No thanks to Thanksgiving

It's that time of year again, for the usual crap about Thanksgiving. Truth is, I've never felt good about this holiday. As a kid, there were several Norman Rockwell-like Thanksgivings I attended where I ate a banana and nothing else. It's a drab holiday with no fun elements at all - no pretty lights, costumes, fireworks. It's just a meal, an American holiday about giving thanks that in the end is all about the food.

And what a meal it is. Now that I'm an adult, the blandness and ridiculousness of the meal has taken on a new meaning. Since the less you eat in this culture, the healthier you are, Thanksgiving now has darker overtones. In obese America, the real glory of this holiday is not about the stuffing in the turkey on the table but about the stuffing of the turkeys at the table. This holiday is a testament to the idea that the mileage you get from your corporeal form is direclty related to how much you abuse it over the years. Think I'm wrong that food is the end all be all of the holiday? No one refers to the holiday and says "geez, I really thanked myself silly." No they overeat, pigout, tank up. All anyone cares about and talks about is how much they ate and their waist line.

And check out the heart attack on a plate that this meal consists of. Dark turkey meat drowned in gloppy gravy, bland mashed potatoes, buttery bread stuffing, apple and pumpkin pies, rolls with butter, sweet potato with marshmallows. Even green bean casserole has the fatty soup and french fried onion thingies. And for those insufficiently polluted, they deep fry their turkey. Yeah, there may be squash and other veggies, but typically in the rush of gluttony, they are rendered useless with butter and excessive steaming. When the menu causes everyone to fall into a near-diabetic coma afterwards, it's time to rethink the whole thing.

The only ones concentrating on the thanking are the religious wackos, and all they want to do is thank their god over and over, which they do every day anyway. Then they haul off to the couch and let the women continue their thankless drudgery of cleaning up after them. If anyone thinks I'm being a killjoy here, take a gander at them.

We Americans already pig out on all the rest of our holidays. How many of us have the same food at Christmas anyway? I submit that these other pigouts are better because the food is more limited and the focus of the holiday is on something else: presents, costumes, spring, swimming, patriotism, etc. Food is secondary because there's other fun stuff going on. Thanksgiving has nothing except the meal. The parade, the football and the day-after shopping are desperate attempts to distract from the soul-throttling emptiness of this holiday. Witness the swollen movie theaters.

So this is one holiday the country could do without. If the thought of millions of swollen Americans quadrupling their double chins by bowing their heads to sincerely thank Providence for their blood pressure and cholestorol medications and all of this wonderful food makes you a little queasy, you see where I'm at. Almost makes you wish for a day of fasting, doesn't it? Perhaps a light menu of popcorn and toast?