Fat Turkeys

Thanksgiving 2020 news flash: too many fat turkeys! When projecting the market for Thanksgiving turkeys in early 2020, turkey farmers had to estimate the number of birds needed for holiday dinner tables. What percentage should be 12-16 pounds, what percentage 20-24 pounds?

 

It’s already been a tough year for those seeking their fortunes in turkeys. With college food service limited and few state fairs or Renaissance festivals wanting turkey legs, demand has been down. Now, the call for smaller gatherings for Thanksgiving is challenging the turkey supply chain. 

 

The Washington Post spoke with Ariane Daguin, who founded D’Artagnan, a premium meat company, and her words feel prophetic. “Some people have gone down to a duck or goose, but still, when you’re talking about Thanksgiving this year, a huge majority of Americans will stick with turkey. Everything is falling apart, so we cling to tradition.”

 

In “Fiddler on the Roof,” Tevye reminds us that “because of our traditions, we’ve kept our balance for many, many years . . . You may ask, how did this tradition start? I’ll tell you – I don’t know. But it’s a tradition.” He concludes, “Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as . . . as a fiddler on the roof.”

 

Tradition often takes a bad rap. A favorite story tells of a family who traditionally cut off the end of the holiday ham, and when the reason was traced back through the generations, they discovered it was because in the late 1800s, the only available pan was too small to hold the entire ham. That’s the origin of some traditions. 

 

Traditions have value as they help connect to those who have gone before us. When we sing a sixteenth-century hymn in the midst of a congregation, we are surrounded by “a great cloud of witnesses” who also believed that “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.” When we use grandma Jones’ recipe for pumpkin pie or nibble at Aunt Charlotte’s corn casserole, we trace our heritage through traditional favorites, cooked with love.

 

While a struggle, sometimes we must let go of traditions for a bit. It’s a different holiday, but in “A Christmas Story” Ralphie and his family salivate over the turkey roasting in the oven, and are devastated when it’s stolen by a pack of ravenous dogs. Yet their visit to a Chinese restaurant on Christmas day provides viewers with one of the funniest scenes in a film that has, in itself, become a holiday tradition in millions of households. 

 

It's traditional to gather together on Thanksgiving. We usually watch the Detroit Lions lose, we clasp hands to pray, and we eat way too much. Yet this year, too many of us are having to say, “I love you too much to risk being together right now.” It’s horrible to be the one who says this to a beloved grandmother or our favorite bachelor uncle who will otherwise be alone, but as infection rates rise dangerously across the nation and in our Ohio backyard, these may be the most loving words and actions we can offer to each other.  

 

These are difficult days. These are difficult choices. Others will disagree with our decisions. But, as our immediate family has decided, we would rather look forward to gathering around a post-COVID Thanksgiving table with a fat turkey in 2021 than to risk spreading this lethal virus to those we hold dear. 

 

In the holiday film “Meet Me in St. Louis,” the Smith family was faced with an unwelcome move to New York. To console her little sister Tootie, Esther (Judy Garland) plaintively sings Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine’s composition: “Someday soon we all will be together if the fates allow, until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow.”

 

I’m claiming Mr. Rogers’ words for these muddling days. “Some days, doing ‘the best we can’ may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn’t perfect on any front – and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves – or anyone else.” Especially when what we can do is motivated by love.