The top 7 reasons to move Thanksgiving to October
& meditations on eating a different bird: Crow
11-22-2022 (issue No. 63)
Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above.
There will be only one issue this week — many of us have a lot going on for the holiday — so I’m combining some of the Picayune Plus features with the regular Picayune Sentinel features in one issue.
Before we get started: It will take only a moment for you to nominate the Picayune Sentinel in the Chicago Reader’s Best of Chicago poll. And it will take only a bit longer to give a gift subscription to the Picayune Sentinel — an ideal stocking stuffer! Renewals are coming up for the first batch of paid subscribers, and I hope not to experience the dropoff that other Substackers have reported at the one-year mark. (The first Picayune Plus, then called Picayune Extra, was Dec. 7, 2021; the first issue of any sort was Sept. 9, 2021.) Just last week I surpassed 10,000 total names on my mailing list.
Contents:
The top 7 reasons to move the date of Thanksgiving to October
Zmail — correspondence from and with readers
Mary Schmich — on hype, loss and gratitude
Re:Tweets — featuring the winner of the visual tweets poll and this week’s finalists
Tune of the Week — “Uncle Dave’s Grace.” Could it be history’s best Thanksgiving song?
Last week’s winning tweet
Below are the nominees for best visual tweet of the week plus a list of the top 10 Thanksgiving-related tweets of all time.
The top 7 reasons to move Thanksgiving to October
If Lincoln had exercised better judgment in 1863 when he fixed the date for Thanksgiving, we'd have celebrated last month and this would be an ordinary week.
Instead, Lincoln settled on late November, which was bad judgement on his part for at least these seven reasons, which I first laid out for an unheeding nation in 2005:
November is a dicey month for travel in the northern states.
Our family has cancelled plans at the last minute due to grim Thanksgiving weekend forecasts and yours probably has to. This year, the news says, “Pre-Thanksgiving weather to be clear but travel home may get messy,” which is typical.
October is a better historical fit than November.
The after-harvest festivals with which Thanksgiving Day has come to be associated were traditionally held in September and October, roughly when the storied Pilgrim-Indian banquet of 1621 took place.
3. There's nothing sacred about holding Thanksgiving in late November.
Early Americans observed various days of Thanksgiving in various months in various places. Our sensible friends in Canada celebrate in early October. But when Lincoln decided to standardize the event, he thought it best to choose the last Thursday of November (amended to the fourth Thursday by Franklin D. Roosevelt) in honor of the Nov. 21 anniversary of the Mayflower's dropping anchor off Cape Cod.
4. A four-day weekend toward the end of October would fall more neatly between Labor Day and Christmas.
Major holidays, like meals and vacations from work and school, should be as neatly spaced as practical. As it is, Thanksgiving both crowds the Christmas season and creates a long slog of days for most of us from early September until the end of November.
Since Labor Day is perfect where it is, New Year’s Day is set in stone and there are a zillion reasons why the idea of moving Christmas is a nonstarter, even though scholars don't even agree on the year Jesus was born, much less the month or day. Given the reported presence of shepherds watching their flocks by night, the best guess is sometime in the late spring or early fall. Nevertheless, Thanksgiving's the best candidate for relocation.
5. A longer period between Thanksgiving and Christmas would create a longer Christmas shopping season.
This would be good for our friends in retail who could deck the aisles with boughs of holly in early November without having to hear the whine, "But it's not even Thanksgiving yet!"
6. Moving Thanksgiving to October might inspire us to move Halloween to late September where it belongs.
I'm getting off-topic a bit here, but it's often too cold and always too dark on Oct. 31 for little kids to trick-or-treat in the early evening.
7. Even when the weather in late November is not so bad that it clogs and postpones travel, it's usually nothing to inspire gratitude for our natural world.
This is a dank, chilly, gray, blah time of year with naked trees and shabby lawns.
October, in contrast, is generally gorgeous and inspiring. No need for gloves and hats during the family touch football game on Thanksgiving morning.
Thanksgiving in October would mean no need to surf the web fretfully on Saturday evening wondering if you'll make it back home the next day or if you'll spend Sunday night sleeping on an airport cot or in the median of the interstate where your minivan finally came to rest.
Lincoln didn't know from airports or interstates, but what's our excuse for perpetuating his mistake?
