OUR THANKSGIVING HERITAGE!!.... the occasional heartbreak of growing up at Thanksgiving time...

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Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, (and I use those terms loosely!) along with the wholesome lessons about our national day of thanks, there is also the poignant side of the holiday tradition. How many of us as youngsters were shocked when we read John Steinbeck's "The Red Pony", "The Yearling" by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, or "Old Yeller" by Fred Gipson??..... what started out as simple fables of beloved animals and the children that adored them ends in horror and tragedy. That is why, as parents (or friendly adults in the neighborhood!) we must always be careful when allowing our young people to bond with animals that start out as companions...and end up as entrées!

I am reminded of the lovely Ferguson family over on Elco Drive whose three boys ranging in age from 3 to 7 years of age, and with the brightest (almost glaring!) smiles, became quite enamoured with a local turkey named Big Tom at the Clara-Lou Spinnaker Petting Zoo. It was during a charity drive that Mayor Fred Buffington of the town raffled off a complete Thanksgiving dinner with all the side dishes to raise money for a new roof for the Shriner's Lodge Animal Husbandry Pavilion. Every Thursday after school the Ferguson boys would run to the petting zoo to feed their special turkey and pet him and tell him about their school activities; an A+ on a Sumatran geography test, a three-run homer in the Pee Wee League semi-finals, the new wheels on the lavender Soap-Box Derby cart, or being cast as Macbeth in the 3rd grade "Let's Like Shakespeare Pageant"...

And then...one afternoon, it happened. Tom's pen was empty. The boys' dismay immediately alarmed their parents Doug and Kimberly, and the head manageress of the zoo, Miss Edith Kranque. Before the tears could start falling, the adults quickly brought Big Tom out from the janitor's store room where he had been put along with all the Chinese food containers of candied yams with orange zest and apricots, the rustic mashed potatoes, the crunchy buttered Brussels sprouts, the green beans with slivered almonds, the celery, chestnut, and oyster stuffing, and the many other delicious side dishes that the lucky prize winners had won! The grown-ups explained that Tom had just gotten a "haircut" and was taking a nap, and that everyone should whisper about their day at school, but "not to wake him up"!....

The boys were much relieved, although little Dickie said he couldn't see Tom's head, but MIss Kranque explained that birds like to tuck their heads under their wings when they sleep...even if their wing was missing feathers and had a light coat of herbed butter with sage on it!!.... And then it was 6 o'clock and time for the boys to go home. There was just one more problem; the Ferguson family happened to have been the lucky winners of the raffle!!... an unhappy coincidence!... Miss Kranque asked Doug and Kimberly what they would like to do... they looked over at the boys petting Tom and getting all buttery. They were smiling those special smiles  that childen do with beloved pets, so Doug and Kimberly decided they'd rather donate the dinner to The Wayward Wives Of Sailors Home on the corner of Key Street and Holgate..... And on the Friday after Thanksgiving, they would tell the boys that Tom had moved to sunny Ft. Lauderdale, where Grandma used to live ....before she passed away...

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OUR THANKSGIVING HERITAGE...... "Freedom From Want"....

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... Friends! Did you know that in some impoverished areas of the country, families try so very hard to enjoy, celebrate, and respect our traditions despite extreme deprivation? Their terrible secret???.....yes. You guessed. You guessed by looking at this photo! This sweet, seemingly innocent photo.....with a troubling secret. ...and some empty chairs! Each year at Thanksgiving, there may be one LESS family member sitting at the dining table, and yet a caring Mother still manages to serve a delicious and filling meal for the remaining guests!!..... But that doesn't prevent the terrible questions!!...."Mommy, did Spot run away?", "Mommy, where's Grandpa?", "Mommy, doesn't Aunt Delia like us anymore?", "Mommy, it's Winter now! Isn't little Bobby coming back from camp?", "Mommy, wasn't Reverend Thompson here last night?".... Please! Let's all contribute our canned goods, packaged foods, and frozen produce to local drives in your hometown!!!....before other concerned Mothers reduce the population any further! YOU CAN HELP!....OR YOU COULD BE NEXT!!! 

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OUR THANKSGIVING HERITAGE!...... the power of the Holidays to rehabilitate the heartbroken!!....

