Let's Talk Turkey

Ahhhhhh …. Thanksgiving. To my American and, belatedly, to my Canadian readers: Happy Thanksgiving everybody!!! I am going to take a little blogging break while I celebrate, but, I’ll be back on Saturday. I don’t know yet. In any case, before I leave you, I want to share a bit of Thanksgiving-style, American, oddball cultural knowledge with my non-American readers. Strangely enough, it seems that the BBC didn’t cover this story, but it’s important and I want to be sure that you all know about it ... The presidential turkey pardon. What is it? Well, I’m glad that you asked. As you may know, tomorrow, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. During the holiday, we eat turkey. Lots of turkeys. But, each year, the life of one turkey is saved. The National Turkey Federation presents the President of the United States of America with a live turkey and the President officially spares the turkey’s life during a quirky, televised ceremony — the turkey pardon. This isn’t a joke. President Bush did it yesterday and, when they were presidents, Clinton, Bush Sr., Reagan, Nixon and others all did it as well. Anyway, after the pardon, the spared turkey typically leaves the White House and goes on to live a long and prosperous life at Frying Pan Park in Fairfax County, Virginia. (In a break from tradition, this year, President Bush banished the turkey to Disneyland.) No one quite knows when the turkey pardon tradition began, but it’s commonly believed that either: (a) Harry Truman started it in 1947 or (b) Abraham Lincoln started it when he pardoned his family’s pet turkey. In either case, the Presidential Turkey Pardon is a long-standing tradition that is ingrained into the very fabric of the United States. And, in case you don’t know the history of the Thanksgiving, in general ... The folklore of the holiday supposedly involves a boatload of white people that were extremely thankful for the Native Americans that helped them live through the cold winter and harvest unfamiliar autumn crops. But, for the past forty years, a gathering of Native Americans and others have assembled at Plymouth Rock for a National Day of Mourning to protest Thanksgiving (i.e. “... um … you thanked us by killing us”) ... Interestingly, in SoHo, I once saw a t-shirt that read — Native Americans: Fighting Terrorism Against the Tribal Homeland Since 1492. Clever. Very clever. Anyway ... Happy Thanksgiving (or National Day of Mourning) everybody! If you need a Funky Brown Chick Fix while I’m gone, feel free to peruse my blog’s archives for your reading pleasure. ;-) See you when I return.