Here are reader responses to my original column making this proposal.
Zmail is a regular feature of the Tuesday Picayune Plus, an extra edition mailed to paying subscribers.
Here’s some of the reaction to my plea to the media to stop giving front-page coverage to acts of hate vandalism:
Garry J. — Every time some anti-Semitic halfwit throws a plastic bag full of hate on lawns in a Jewish area, the cops and the news media go nuts, when in reality if they did that to me, as a old Jewish atheist, I would just dump it in recycling & tell no one, thus depriving them of any satisfaction!
Phil S. — Media should do what sports broadcasters do when they turn their cameras away from fans who run onto the field during a game. Don’t give these people the fame they desire!
Steven K. — I disagree with your view that a white supremacist is the most likely culprit; far more likely a rise eliciting prank or a Smollettesque hoax would be my hunch). Watching and reading about the hysterical reactions from public officials, the bombast, the $100,000 reward, the shutting down of construction, the extended sensitivity training, etc all really made me cringe, and not for the least of the reasons being the image of the culprit, balled up on the floor at home and trying to fend off a hernia from the hysterical laughter. Besides, when it comes to the question of whether or not to report a story like this, the answer is already baked into our collective conscious by way of adage: no noose is good noose.
Wendy C. — It would be worse if this would be normalized to the point of acceptance, almost where we are with mass shootings.
I recognize that news editors have to walk a fine line between ignoring such incidents and amplifying their messages. I was hoping to hear from one or two of them, or at least some of those who have reported on such stories. I did not.
Michael G. — Is it just me or are none of the 'tweets" this week funny?
My sense is that prolific tweeters have been at least a little less inclined to wisecrack since Elon Musk appears to be doing his best to despoil the platform. I thought there were some decent finalists last week, but it was an uneven selection, I’ll admit that.
Marc M. — Regarding the Great Self-checkout Debate: The automated increases the total number of lanes. The Jewel that I go to eliminated two staffed lanes to make room for 11 self-checkout positions. So even at the busiest times when the line for these is longest, it is always faster. I also don't have to wait behind people having long conversations with the tellers about coupons, checks, cash back, prices, etc.
Readers slightly favored the self-checkout in my click survey, 54% to 46%
Rick W. — Before we start feeling too warm and fuzzy about the Validation of Democracy as exemplified by right-wing extremist Kari Lake's loss in the Arizona gubernatorial race, can we keep in mind that enough people voted for her that it took a week to determine that she lost? There's a lot of razor's edges still out there, and I think complacency in the face of very narrow victories is a good way to lose next time.
James P. — Why do you frequently chide John Kass? It seems that you single him out as the target of your one-up-manship.
I’m frequently advised to ignore the poisonous rantings of my former colleague, and I usually do. But the way he taunted Democrats before the election in his chesty “Red Wave Coming” column was just too much to ignore.
Denis — At least John Kass is following the culinary advice sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson: "If you have to eat crow, eat it while it's young and tender."
In 2005, I devoted an entire column to the topic of eating crow along with one’s words. Here’s what I said:
I've been trash-talking Chicago White Sox since mid-May , and now the black, barely-edible scavenger birds have come home to roost on my plate:
Tenderize with a mallet. Marinate overnight. Fry in oil on a hot skillet.
One bite, and you're sure to say, "Mmmm ... tastes like woodcock."
Eating crow ain't so bad.
And the time is upon us. All unreconstructed Cubs fans who belittled the White Sox this season and dismissed their early success as a fluke are fixing to dine on the bird some call "the black bandit."
They'll collapse in the end. They're the White Sox , after all. The second most ill-starred team in baseball. And how great will that be? — Eric Zorn, May 15.
"The meat of the crow, being a carnivore, is presumably rank and extremely distasteful," writes Michael Quinion at World Wide Words. "And the experience is easily equated to the mental anguish of being forced to admit one's fallibility."
The Sox are very likely to win the division and choke in--I mean make--the post-season. — Eric Zorn, Aug. 23.
"To eat crow means to suffer humiliation, and specifically to be forced to admit to having made an error, as by retracting an emphatic statement," says Random House. "Crows are notoriously disagreeable birds in every respect."