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... Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen! So many of us know the terrible toll that crime, a bad upbringing, a pathological environment, or even faulty genetics can cause a youngster. ...and what if that young person was accused of terrible crimes herself?....even murder??.....even MULTIPLE murders!!... well here's a happier turn-out for a change. A young lady who at the age of 10 had terrible scandal in her life, was even presumed dead after a tremendous accident, and then after being rescued from a near-drowning in a lake, she spent several years of rehabilitation in The 4H Club Institute For Healthful Living & Mental Hygiene.... surrounded by supportive professionals, nutritious food, daily chores and exercise, a regimen of discipline born of love, good fellowship with the other inmates, herds of farm animals, and a heapin' spoonful of fresh air and green grass, she has been rebuilt into a productive and happy citizen!... Her parents thought that they had lost her! We ALL thought we had lost her!!...but no! WE STILL HAVE RHODA!!! ....so very much to be thankful for! 

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Sybil Bruncheon’s THANKSGIVING HOSTESS "DOs & DON'Ts!!!" .......

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....... Ladies! If your husband has invited over his boss and the wife.... or maybe some fussy in-laws, it's YOUR job to select a cuisine that covers everybody's dietary needs and whims! Is Aunt Cornelia on the left a fruitarian?....Maybe a "Boston Bananas Foster" is her idea of a main course! And what about nice Mr. Hekoki there in the middle from the office? He might want to have an "Eastern" influence for his Thanksgiving.... maybe wild rice stuffing with daikon radish shavings and tofu! ... with tonkatsu sweet potatoes!! And isn't that Uncle Herb on the right? Is he a football-all-day-with-a-drumstick type??...Well what could please a true meat-eater more than a Toledo-sized "turducken". Ask your local butcher for the jumbo portion of that new-fangled Holiday entree.....perhaps he has special chicken, duck, and turkey specimens from Chernobyl or Three Mile Island!...or even Fukushima!!! ...and remember that many guests may be lactose intolerant (no cheeses or ice cream!), or even vegans (no cheeses, ice cream, deviled eggs, or honey!!) ...whatever the case, it's up to you as the hostess to make everyone at your Thanksgiving table feel welcome...and grateful! You'll have every one of your Pilgrims yelling "Yay!"..and "YUM!"...and “私にもっとサツマイモをくれ!!!”…

Sybil Bruncheon’s “Our Thanksgiving Heritage:... The Early Years!!...

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.... Yes, Friends, although we associate Thanksgiving with our own fun-loving pilgrims from the 1600s, in fact other civilizations had their own earlier versions of "Thanksgiving". Did you know that in ancient Egypt, there was a famous tradition of giving thanks in the Fall season for the bounteous harvests granted by the Nile river?... The people prepared their own feasts comprising yam-beetle casseroles with a river-reed bouquet-garni and minced mud-minnow mousse. Also wild asparagus spears with goat butter, Babylonian/Brussels sprouts grilled with baby sparrows wrapped in a flaky papyrus phyllo, delta oyster and clam stuffing inside a turkey buzzard, and relish made from pharaoh berries and citron soaked in natron...(or was it the other way round??) ....and Amenhotep's favorite dish; "Franks in Frankincense"!!...

The main difference between their tradition and ours was that their feast was made for the next life and was displayed for the celebrants in a special case where the dinner was then mummified by holy priests and special ..um... "meal mummifiers". ...oh, and another difference... the lady of the house would actually wear the turkey on her head until it was time for burial!!! The Romans imitated much of what the Egyptians had started, which is probably the origin of what later became Turkey Tetrazzini....Festive, wasn't it?!? 

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OUR THANKSGIVING HERITAGE: ... "the hungry years"......

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Hello Friends. It is a little known fact that during the hardest years of the Great Depression, even the White House had to budget...even during Holiday time!! It would not have been politic to have been seen feasting on sumptuous dishes and reveling in the plenty that America had been known for only a few years earlier when much of the country was now dragging through bank collapses, farm foreclosures, and dust bowl droughts. The clever chefs in the White House came up with an alternative. They prepared nutritious and fairly flavorful entrees out of an unlikely source....strange sea-life from the deepest parts of the ocean. Oceanographer William Beebe in the famous Bathysphere designed by Otis Barton dived to a depth of nearly a mile and found the most bizarre and somewhat frightening wild life down in the darkest regions where no sunlight ever reached. Carrying creatures back for the Smithsonian Institute and the National Geographic Society, it was soon determined that these new fish species were edible during a misunderstanding in a museum cafeteria, when rare specimens were mistaken for a grocery delivery to the cooking staff. The cooks were alarmed when they first took the animals from the loading dock, but assumed that the Roosevelts had brought some exotic delicacies back from foreign dignitaries. Sadly, the odd dishes they improvised were immediately valued at nearly $1.5 million dollars when the cost of the deep-sea technology, trial-and-error device testing, military and scientific staff salaries, college and research grants, and special materials and instrumentation manufacture were all tallied. That would make the cost of every forkful of the "roasted turkey" about $5800. Both the White House and the scientific community were mortified....But the public only read in the papers that the First Family were exploring other, more economically responsible Thanksgiving dinner choices during hard times....and after all, Mrs. Roosevelt, after the first few bites declared.... "Why, Franklin!...it tastes just like tuna fish!"

