by MITCHELL COTE
Staff Writer
There are many things that are certain in life. Death, taxes, and your trash cans eventually getting full are three of them. In November, three more are added – at least, mostly for Americans. These are corporate parades with fun balloon renditions of famous characters and Goku, a football game you’ll never finish because you fall asleep during the 3rd quarter, and, most famously of all, turkey. But why does Thanksgiving center around the admittedly quite tasty flesh of a carved up Meleagris gallopavo? Who decided that that was a good idea?
According to many, the person we can blame for this is the same person who gave us Mary Had a Little Lamb. You see, before she wrote that chart-topping masterpiece, Sarah Josepha Hale wrote a book called Northwood: Life North and South in which she describes a seemingly traditional New England Thanksgiving dinner with a turkey at center stage: “The roasted turkey took precedence on this occasion, being placed at the head of the table; and well did it become its lordly station, sending forth the rich odor of its savory stuffing, and finely covered with the froth of the basting.”
So what does this have to do with the price of tea in China – or indeed, the price of turkey in Maine? Well, Mrs. Hale was also a staunch believer in the idea that Thanksgiving should be celebrated by everyone in the United States, and so wrote letters to 5 successive presidents. She told Lincoln that “…each State should, by statute, make it obligatory on the Governor to appoint the last Thursday of November, annually, as Thanksgiving Day…”, and that managed to get through to him – and so, Thanksgiving became a national holiday. And it only makes sense for us to honor the person who got Thanksgiving this far by using her book as a base mark… right? But hang on, why would she have turkey take precedence on that occasion? What was her thinking?
Well, there’s a lot of turkeys in New England. A lot. According to the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, there were 39,060 turkeys there by 2014 – and this was AFTER a massive effort to bring back the turkey following its fall a mere 20 years after Hale debuted at number 1 on Ye Olde Billboarde Hot 100 (I swear). So it makes sense then that turkeys would be the meat of choice at plain old any time of the year, and doubly so on Thanksgiving! Right? Surely, the settlers must have eaten turkey when they had the first Thanksgiving, right? I mean, surely.
Well, the first documented Thanksgiving happened in 1621. Edward Winslow, a leader on the Mayflower, had this to say about it; “…for three days we entertained and feasted, and [Native Americans] went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governor, and upon the Captain and others.” William Bradford, the governor of the Plymouth colony, had this to say, however; “…others were exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store… And besides waterfowl, there was a great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc…” So it seems that the first Thanksgiving, while still having turkey, was much more varied than the plain white meat and dark meat we ended up with on our dining room tables.
So why turkey? Well, because there were a lot of them. And even if cod or ducks weren’t available, people could always rely on turkey to be there for them. And this Thanksgiving, me and everyone else here at The Dig hope that you can rely on turkey to be there for you as well – and maybe even a fish or two this year.