between wild North American turkeys and not-so-wild Puritanicals from Europe, the history of the turkey is one long story of malignment. Turkey congregations tended to be a little more boisterous, with a lot of gobblings, than the solemn meetings of the Pilgrims, but because of the latter’s background of tolerance, these observances were tolerated. The Pilgrims were disgruntled to learn, however, that the turkeys had come to concur that the 1621 harvest was indeed bountiful and set about establishing the New World’s first corn-fed crop. Then, things really went downhill when the Pilgrims realized that turkeys were polygamous.
Two hundred years later, things were not much improved for the turkey. Despite its muscular body, multi-colored plumage, great sense of hearing, color vision and a freely rotatable neck that would make Linda Blair nauseated, the turkey was denied election as the National Bird of the U.S. Many early politicians decried its goofiness, the extra flaps of skin on its head and the way its body continued to try to run and fly after being decapitated- traits that never stopped early politicians from being elected.
Ben Franklin was a big proponent for the turkey as a national symbol. Ever the observer, Franklin opined that the turkey was “steadfast” while the bald eagle was “cowardly.”
Congruent with its malignment, turkeys have a long association with U.S. presidents. Although petitioning for their own emancipation, turkeys were distraught after Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1867 in the lesser of his two famous Proclamations. Each President since Lincoln annually declared the holiday as the fourth Thursday in November, except William Howard Taft, the 27th and largest U.S. President, who instead ordered all turkeys and dressing to be shipped to the White House.
Three hundred eighty-five years later, things are finally looking up for turkeys in America. Although smoked turkey legs are still served at Walt Disney World, you have to look long and hard to find a cart that serves them. Once a burgeoning market for turkey wattles (the loose skin that falls from the neck) and snoods (the loose skin that grows over the beak), most domestic potted meat food products now proudly announce, “made [only] with beef and chicken” on their labels.
So, as you contribute next week to the annual American consumption of 572 million pounds of cranberries, 1.4 billion pounds of sweet potatoes, 831 million pounds of pumpkin, don’t forget the 270 million maligned turkeys who gloriously contributed the 13.6 pounds that you’re going to eat, not to mention the Wild Turkey Bourbon that’s made from their grain.