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Sybil Bruncheon’s THANKSGIVINGS!!… ON OTHER WORLDS!!!... care for a bite?

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...Hello, Friends! Did you know that on other planets many different civilizations, and even LIFE FORMS have ways of expressing the universal need to say "I Thank You!"??? Yes, you are not alone in sharing the eternal emotion of "gratitude".

...Here, in this interdimensional image chip (known as a "polaroid instamatic" to your kind!), we see a celebration on the planet Zzjr#deetyl*%5... a female Zzjrian is sampling a mandible-ette portion of dzatso-monkey in yellow sauce. Her nice escort is offering it to her with one of his hand-feet. In their world, the feeding of one another is considered the final step before gamete-sharing, but since they are at a cocktail festivity, he wears a special Chastity Helmet to prevent any further intimacy in front of company...or spawn that may be running about. Notice her high sense of fashion. As opposed to doing anything as savage as eating a turkey, on the planet Zzjr#deetyl*%5, a really stylish woman carries an animal as a purse, and inserts a lipstick, a wallet, and various things into its behind-region after thoroughly sedating it. Interestingly, if she cannot afford a purse, she does the same thing to her male-spouse... with or without sedation. Learning about Thanksgivings on other worlds is fun, isn't it? 

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Sybil Bruncheon's "Our Thanksgiving Heritage"... A PRAYER FROM REVEREND SIMPLICITY CARFEATHERS (1620)…

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Oh, Merciful Lamb, please let us, on this first Thanksgiving, be grateful for our yam and twig casserole...especially since Thou hath granted us a festive little garnish of pine needles which we will apportion to each and every one of Thine worshipful diners in a portion not greater than one and one half needle-ettes per soul. Also, remindeth us to be glad of heart at the sight of the turnip, radish, and skittle-beetle soufflé which our Indian brethren have prepared with loving and unwashéd hands and left at the back-flap of our tent sometime in the last three days.... And in a hollowed out birch-bark serving dish which we have been told we may keep as a "house-warming" present! We did indeed warm our home by burning it in a hole in the middle of the room. And thank You blesséd Soul of Peace for helping us to extinguish the flames which spreadeth to the canvas by smiting it with sticks as if it were the accurséd hind-quarters of Satan himself (which it very well may have been since Goody Dalrymple says that she smelled infernal farting and saw in the rising smoke the face of a goat with three horns that recited French limericks!). Anyway...we put out the fire, and now have a nice view of the stars at night!

Finally, oh Patient Saviour, we thank Thee for the sight at least of a plump turkey which we would have prepared for our holiday repast had it not pecked out the left eye of Reverend Punctuality Throckmorton during his interminable sermon on "Edibles And Their Free-Will To Embrace Low-Calorie Salvation...OR NOT!"...it was during the declamation and response section of his endless exhortation to "dessert sinlessly" that the turkey lunged at the blesséd Reverend and un-eyed him as it scaped our lean-to prayer-hut! The entire congregation tried to bolster the Pastor's challenged morale by gathering feathers, oak leaves, river mud, and hair-combings to fashion a graven image of a turkey for him to kick and dismember to purge his righteous anger!!

Oh, Serene Guide of our Spirits!... The Reverend in his humble radiance, forgave the facsimile for its transgression against his extremely modest face, and said that one eye still allowed him to see the wonders of our new home here in the new world and would keep him from stubbing his bunion on that damnable tree-stump near the entryway to our settlement as he has done thrice-times this very week when arising in the middle of the night to make his water away from prying eyes and pointing fingers. The mud-and-rubbish turkey now sits in pride-of-place on said tree-stump as a decoration for our feast!! ...and much thanks hath been yowled up to the Heavens along with songs and gourd rattling! We all plan to take our once-yearly bath after the cranberry-cricket flan.... Halleluiah!!!! Halleluiah!!!! OHHHH...HALLELUUUU-IAH!!!!

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OUR THANKSGIVING HERITAGE: ...what a wonderful world...

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......Yes, Folks! We have so much to be grateful for on our own planet Earth at Thanksgiving time. Family, friends, and delicious and wholesome food prepared with love and respect for the traditions of our most cherished values; freedom of speech and worship, security in our homes, and patriotism for our wonderful country. ....But did you know that on other planets, many people have to arm themselves and fight their Thanksgiving dinner to the death even before the first can of cranberry sauce is opened??? Let us all truly give Thanks!!! 

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