Thanksgiving, Part III: The Apologist

As I wrote the previous two blog entries, I wondered how this harvest holiday, which is celebrated primarily in the USA and Canada, appears to the rest of the world. 

Surely, everyone in the USA has been taught the story of the Pilgrims' first winter and how they were saved from starvation by the generosity of the Native Americans. Although this story has been disputed by several historians, it remains the popular myth, and despite the occasional school play about the socio-political implications of the first Thanksgiving dinner, for many people in the USA, Thanksgiving is all about the food.

The comedian Jim Gaffigan does a hilarious routine about holiday over-eating in his concert video, Beyond the Pale. As he runs through the traditional holiday excuses for gluttony ("I normally don't have a burger, a brat, and a steak, but it is the Fourth of July....It's what the Founding Fathers would want."), he stops at Thanksgiving to say, "We didn't even try to come up with a tradition. The tradition is we over-eat!"

 

Only two bites left.

Gaffigan imagines explaining the hors d'oeuvre to a person from a starving country: "That's food we eat before we eat our food. You're thinking of dessert, which is food we eat after we've eaten our food."

Taking a rest break between dinner & dessert.

All I can say in our defense is that we did take time before eating to express thankfulness for our good fortune. Donna also expressed a desire that all of us (and our fellow Americans) wouldn't succumb to the epidemic affluenza that has ravaged the United States.*

And we didn't waste the extra food. There were leftovers for everyone to take home...

...and the turkey carcass was picked clean.

* She was referencing the book Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic by de Graaf, Wann, & Naylor.