Thanksgiving 2024: How Hippos Can Save the Day!
...and other sage advice for the holiday.
Thanksgiving is in a few days, so, in the spirit of the season, I am going to tell you what to do. From newspaper pundits to morning news anchors to a zillion bloggers desperate to turn out content, a lot of people are giving not-so-helpful advice on how to deal with, moderate or avoid politics this Thanksgiving. These suggestions range from feeble (sending out a pre-holiday politics-prohibition to guests) to pretty damn stupid (a sharp whistle blast every time someone approaches the subject). The best suggestion I’ve read is just don’t show up – a luxury many of us don’t have.
For those of you who are obligated to attend festivities that could very well get heated, I’ve got some answers:
Become the Life of the Party: Or, as family therapists say, be the "Identified Patient." Embrace the black sheep inside you and thrive! Make sure that your antics and “mis-speeks” can’t be ignored. You don’t have to be loud and flamboyant; passionately picking your nose throughout the day will be enough. If that fails to garner attention, eat a booger or two. And, if you are still being ignored, teach a toddler how to gooble and gobble. No one will be talking politics.
Embrace the Extreme Until You Don’t: Me? I rush past misogyny, White supremacy, xenophobia, and Gay hate to blanket everything with a thick residue of misanthropy. Why loath some, when you can hate all. The answer to every small problem is “Just kill them all.” Your half measure solution? “Send them to the camps.” The justification for it all: “Well, someone has to die.” Keep it simple and make sure that you start small: Problem parkers, litterbugs, whomever is responsible for the swirly circle showing up on the screen, they must make the “ultimate sacrifice.” When the subject turns to a “big” issue like immigration, your reply to others’ answers is “I don’t know. Seems extreme to me.” Wash, rinse, repeat.
A Living History Lesson: For most of our lives, we’ve been taught that the first Thanksgiving happened in 1621 when members of the Wampanoag tribe aided starving English colonialists in Massachusetts with a feast, a feast that became an American tradition centered on how good we and our White sociopathic forebearers are.
In the last decade or so, another bit of history surfaced as a corrective. This Thanksgiving origin story centers on the Pequot Massacre of 1637. In the fall of that year, on the banks of Massachusetts’ Mystic River, paranoid about an Indian uprising, colonialists attacked a settlement of the Pequot people, murdering over 400 and enslaving around 700 people. A few days later, the colonialists celebrated with a feast, which some historians identify as the first Thanksgiving.
Regardless of which (if either) origin story is true, there’s absolutely no question that the relationship between English colonialists and Native people was more hostile than empathetic, and that, on the whole, Native people suffered for it. We know that from 1619 to 1800, tens of millions of Native American people were killed directly or indirectly by European colonialists. We also know that periodically, Native people fought back, something that mostly didn’t end well. An example:
In 1675, a confederation of Natives in southern New England led by a Wampanoag headman named Metacomet (or Pometacomet, known to the English as King Philip) tried to halt the spread of colonial communities by creating an alliance among Native groups. He roused a rebellion that eventually stretched across modern Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and even Maine. Armed colonists, with some Native allies, hunted Metacomet and any Indigenous people they believed were his allies. After a series of Native assaults on scattered colonial towns, colonial soldiers gathered in modern South Kingston, Rhode Island. In a pitched battle now known as the Great Swamp Massacre, the Natives killed scores of colonial soldiers. But colonists set fire to a Narragansett encampment, killing perhaps almost 100 Native fighters and hundreds of non-combatants in a single night. Colonists finally found Metacomet in August 1676. They decapitated him and quartered his body so they could put it on display, a strategy that English officials had long used to discourage men from becoming pirates.
Why not reenact some history, with a little twist. You can pretend to be Metacomet, but this time, your rebels win! You can stage your attack at dinner time, or, hell, start the festivities with some war. By the time dinner comes around, the “colonialists” will be vanquished and you will be explaining to police why a dozen of your relatives are stacked dead on the front lawn.
Nudity: Nudity.
Hippos Save the Day: The great thing about family holidays is if you want to reanimate a “dead” cultural fad or sensation no one is going to stop you. Looking to dance the macarena? Today is the day! Bored? Break out the pogs! Stumped for words? Bring back “Who let the dogs out?” and “Where’s the beef!” That’s what I’m talkin’ about!
Baby hippo Moo Deng might be yesterday’s Hippopotamidae, but she can still show up at your Turkey Day…and you are just the one to bring her to the party. When things start to drift political, pipe up with “How ‘bout that Moo Deng!” The response will be mixed, but those who are sick of the pygmy hippo will be silenced by Moo fans, especially if you are there to stoke the sensation.
Pump up the cute talk, revel in adorableness, swim in the silly, and when the cooing starts to cool, it’s time to interject, “Did you know that hippos kill more people than any other land mammal? It’s true. Besides man and the mosquito, hippos are the deadliest creature on Earth.” Mesmerize your family and friends with facts like a hippo can snap a canoe in half in one bite and that often they kill people by ramming them. Recount tales of hippos trying to eat people only to spit them out – prompted or not. Wonder out loud how many babies Moo Deng could eat.
Your audience will be eager to hear more hippo facts, such as, a single hippo shits more in a day than a human does in a year. It’s true, look it up. Hippos eat all the time and they eat a lot, so it’s no surprise that they shit all the time and they shit a lot. While hippo shit can be beneficial, the propensity of their pooing can kill rivers.
Also, like skunks, when hippos are surprised, they spray. Unlike skunks, when hippos are surprised they spray poo! You want to silence a MAGA hat? Lay that nugget on the resident kid gross-out artist, with the direction “YouTube!” Then prepared for a Thanksgiving jump into a hippo hole of “Hooo! That’s gross. Play it again!”
Granted, turning Thanksgiving into Hippopolpooza is not going to make you popular among the adults, but you will be the hero of the kid’s table. Still, fat chance you will find yourself sitting with your new friends. Nah, you will be exiled to the end of the table with great-aunt Pam and the old widower who lives next door. Be prepared to answer questions like, “Is this ham? It sure tastes like ham” and “Whatever happened to that Pretty Lady actress, the one with the big mouth? I thought she was going to be famous.”
Or you might be exiled to the bedroom with too-drunk cousin Steve, who still can’t get over “the tuck rule.” Best outcome is that you are stuffed into a taxi cab with a few to-go containers and an ample portion of pie, but make sure you get pie, because if Thanksgiving is about anything, it’s the pie, several varieties and many slices. It’s the pie that rules the day. It’s the pie that we are thankful for. It’s the pie and only the pie.
So, I’m off for Thanksgiving, so you will get nothing from me on Thursday. After the holiday, I’ll be away for about ten days, on a long-planned vacation. If you hear from me between now and then, consider it a bonus. Have a good holiday, trust my advice, and survive to fight another day.