Why Thanksgiving, the most unusual of holidays, is also the very best

My family had never eaten Thanksgiving dinner before we moved to Canada in the early 1990s. I had never even heard of it. My mother, having seen it celebrated on American television, had a vague idea that it had something to do with Christmas — she seemed to remember snow and maybe Christmas trees.

The turkey proved an essential distinction, needless to say. A native bird of North America, it was inevitable that the turkey, delicious and plentiful, should have become the staple dish of the holiday.

Later in the 16th century, the turkey supplanted the traditional goose on English tables at Christmas, where dinner is customarily served in the early afternoon, along with roast potatoes, brussels sprouts and pudding. This became the standard quickly enough that, by the time Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol in 1843, it was a given that Scrooge would dispatch a turkey to the Cratchit home after he awakens a changed man.

Roast turkey, generously stuffed, is one of the great comfort foods in all of North American cuisine, as pleasant and gratifying as any main course. And it is one of the great delights of Thanksgiving that it is a holiday built around the enjoyment of this abundant and flavourful meal. Of course, we all take a moment, amid the clatter of utensils and the rumbling of stomachs, to give thanks for good tidings and the presence of our loved ones, as custom naturally dictates.

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