... Or not, as the case may be.
You’ve seen countless anime Christmas images with the casts of various series dressed as Santa Claus, eating Christmas foods (like KFC fried chicken... a Japanese tradition!), going on datos, etc.
When it comes to Thanksgiving, celebrated in the U.S. on the fourth Thursday of November and in Canada on a different date... there’s pretty much nada.
Christmas, of course, is celebrated in many countries, so showing Goku, Vegeta, Chi-Chi, and Bulma eating Christmas cake makes sense enough. Imagining them in pilgrim outfits and eating turkey doesn’t ring quite the same.
So the only anime Thanksgiving images you’ll see are fan art images like the one above and the one below.
Turkey is the traditional meat that is eaten on Thanksgiving. Apparently turkeys are native to North America, which I only found out by looking it up on Wikipedia.
If you happen to be reading this in a country that doesn’t eat much turkey, just imagine chicken with 75% of the moisture, fat, and flavor taken out. This is turkey.
It comes as a giant frozen bird carcass that requires nerves of steel to cook - you literally have to start the process the day before - and the amount of turkey leftovers, no matter how many families come to your house for dinner, is legion. The entire nation eats turkey sandwiches and turkey casserole for the next two weeks to use it all up.
Roast turkey is as dry as a bone. For some reason, in addition to gravy, which actually makes sense, the other thing you put on turkey is cranberry sauce.
I could get into American history and explain why you see some of the traditional foods you see on the Thanksgiving dinner table, which include turkey, stuffing (made with stale bread or corn bread and sage), cranberry sauce, green beans, mashed potatoes, baked yams or sweet potatoes topped with seared mini-marshmallows... but really it’s this. Supposedly the pilgrims and Native Americans, when they weren’t trying to kill each other, sat down to a meal together serving what they had at hand and the Thanksgiving holiday was the result.
Starbucks used to sell what they called a “Holiday Turkey Sandwich.” It came in a special red cardboard wrap. Here are several iterations of it.
For some reason, they didn’t offer it last year or this year, and people really miss it. I miss it. It was turkey, stuffing, gravy, and cranberry sauce - literally Thanksgiving on a Bun. It was only sold in November so you had to remember to get it before it was gone.
There’s no reason for this post other than to: 1) vent about the dryness of turkey meat; 2) describe Starbucks’ Thanksgiving on a Bun sandwich, which I miss; and 3) wish you a happy Thanksgiving wherever you are, even if you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving!
