Thanksgiving Day tends to raise a lot of alarming concerns. Sure, it’s a day of thanks (supposedly), but in reality, it has become a day of questionable origins that is dedicated to football, awkward family moments and a mass effort to collectively and willfully raise the country’s obesity percentages. Ironically, the only aspect of the holiday that still accurately reflects its advent is the tradition of the hosts inviting and feeding people that they disdain in a failed attempt to remedy tensions between the two parties. But aside from those petty concerns, a more disturbing element has surfaced in recent years: How does one take a day that is unglamorously dedicated to food (which is pretty much every day if you live in the South or Midwest) and make it more exciting? Football is one solution, but it doesn’t satiate the increasingly hungry and craving part of our minds that desperately yearns for Aunt Gertrude to stand up and walk out of the room in disgust as your dad, uncle and brothers silently applaud your successful efforts to rid the table of its nefarious source (i.e. Aunt Gertrude). Here are some fun ways to make the day interesting:
• While no one is looking, add your own “touch” to the dishes that you aren’t planning on consuming … examples include adding beets to the cranberry sauce, mixing yams into the pumpkin pie, inconspicuously stuffing your great aunt’s dachshund, Odie, inside the turkey just before its placed in the oven, etc.
• Once the food is prepared and set, discreetly loosen the legs of the chair that your obnoxious and overweight uncle Vern will be sitting in, politely offer to sit next to him during the meal (to the pleasant surprise of your family), and then, just as he goes to exclaim his annual “Boy, am I stuffed … get it?” line, you wrap your foot around one of the legs of his chair, give it a sturdy but unnoticeable tug and then watch in pleasure as your uncle and his chair collapse midsentence while he reaches for the table cloth and brings the rest of the turkey down upon his embarrassed, greasy face.
• Walk around the house all day dressed as a time-period Pilgrim, passionately crying out, “If we really want to celebrate Thanksgiving Day ‘traditionally,’ why don’t we make a feast, invite our neighbors, then kill them and take their land?”
After all, this is the day of Thanksgiving, so it only makes sense to offer excitement that others can be thankful for on a holiday built on anachronistic and dubious traditions.