If it’s Thanksgiving – it’s turkey

If it is Thanksgiving — it is turkey.

Meddle with the Christmas menu if you must. Have ye olde English goose or ham, a standing rib roast, a baron of lamb, a brace of ducks, a crown of roast of pork — but don’t mess with turkey on Thanksgiving.

The turkey is a weird and improbable bird. It is among the more bizarre-looking creatures that we are willing to eat. First, there is that bald bluish head, then the caruncle, that brightly colored growth about the throat that turns scarlet when aroused by threats or signaling amorous intentions. This appealing pastiche includes the snood and wattle, flaps of skin over the beak and under the “chin,” that behaves in the same alarming manner.

While domesticated birds don’t fly, the wild turkey has been clocked at 55 miles an hour in flight and 25 on the ground. The turkey has keen auditory skills but no ears, can detect movement a hundred yards away, and has a poor sense of smell but a well-developed sense of taste.

The turkey is the all-American bird for the all-American holiday. It was sufficiently emblematic that Ben Franklin cast his lot with the turkey as a contender for National Bird. When, along with a lot of Masonic symbolism, the bald eagle was adopted by Congress as part of the Great Seal in 1782, Ben objected, claiming the turkey to be far more appropriate and respectable than the Bald Eagle — a bird “of bad moral character.” The turkey, on the other hand, was “a true original of North America” and, although “a little vain & silly,” was “a Bird of Courage.” Franklin had it right. The perfect bird for America — then and now. Courageous, but, from time to time, a little vain and silly says it all. With its extravagant plumage, impressive size, propensity to noisily panic, and with awkward, spindly legs given to trotting, the turkey would have done the Great Seal proud.

Turkey love, whether based on a predisposition for the bizarre, knee-jerk tradition, Rockwellian sentimentality, or those turkey sandwiches and other delights made from the inevitable leftovers, triumphs over any considerations to the contrary. If it is Thanksgiving — it is turkey!