Thanksgiving this year is November 22nd. It is always the fourth Thursday of November.
All Americans know the story of Thanksgiving. Pilgrims who came to this country to escape religious persecution in England managed to make it through their first hard winter and to gather a bountiful Fall harvest. To celebrate their good fortune at having arrived here and survived, they held a great feast to thank God and the Native Americans without whose help such survival and good eating might not have been possible. At this feast was served turkey, corn, potatoes, turnips, and pumpkins—the food available to them. As the story goes, after three days of feasting at one such celebration, the Indians disappeared into the woods and returned with five deer, which they gave to the governor. This was sometime around 1621.
Later, of course, the White Man slaughtered as many of the natives as possible, bought Manhattan from them for a box of beads, drove them onto reservations where in the 20th century these seemingly worthless lands were discovered to have such riches as plutonium and oil, and to be so fortuitously placed as to make some of the most profitable gambling casinos in the country. I am sure that there is a team of lawyers somewhere trying to take back those lands and their profits.
But I digress. I have always wondered why the Indians went out to get the deer and why it is that venison, the meat from deer, has never caught on as traditional Thanksgiving fare. Were the natives tired of turkey? We get tired of it. Did the food run out? Did one of the Pilgrims say something about who brought what? It isn’t as though deer has nothing to do with Thanksgiving these days. I mean, deer has as much to do with Thanksgiving as American football does. While quite a lot of men leave the feast table to go sit in front of a television to watch football, I think there may be just as many who don hunting vests and grab their rifles before walking off into the woods to shoot a doe. Doe season (the right to kill a female deer) usually opens on Thanksgiving or the day after. Maybe it is just a Southern thing. If that is the case, does that mean that Southerners are more traditional in their celebration of Thanksgiving? After all, when a Rebel comes out of the woods with a deer, somebody cooks it, and somebody eats it.
Later, of course, the White Man slaughtered as many of the natives as possible, bought Manhattan from them for a box of beads, drove them onto reservations where in the 20th century these seemingly worthless lands were discovered to have such riches as plutonium and oil, and to be so fortuitously placed as to make some of the most profitable gambling casinos in the country. I am sure that there is a team of lawyers somewhere trying to take back those lands and their profits.
But I digress. I have always wondered why the Indians went out to get the deer and why it is that venison, the meat from deer, has never caught on as traditional Thanksgiving fare. Were the natives tired of turkey? We get tired of it. Did the food run out? Did one of the Pilgrims say something about who brought what? It isn’t as though deer has nothing to do with Thanksgiving these days. I mean, deer has as much to do with Thanksgiving as American football does. While quite a lot of men leave the feast table to go sit in front of a television to watch football, I think there may be just as many who don hunting vests and grab their rifles before walking off into the woods to shoot a doe. Doe season (the right to kill a female deer) usually opens on Thanksgiving or the day after. Maybe it is just a Southern thing. If that is the case, does that mean that Southerners are more traditional in their celebration of Thanksgiving? After all, when a Rebel comes out of the woods with a deer, somebody cooks it, and somebody eats it.
