Allison Cafe

Thanksgiving day has come to mean so many things to Americans. Eating turkey, watching football, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, consuming way too many calories in one day and the start of our holiday shopping season the day after Thanksgiving. But what is Thanksgiving Day really meant to celebrate? Have we gotten lost in all the sports watching and pumpkin pie eating to really appreciate the true meaning?

The origin of Thanksgiving as an American holiday dates back to 1621 when the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn feast in celebration of the harvest. The early celebrations are thought to be a feast in thanksgiving for the harvest and an early cooperation between the two peoples. The harvest part would explain why the holiday has become so heavily expressed through food consumption. But at the heart of it is the word thanksgiving. And it is that aspect of the holiday that leads us all to stop and have a moment of gratitude. Well, we should anyway somewhere in between the turkey and the pumpkin pie.

Somehow turkey seems to have waddled into our history books and staked a steady claim on the holiday. According to one figure in a 2007 survey conducted by the National Turkey Federation, nearly 88 percent of Americans said they ate turkey at Thanksgiving that year. And since the average weight of turkeys purchased for Thanksgiving is 15 pounds, that means some 690 million pounds of turkey were consumed in the U.S. during Thanksgiving in 2007. But when did it become all about one bird? At the first Thanksgiving feast they are believed to have served many types of meat, and possibly no turkey at all. So why the turkey now? One theory is that wild turkey was native to northern Mexico and the eastern United States, and thus more readily available than the geese that the English were used to eating back home. Somehow it became the bird of choice for the holiday.

The early settlers at the first Thanksgiving are thought to have served more protein than vegetables and possibly no sweets at all. They also had a very active lifestyle and required that extra protein in their diet. Today we really pack on the calories at holiday meals, maybe even twice our 2,000 daily calorie limit. And some of us are not exactly very active that day. So what can we do to enjoy the day and not feel guilty? Well it has a lot to do with the choices we make about what we put on our plate, than it does with quantity. That slice of pumpkin pie might only be 180 calories, but when we start adding whipped cream and ice cream it can start to add up. So enjoy the day but maybe do without some of the extras if you are watching the numbers. And take time to go for a walk that day, walking at a brisk pace can actually burn a lot of calories. Try visiting a calorie calculator from a website such as Sparkpeople.com to calculate how many calories you will burn while walking based on your weight and how far you walk. For example, if you weigh 150 pounds and you walk 2 miles at a 3mph pace (about a 20 minute mile) you can burn 160-180 calories, that equals one piece of pie! (Now that is tasty math!)

Whether eat you eat your turkey roasted, grilled or fried, or if you even eat turkey at all, I hope that this holiday you take a moment to consider the true intent of the holiday. To give thanks for the blessings that have been bestowed on our lives. Because after all the turkey is gone and the last piece of pumpkin pie is consumed, the real craziness of the holiday season begins with black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving which is typically a day when our holiday shopping begins. Gobble, gobble!

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