These and other reference works note that the expression was popularized by a folk tale published in the Atlanta Constitution in 1888:
During the War of 1812, the story goes, a British officer encountered an American hunter who had just shot a crow behind enemy lines. The officer complimented the hunter on his aim and asked to see his gun. When the American handed the gun over, the British officer turned it on the American and forced him to eat a bite of the bird as his punishment for trespassing.
The American obeyed, but when he got his gun back, he leveled it at the Brit and forced him to eat the rest of the crow.
I'll just have to wait a little longer to taunt John Kass. — Eric Zorn, Sept. 28.
Most authorities doubt the tale is true, and some note that at first the expression for self-abasement was "eating boiled crow," in which "crow" is slang for the offal that turns up in haggis, headcheese and other dishes. The British term for this is "umble," which is where we get the phrase "to eat humble pie," which is also on the North Side menu.
They're not going to win it all. I've predicted this many times over the season and won't back away from the prediction now... Eric Zorn, October 3
At Crow Busters, a website devoted to crow hunting, the proprietors write: "Our experience is that the mere mention of dropping these birds on the menu brings a series of comments from other hunters as if we had just suggested stir-frying up a batch of common sewer rats."
Most who hunt crows do so for sport or to rid their property of a nuisance. But, say the Crow Busters, properly prepared, the omnivorous fowl is a fair meal, "as tasty as most other game birds and even tastier than some," they write.
Recipes on their site include Summer Crow Kabobs, Pan Fried Crow, Crow Creole, Crow Casserole, Crock Pot Crow, Crow in a Blanket and Crow Bean Roast.
The Tribune's late outdoors writer John Husar was also an enthusiast: "Crow is an athletic bird with dense, dark breast meat," he wrote in extolling this particular avian repast. "It must be tenderized. Like woodcock, it also has overtones of liver, so if you like liver, you'll really love those birds. ... A well-prepared breast of crow is nothing but succulence."
I'm writing before the end of Wednesday night's game due to early deadlines for this section, but barring a turnaround unprecedented in World Series history, my figurative feast is nigh.
If you want the application process for an egg facial, you're on your own.
When the Sox win the World Series this week, it won't be time for the humiliated trash-talkers to deny, to sulk, or to diminish what's happened. It will be time to be a good loser. Again. To say congratulations. Great season. You deserved it. You earned it.
Only in private will we use that tenderizing mallet on our own heads.
News & Views
News: Former Gov. Pat Quinn and 15th Ward Ald. Ray Lopez say they’re not running for mayor.
View: I wasn’t alone in anticipating Quinn was entering the race when he called a news conference last Thursday to announce his intentions, though I wasn’t sure what political lane he thought he was going to occupy. Voterslike Pat Quinn — I like Pat Quinn. His heart is in the right place. But I suspect they’re looking for a fresher face.
Of the nine declared candidates at this writing whom I deem likely to submit enough valid signatures to get on the Feb. 28 ballot (see the list here), former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas is the only white candidate. That combination might put him in the top two, barring other late entrants by next Monday’s filing deadline, but I doubt it will put him on the fifth floor of City Hall. He’s adopted a more conservative political profile since 2014 when he was then-Gov. Quinn’s running mate, and he got just 5.4% of the vote and finished ninth in the crowded 2019 mayoral race. Further, the percentage of white voters who vote strictly along racial lines is far smaller than it was nearly 40 years ago.
The top five in Chicago magazine writer Edward McClelland’s recent Mayoral Power Rankings look like this:
U.S. Rep. Chuy Garcia, D-Chicago
Lori Lightfoot, incumbent
Brandon Johnson, Democratic Cook County commissioner
Vallas
Willie Wilson, entrepreneur/philanthropist
Smart money says no candidate will get the necessary 50% of the vote plus one to avoid a runoff election.
News: The Northwestern University football team is now 1-10 and appears nearly fully returned to the dismal days of yore.
View: It may be time to dust off and update the jokes from the 1976 through 1981 era when the Wildcats were 3-62-1. Remember these “final scores”?
Catch 22, Northwestern 0 Fahrenheit 451, Northwestern 0 Northside 777, Northwestern 0 Speed of Light 186,000, Northwestern 0 Ways to Leave Your Lover 50, Northwestern 0
Nominations for updated scores accepted!
