Handling Thanksgiving dinner can be a mouthful

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/10/2018 (2843 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, a traditionally stressful time because once again you have volunteered to cook a fun and festive dinner for all of your relatives.

In the true spirit of this time of caring and thankfulness, allow me to say — and this comes from the bottom of my gravy-stained heart — you are a complete idiot!

Seriously, what were you thinking? Let me ask you this: Do you think you are emotionally and physically prepared to cook and serve a turkey the size of a beer cooler along with all the required trimmings, including those disgusting fluorescent jellied salads filled with fruit cocktail and Kraft miniature marshmallows?

I beg your pardon. You DO think you’re ready? Ha ha ha. I apologize for that cruel little laugh, but the mere fact you think you are ready to dish up Thanksgiving dinner is concrete proof that you could not be less ready.

The tragic thing is you know your sister — the one mom always loved more than you — was more than willing to host Thanksgiving this year, because she never misses a (bad word) opportunity to show off her near-professional culinary skills and, unlike you, never gets stressed out to the point where she is forced to wallop crazy Uncle Billy over the head with a casserole dish because he is more right wing than Attila the Hun and refuses to take his “Make America Great Again” hat off at the dinner table despite the fact he hasn’t been to the U.S. in more than 40 years.

What we all need to remember at this deeply emotional time of year is that we can get through the holiday with most of our medically important limbs and organs intact, provided we all pull together as a team. If you are a standard guy of my particular gender, your Thanksgiving obligations consist of the following:

● Lying on the couch in your den until the turkey is done, which traditionally is the same amount of time it takes to watch two professional football games on your big-screen TV;

● Shrieking like a wounded jungle creature because clearly that receiver had one foot in bounds when he caught the ball in the back of the end zone;

● Yelling for your spouse to bring you another cold beer, because she is simply having fun in the kitchen, whereas you are focused with laser-like intensity on a game that has reached a critical juncture and could have serious consequences for the fantasy football league at your office.

The other thing we need to keep in mind over the holiday weekend is the fact that preparing the perfect roast turkey can pose some serious hazards — and not just for the bird. I am not talking about the fact that if your turkey is slightly undercooked your family will be attacked by germs the size of Labrador retrievers.

No, that goes without saying. What I am trying to stress is that there are a number of other turkey-related dangers you will want to steer clear of this weekend, including:

● Dropping a frozen turkey on your foot or on the foot of a loved one. Without doing any actual research, I am sure this is the most common cause of Thanksgiving injuries, outside of slicing off your finger because you weren’t paying attention while using the electric carving knife you got last Christmas;

● Engulfing your entire home in flames, because you decided this was the year to try deep-frying the turkey by immersing it in a giant pot overflowing with boiling oil, because you saw some hillbilly TV chef do that on the Outdoor Living Network;

● Tearing most of the ligaments and tendons in your body because, even though you have not engaged in actual physical exercise since the day they closed Portage and Main to pedestrian traffic, you insisted on taking part in the annual family touch football game, which always ends with someone’s shin bone protruding from their body at an extremely unnatural angle.

As I think I may have suggested earlier, the hardest part of the traditional turkey dinner is the part wherein you sit peacefully around the dinner table and engage in polite conversation when what you really want to do is beat most of your relatives unconscious with your sterling silver gravy boat.

But don’t get me wrong. There is a lot more to Thanksgiving than just eating turkey, watching endless hours of football and arguing with annoying relatives wearing stupid paper hats around an overcrowded dinner table.

Thanksgiving, at least in my house, is also about unbuckling your pants and flopping down on the living room carpet face-down while whimpering like a wounded woodland creature because you ate an entire pumpkin pie and squirted most of a can of Cool Whip directly into your mouth when no one was watching.

I am, of course, kidding around in a light-hearted manner, because, as most of us already know, Thanksgiving is a deeply spiritual time, a time when we pause to reflect on all the blessings we have received in the past year, a time when we feed the dogs under the table and no one gets upset, and above all, a time when we look around the dinner table, get in touch with our innermost feelings, and give voice to the important lesson that every family learns at this joyous time of year: “WE FORGOT THE (BAD WORD) CRANBERRIES!”

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca