The Holiday Season (Part IV)

Thanksgiving: Take Two

Here are a few little facts to drizzle over your mashed potatoes and dinner conversation tomorrow evening when your Great Uncle George painfully wants to talk about the time he was stationed in some where or other and then gets stuck in a bunker that actually wasn't a bunker but an out post and how his war buddy who was with him is now a pastor that someone he thought you knew in college might have baptized...

FACT: Abraham Lincoln declared that Thanksgiving should be celebrated the last Thursday of every November. The true first Thanksgiving took place on December 4th.

FACT: Thanksgiving was not made a true national holiday until 1941.

FACT: 1621 was the year of the first Thanksgiving. Pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians sat down for a festive harvest celebration. This was actually a common practice among many American Indian tribes through out the nation.

FACT: The only two foods known for sure to be served at the first Thanksgiving were wild fowl and venison. Sorry Bambi's mom...

FACT: Minnesota is the top turkey producing state in these United States. Only six states in the whole union are believed to produce a third of the birds consumed by the nation.

FACT: Roughly 690 million pounds of turkey are consumed on Thanksgiving.

FACT: The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was once the Macy's Christmas Parade to get shoppers excited for the upcoming season of giving. Snoopy has made an appearance at said parade more times than any other character.

If that isn't enough to keep conversation light and interesting, please RESIST THE URGE to bring up any of the following:

• Global Warming
• The fact that the turkey served is really not turkey but tofurky, and isn't it cool you can't taste the difference?!
• That awesome job you just landed (ok, you can mention this, but for no longer than five minutes. Everyone who is unemployed or hates their mediocre jobs will be gripping their knives a little too menacingly)
  
• How much recently passed Aunt Enid would have loved to see her prized crystal centerpiece put to good use.
• The TRUE end to the first Thanksgiving (unless everyone at the table is on the same page on the matter)
• How much better the host's house looks when they put a little effort into it
• Health care

And finally...

• The dry, over cooked, practically rock hard turkey your host worked all day on

I hope all of you have a lovely, wonderful Thanksgiving, and please be thankful for your blessings and good thoughts.

Being Thankful, WW