Thanksgiving casts spell on America

"Forever on Thanksgiving Day

The heart will find the pathway home."

- Wilbur D. Nesbit

This Thursday provides a holiday in which most of us will visit a spell, sit a spell and eat a spell.

So let's spell Thanksgiving.

T is for turkey, something that's supposed to be very healthy and usually eaten only one time a year. This is that time.

H is for the house you go to. Often it is a house too small for everyone, but somehow, some way, you fit them all in. Forget the Norman Rockwell image of everyone sitting around a table. Many of my best Thanksgiving meals have been eaten off a paper plate while sitting on a couch watching the Detroit Lions lose creatively on TV.

A is for aunts. Thanksgiving is made for aunts, the greater the better. Aunts bring uncles, and usually both bring cousins. Cousins are fun. They're like brothers and sisters, only without the statute of limitations. To truly get the measure of a family's fortune, one must engage in at least one front-yard touch football game among cousins on the fourth Thursday afternoon in November.

N is for nutmeg. A forgotten spice, but this week, a useful one. It can take something as questionably edible as a pumpkin and turn it into a tasty pie.

K is for the knife you carve with. There's nothing like that first time it's your house and your table and you realize that you have to be the one carving in front of family. I personally had no idea how to proceed but followed a technique I remembered from an old Beverly Hillbillies episode.

S is for sisters who watch incredulously as you cut a turkey sideways.

G is for giggles, which come from those sisters, but they are muffled giggles because you are, after all, holding a knife (see K above).

I is for iced tea, which is still OK to drink down here in November.

V is for vegetables. Hopefully, they are cooked in lard or with bacon, which is OK. On the fourth Thursday in November, the FDA forgives all dietary restrictions and warnings. (This was a White House initiative during the Clinton administration.)

I is for interesting, which is about the best you can say about any recipe that involves asparagus, cranberries and oysters.

N is for saying "no thanks" to the asparagus and cranberries.

G is for going, which eventually, you have to do. Have you ever noticed how nobody wants to be the first to leave, but when the circle is broken, no one seems to want to stay?

Put them all together, they spell: Turkey-house-aunts-nutmeg-knife-sisters-giggles-iced tea-vegetables-interesting-no thanks-going.

Put them all together at your house Thursday and see what happens.

Reach Bill Kirby at (706) 823-3344 or bill.kirby@augustachronicle.com.