Land of Linkin’
“As the plaudits roll in for the late William J. Kunkle, who led the 1978-1980 prosecution of John Wayne Gacy, let’s see how his lifelong victory tour turned that trial’s false narrative into a decades-long perversion of justice that continues to hurt victims’ families,” begins a Twitter thread by Alison True, former editor of the Chicago Reader and the proprietor of JohnWayneGacyNews.com, a site that contends “the official story” about the notorious area mass murderer “is full of holes.” True, a neighbor and friend, was featured in the 2021 Peacock documentary series “John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise.”
In “How Colleges and Sports-Betting Companies ‘Caesarized’ Campus Life,” The New York Times tells the tale of the “far-reaching but secretive campaign by the nascent online sports-gambling industry” to enlist universities in a program to hook students on wagering. “The partnerships raise questions, however, about whether promoting gambling on campus — especially to people who are at an age when they are vulnerable to developing gambling disorders — fits the mission of higher education.” Gee, ya think?
New Substack: Pesca Profundities featuring the always provocative podcast host Mike Pesca. He begins by engaging with Adam Davidson on the subject of cancel culture. The back story here is quite interesting and can be found in this New York Times article:
“On Nov. 18, the journalist Mike Pesca, who hosts the popular news podcast “The Gist,” posted a link (to Davidson’s Journa.host corner of the Mastodon social media site) to a (New York) Times story about health concerns associated with the puberty-blocking drugs sometimes prescribed to transgender youths, writing, “This seemed like careful, thorough reporting.” In response, Parker Molloy, a journalist who writes the Substack newsletter “The Present Age,” accused Mr. Pesca of anti-trans bigotry, and then posted angrily at Mr. Davidson for not removing the post.“@adamdavidson’s decision not to take action on anti-trans content isn’t inspiring confidence and I totally understand why other places are doing instance-level blocking,” she wrote on journa.host. (Instance-level blocking refers to the ability, on Mastodon, for one server to block content from another.) Zach Everson, one of the journa.host administrators, responded that he agreed with Ms. Molloy, then added, “Banning someone for posting a link to an NYT article sets a precedent that we really need to work through.” On Saturday, journa.host suspended Mr. Pesca.”
Mary Schmich on hype, loss and gratitude
My former colleague Mary Schmich posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook and allows me to republish them in the Picayune Sentinel. Here is her most recent offering from a column she wrote for Thanksgiving 20 years ago.
Not long ago I took a long walk with a friend I’ve known since we were 17. I hadn’t seen her in a while, so, knowing only the outlines of her latest accomplishments and troubles, I asked, “How has life in the 40s felt to you?”
She was quiet for a moment, then waved toward the sun and sky and said, “You know what I feel mostly? Grateful.”
I nodded. “Me too.”
On the surface, our lives are very different from each other’s now. In the years since we overdosed on coffee and deep thoughts in the dorm at 1 a.m., we’ve had different joys, different griefs, different reasons to chafe occasionally against the boundaries of the lives we’ve built. But from our forked paths, we’ve arrived at the same conclusion: In the middle of life, the first word that comes to mind to describe our lives is “grateful.”
Gratitude is one of those words that’s so overused that you may hesitate to use it. It smacks of Hallmark cards and self-help books, of an industry that presumes we need to be taught gratitude, usually at full retail price plus tax and shipping.
But the truth is, just as dogs have to be trained to pipe down or roll over, we do need to be taught to pause and say thanks. Thanksgiving is our annual refresher course.
“Say thank you,” adults are forever chiding children who have yet to compute that what they’ve been given wasn’t rightfully theirs all along. That candy bar, the new doll, a compliment — most of us have to be taught that these are gifts, not entitlements.
So we learn to say thank you, though thanks may be less an honest expression of gratitude than a social ploy designed to keep the goodies coming.
As part of our instruction in gratitude, a lot of us are drilled to say grace before meals. “Bless us, oh Lord, for these thy gifts, which we are about to receive, etc.” was the Catholic prayer my siblings and I had to recite before we were rewarded with supper. Desperate to get to the Spaghetti-O’s, we raced through it with the same speed and reverence we brought to “Peter
Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.”
I envied Protestants, whose snappy “God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food” was an infinitely shorter route to the grub.
