The Pun Also Rises(as seen in the North Adams Transcript)
"Turkey in the Maw"This week is Thanksgiving, a time when we celebrate our conquest and pillage of the native peoples of this land, because it’s always important to kill people if they-- Sorry, don’t know what I was thinking. Thanksgiving is a happy, happy time, when we celebrate the peace and love that existed between the pilgrims and the Indians. As we’re all taught in elementary school, the pilgrims and Indians were great friends, and the pilgrims brought lots of food to share with the Indians, and that’s how the holiday of Thanksgiving was started. Of course, you have to do a little interpretation to fully understand what that means. When we say "great friends", we mean "attempting to sign a treaty to avoid killing each other." It’s like being friends with a bear when he stumbles into your campsite. Yeah, you're smiling and saying "nice bear", and you may even offer him your food. But inviting someone to dinner doesn’t mean you like them. (If you need any more proof of that, look at your relatives around the Thanksgiving table. Especially Aunt Bertha.) And the pilgrims did bring lots of food, if by "food", you mean "incompetence". After all, the pilgrims had just landed in this new world and were dazzlingly stupid. They tried to use trumpets as guns. They still hadn’t even figured out that belt buckles were supposed to go on their belts, and so they wore them on their hats. Naturally, they had no idea whatsoever how to go about getting food, in spite of the fact that the land was filled with food. Many teenage children at home seem to have the same problem with refrigerators. Just put a belt-buckle hat on your kid, draw a tree on your fridge, and when he cries, "Mom, there's nothing to eat!", you've got a pilgrim. So, the Indians had to go to the fridge and make most of the food. Finally, you could say that the pilgrim-Indian feast is where Thanksgiving started as a holiday, if by holiday you mean holy day, and by holy day you mean day when belt-buckle-hatted people were in charge. Because the Indians were giving thanks long before the pilgrims came, since thanking the land for its bounty was a Native American tradition. They said things like, "We return thanks to our mother, the earth, which sustains us. We return thanks to the rivers and streams, which supply us with water. And we return not so much thanks to the mosquitoes, which frankly, we could do without. But hey, we’re Native Americans, so we respect nature, even the annoying bloodsucking parts, like mosquitoes, and pilgrims." Not to mention the fact that Thanksgiving fell around harvest time. Everyone has a celebration around harvest time, because they are really happy that there is food. Sure, the pilgrims had their first Thanksgiving with the Indians, and said "Praise God! These savage people brought us tasty treats in the new land! Yay for food!" But the Native Americans had been there years before, and at harvest time every year, they would chant their traditional prayer: "We give thanks to the earth. Yay for food!" And the Native Americans were not by any means the first to do this. In Egypt as far back as 2200 BC, the harvest time was already being met with a prayer: "Praise be to Amun-Ra, glorious god who gives us the blazing sun that helps our food grow. But building these pyramids is hard, sweaty work, so would you mind turning it down just a notch? Still though, yay for food!" As we can see, the reaction to harvest time has been the same throughout the ages. And why shouldn't it be? Everyone loves a good harvest. Different cultures and religions may vary widely when it comes to how one should live, how one should dress, or how one should prepare a human sacrifice to appease the gods, but all of them like food. So be inclusive when you say what you're thankful for. When you're going around the table before dinner and it's your turn to give a speech, you only need to say three words: "Yay for food." Everyone will understand, and really appreciate you -- because it means they'll get to eat sooner. ________________
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