Thanksgiving is the most American of all holidays – not because it reminds us of how the Native Americans (sometimes referred to by the Freudian phrase “Naive Americans”) welcomed the white men with open arms and saved them from starvation (a small kindness white men repaid with disease, famine, and genocide), and not because it is a holiday that reminds us to be thankful for what we have (approximately 3.7 million square miles of prime real estate previously inhabited by said Native Americans). If you buy that shit, you truly are a naive American. No, Thanksgiving is the most American of all holidays because it is all about the thing America does best: eating. Whether or not we’re really thankful for it, this Thursday Americans will be gorging themselves with heaping piles of food, stretching their intestines like sausage casings with criminally bland cuisine: turkey, potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, rolls, and stuffing (which, ironically, is suitably descriptive of all the preceding). With the exception of a few hypercompetitive, skinny Japanese guys with hot dog fetishes, Americans eat more than just about anybody else in the world. We’re big people with big appetites, and Thanksgiving is America’s superbowl of gluttony. We eat all day and when we’re not eating we engage in an impressive amount of sloth. Combined, these two (in)activities create luxurious folds of body fat. Seriously, take a long, slow waddle around the mall on Friday with the other 200-million-or-so bargain hunters, and you’ll think you’re at a sumo wrestling tournament. It may seem like they’re out to knock off their third deadly sin, avarice, but really they’re just getting too big for their clothes. Most Americans, like their cell phone plans, have rollover. How do we solve the problem? Do away with Turkey Day? Not hardly, but maybe a quick jog Thanksgiving morning wouldn’t hurt. Fortunately for Austinites Thundercloud Subs sponsors their annual Turkey Trot, a 5K fun run benefiting Caritas, a local charity that fights poverty, hunger, and homelessness. You might not get rid of your rollover in a 5K, but you should feel a little better about engaging in some gluttony and sloth.
This article appears in November 24 • 2006.