But somewhere along the way, after the rote recitations of gratitude we learn young, most of us learn to mean thank you. To feel thank you. To realize that almost nothing is entitlement, that everything’s a gift and that most of it can be taken away.
Our parents try to teach us this; then loss comes along to drive the lesson home. Nothing teaches gratitude more efficiently than loss.
The loss of people you love, through death or misunderstanding.
The loss of youth. Of beauty.
The loss of trust. Of money.
The loss of a home or a job.
By the time you’re in midlife you’ve lost one or more of those. Having lost a few things, you more fully realize what those things were, and how lucky you were to have had them.
And once you’ve lost a few things you’re attached to, you have two choices: grow bitter at what you’ve lost or start noticing how much you still have.
Have you ever noticed that after a catastrophe, many of the victims or the victims’ relatives talk of gratitude? In the wake of the hurricane, the car wreck, the cancer, the terrorist attack, there are always people who respond by saying they’re grateful to be alive. To have their health. To have their family. Grateful for a sunny day, or a rainy one, depending on the need.
They incarnate the simple truth that without loss, we’re less likely to learn gratitude and more likely to take our good luck for granted.
It’s a consequence of getting older, I’m sure, that recently I’ve found myself pausing regularly before I eat to look at my food and think, “Thanks.”
I’m glad in a new way for the food and a peaceful place to eat it. Glad to have had parents who taught me to say thanks before I understood the word. Glad for the life and the losses that helped me understand better.
Glad for Thanksgivings that remind us all to say it. — Mary Schmich
Re: Tweets
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor and so can’t be included in the classic Tweet of the Week contest in which the template for the poll does not allow the use of images. Subscribers vote for their favorite:
Results next Thursday.
Rather than conducting a Tweet of the Week poll this week I’m presenting the top 10 Thanksgiving-related tweets from the archives.
At any point during our Thanksgiving there are three or four family members who are legitimately concerned that it’s just an elaborately staged intervention. — @BobTheSuit
My husband and I make a good team. I'm about to start cooking Thanksgiving dinner and he's taking the batteries out of the smoke detectors. — @3sunzzz
I'll host Thanksgiving if I can wear a bejeweled pantsuit and throw a wine glass at a painting while saying, “Dammit, Daniel, nobody cares about your novel." —@LizHackett
My personal touch to Thanksgiving: When guests finish the food on their plates, they see the message, “Time to leave.” — @TheAlexNevil
If you are going to someone's house for Thanksgiving, compliment their baseboards. That is what they are spending today cleaning. — @simoncholland
"I'm so excited for a short work week!" … oblivious turkey — @nedostup
If any of you are going Black Friday shopping this week please try and be a decent human being and turn your phone horizontal before recording any fights. — @GDUB18T
What's that, turkey? GOBBLE GOBBLE Timmy fell in a well? GOBBLE GOBBLE [breaks turkey's neck] No time for your riddles, into the oven you go. — @PaperWash
Right now there is an aunt buying all the ingredient for that thing she brings every Thanksgiving that everyone in the family hates. — @simoncholland
The worst part of Thanksgiving is when people ask what you’re thankful for because the thing I'm most thankful for is people not asking me stupid questions. — @OhNoSheTwitnt
Tune of the Week
Thanksgiving songs don’t get better than “Uncle Dave’s Grace,” in which a guilt-wracked liberal attempts to bless the holiday meal.
It begins,
Thanksgiving Day, Uncle Dave was our guest He reads The Progressive which makes him depressed We asked Uncle Dave if he'd like to say grace A dark desolation crept over his face "Thanks," he began as he gazed at his knife "To poor Mr. Turkey for living his life All crowded and cramped in a great metal shed Where life was a drag then they cut off his head
The lyrics go on from there and will be amusing to self-aware liberals and pleasing to smug conservatives. I realize this is the third Lou and Peter Berryman song I’ve featured so far in Tune of the Week.
Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!
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There was a highly embarrassing loss that ended in Tops: 4 Northwestern: 0
Great issue - many Laughs Out Loud! Happy Thanksgiving, Eric. Speaking of which, I'm grateful for your twice-a-week online publication (and the getting the Tuesday issue is well worth having a PAID subscription).