Is turkey essential for Thanksgiving?

Turkey is an icon of a traditional Thanksgiving meal, but how important is turkey to the fall holiday? Honestly, it’s not essential to the festivities.

The dish is overrated and somewhat outdated as a main dish for the holiday. Turkey is not even the star of a Thanksgiving. The most important part of the dinner is the sides. I’ve been a little unnerved when I get served stuffing that doesn’t taste quite right or when the mac and cheese is dry. It’s not like turkey packs a flavorful punch anyway, not the way my family cooks anyhow. Don’t get me wrong there is seasoning and some taste, but the dish is completely upstaged by its counterparts.

There is an argument for how traditional turkey is to Thanksgiving. However, an article on mentalfloss.com “Why We Eat Certain Foods on Thanksgiving” suggests there is a lack of primary sources indicating that turkey was served at the first Thanksgiving.

In current celebration of the holiday, plenty of people opt for Turkey alternatives. Sometimes when my family actually cooks a Thanksgiving meal [as I’ve gotten older, we usually have Chinese food, but that’s another story for another time] we substitute ham as the main entree. From my understanding, it’s not a completely unusual practice.

Additionally, turkey is not served by families with the different dietary choices than the mainstream culture such as vegetarians, vegans, and the macrobiotic diet. For instance, one of my friends when I was younger was a pescatarian. She and her mom use to eat crab for Thanksgiving, although I’m not sure whether she still practices the pescatarian lifestyle.

Also, if you don’t serve turkey you don’t have to deal with the white meat or dark meat dilemma. A good meal doesn’t impose questions, it simply is.

Lastly, there is always so much turkey leftovers even when you get a smaller sized bird. That is actually one of the reasons my family switched to doing ham occasionally, we got sick of eating turkey in the many days following Thanksgiving.

Turkey is decreasing in its importance to Thanksgiving as each and every year passes by.