It is Thanksgiving Day. Time to be thankful. Have an attitude of gratitude. Even if you have troubles in your life this year, everyone has something they can be thankful for.
Calling this day "Turkey Day" is shortsighted. It is like not acknowledging the reason for Christmas.
Thanksgiving began with those pilgrims thanking the almighty for surviving. They celebrated with the Native Americans who had helped them survive by hunting and gathering. It is good the origins of this day go that far back. They ate turkey, cranberries and probably lobster. They were in New England and that is what was available. If they had been in Minnesota we might be dining on wild rice and venison. If Thankgiving had started in our generation, we might be eating Big Macs. Of course that would have meant a lot less time spent in preparation and clean up.
I initially titled this blog article, "It's Not Turkey Day, You Turkies". It didn't look right, so I asked my husband how to spell turkeys. He said, "turkey's". Oh, that darn apostrophe is problematic. I laughed. Sorry, Jon. Not good to disrespect your mate, especially when I am punctuationally challenged myself. I had to revert to using the dictionary which corrected my spelling. Plural of turkey is turkeys, not turkies.
I gleaned new knowledge from my spellchecking. Under word history is states: "The bird commonly known as the turkey and familiar as the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving feast is a native of the New World. It acquired the name of an Old World country as a result of two different mistakes. The name turkey, or turkey cock, was originally applied to an African bird now know as the guinea fowl, which was believed to have originated in Turkey. When the Europeans came upon the American turkey, they thought it was the same bird as the African guinea fowl, and so gave it the name turkey, although the two species are quite distinct."
Turkey is as American as apple pie even if it has the name of a Muslim country.
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