You know you’re on a Foreign Exchange to America When... Your Eating Turkey a Month Early

When I turned on the TV Thursday morning there was a 30 foot mechanical turkey dressed as a pilgrim terrorizing New York City. No, I wasn’t watching a really bad Japanese monster movie. It was Thanksgiving, the day when the entire country idolizes the creature they’ll devour that very afternoon. It’s a strange juxtaposition, cooing over what you’re about to eat. All those cute images of turkeys adorning cards when the reality is millions have recently been sacrificed to satisfy the American day of food excess. A couple even had their last moment shared with the entire nation through the wisdom of Sarah Palin’s publicity team. They couldn’t have moved a little to the left?

The turkeys are going to fight back though. They have a secret weapon, a suppressant drug concealed in the tasty goodness of their meat, Tryptophan.

If a foreign state ever wanted to invade this country the best time would be around 3.30 in the afternoon on Thanksgiving. This is when Tryptophan has had its full effect. Aunt Marge is passed out on the sofa, cousin Ricky is napping on the floor and the dog is flaked out on the porch. This is happening at houses throughout the nation, even the National Guard are in a turkey coma, the doors are wide open. This is when the turkeys will make their move. Their suicide roasting squads will bring the country to its knees and let in a vegetarian invasion force. Buddhists maybe.

Our last line of defense will be marching bands. There isn’t an army in the world that could stand Wilmington Heights High School’s rendition of ‘Winter Wonderland’ for more than two minutes without their ears bleeding. Give the cheerleaders actual guns instead of those wooden ones and New York at least would be safe.

Thanksgiving is a peculiarly American holiday. In other places it is little more than a harvest festival but here the religious and the secular are brought together in a celebration of the country’s inception. In a land populated by immigrants of so many different faiths the religiosity of Christmas has faded, Thanksgiving is both Christian festival and recognition of how we all got here. There are the usual excesses of American celebration (food, drink, shopping, shameless commercialization) but at its core Thanksgiving is the perfect melding of myth and reality.

It celebrates the lessons the pilgrims learnt from the Native American tribes that allowed them to survive in the New World. The irony that the very people that helped the settlers get through those first few years were later persecuted and all but wiped out by the colonists is conveniently hidden in a haze of goodwill and joy.

Much like turkeys both the pilgrims and their Indian tutors are painted as idols sharing their meal around long tables as families throughout the country still do. Like other myths it is a comfort, a fairytale moment when the two cultures were able to put away their differences and eat, again, like families do. Thanksgiving is wish fulfillment, a perfect time when America and your family are united over cranberries and pie, a day set aside from the trauma of war, economic meltdown and family ruptures. We all need this little escape in to a food induced stupor where we attempt to fix history in our favor and forget that pyramid scheme Ricky got you involved with. Whether it works or not can be left for another day.

Pass the turkey, please. I think I’ve just got my second wind.