Thanksgiving is a lovely holiday for gathering around the table with family and friends and giving thanks for our many blessing.  There should be no conspiracies or mysteries linked to this delightful event.  If only that were true…

For starters, that nice little story you learned in school about the Pilgrims and the Indians sitting down to celebrate their first bountiful harvest – it’s apocryphal.  The first English settlers in Plymouth may have had a small autumnal feast to which they invited a few indigenous neighbors, but they didn’t “celebrate Thanksgiving.”  That tradition was fabricated in the 19th century.

The Thanksgiving turkey also has a chequered past.  It was originally running neck in neck with the bald eagle to become the image on our national seal – it even had Benjamin Franklin’s endorsement. What, then, caused the turkey’s ignominious descent? Who stood to profit from the turkey’s downfall?

Perhaps it was the chef who crafted the original turducken. Even though there is no known conspiracy linked to this culinary frankenstein, one must admit – it’s just plain bizarre.

And since we’re talking turkey, let’s also talk tryptophan.  For years, this amino acid got the blame for making us sleepy after Thanksgiving dinner. In fact, tryptophan has been the fall guy for carbohydrates. It’s all part of the conspiracy to make you fat.

After the meal is over, my husband and his brother plop down in front of the television to watch “the big game.” Now, I don’t know much about football, but it seems like the Detroit Lions always play on Thanksgiving.  With such a large national audience, you’d think that other teams should get a chance, especially ones that are able to actually win. It turns out the Lions have a long-standing “arrangement” with the NLF that lets them take this prime spot.

Last but not least, one of my favorite post-Thanksgiving traditions: Black Friday holiday shopping.  But this year a group of retailers like Walmart and Kmart have conspired to turn Black Friday into Black Thursday by opening their doors at 10pm on Thanksgiving itself. It is not okay for corporations to take away Thanksgivings like that.