Thanksgiving gets the short end sometimes

Although sometimes it does get the short end of the wishbone where holidays are concerned, Thanksgiving is pretty high on my list of favorite holidays. There's nothing to compare with waking up to the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade with all of the huge balloons, spending a lazy day with family and gorging ourselves with the most amazing meal that we have looked forward to since last year!

Thanksgiving is another one of those things that we Americans do that no one else in the world does. Our Pilgrim forefathers were so thankful that they had survived the long year of 1621 in the New World that they celebrated the bounty that they had and gave thanks to the Lord for it. Although they did have a three-day feast in celebration of a good harvest, and the local Indians did participate, this "first Thanksgiving" was not a holiday, it was simply a gathering and it wasn’t repeated the next year.

The harvest of 1621 was a bountiful one. And the surviving colonists decided to celebrate with a feast -- including 91 Indians who had helped the Pilgrims survive their first year. It is believed that the Pilgrims would not have made it through the year without the help of the natives. The feast was more of a traditional English harvest festival than a true "thanksgiving" observance. It lasted three days. They didn’t have pumpkin pies because they would not have had flour or sugar left and large bowls of mashed potatoes would have been unheard of because the potato was thought to be poisonous at that time.

Governor William Bradford sent "four men fowling" after wild ducks and geese. It is not certain that wild turkey was part of their feast. However, it is certain that they had deer meat. The term "turkey" was used by the Pilgrims to mean any sort of wild fowl.

One of the exchange students living with us asked me, in all seriousness, when we would go and find the turkey for our thanksgiving dinner. When I said that the next time I went to the grocery I might get a turkey breast, I noticed the confused look on her face. It took a little while to register with me that she thought we would go out and hunt for turkey. I explained to her that most people ‘hunted’ their thanksgiving turkey in the frozen food section of the local grocery stores or better yet would call the stores’ deli or call Joe’s Market and order the pans of dressing and the turkey already cooked to perfection.

I know it was a big disappointment for her that our family didn’t have a turkey to carve or big drumsticks to gnaw on or the wishbone to pull because it’s our family tradition to have chicken and dressing and baked ham. We only eat Moms dressing twice a year and it is always worth the long wait. The feast was good as always and we had a good time feasting on sweet potato casserole and corn salad and other side dishes and hot rolls and then finishing off with slices of pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie or a big slab of my sisters strawberry cake.

Now that Thanksgiving is officially over, I can concentrate on Advent and getting my home ready for Christmas. I can decorate my trees and put out my Christmas village and start bringing out my figurines and light the Advent candles each week as Mary and Joseph make their way around the room for their final destination of the stable and the manger and ready our home and hearts for the coming of the Lord. I won’t need a wishbone for that.