Turkey

Here I boldly present to you, my ever loyal audience, an essay originally intended for adorably French adolescent ears.  Alas, it is imperfect and rather dark, but I accept it as such and submit it here as the future subject of your scorn/ambivalence/approval.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is an American holiday that occurs on the last Thursday of November of every year.  It celebrates the first meal shared in the seventeenth century by the pilgrims, who had emigrated from England, and the Native American Indians.  It celebrates fraternity, the common good, and satisfaction in what we already have, also known as "thankfulness".  It emphasizes the appreciation of non-material things: health, happiness, family, friends, safety, community.
To celebrate Thanksgiving, one must have something to be thankful for.  In the event that you feel you have nothing to be thankful for, you are in luck; as this holiday is tailor-made especially for you.  You are a miserable wretch who finds nothing pleasant in everyday life: work is a burden seldom rewarding, your family nags at you until you are on the brink of wringing their throats, and school is¡­ well, school.  Your girlfriend never gives you what you want when you want it: sex, affection, attention, space.  You're not particularly beautiful, and you could do with losing a few pounds.  Who couldn't?
But then you remember your cousin's good friend that passed away this last summer.  You recall the absolute desolation she felt when that friend erased himself from her future, forever to remain a source of sweet agony whose memory she at once relished and dreaded.  And you are reminded of your bulimic ex-girlfriend, whom you could not invite to dinner without a pang of powerless guilt.  You are reminded of the unfortunate protagonist of Le père Goriot, who witnessed a relentlessly generous father waste away and die following his being abandoned by his two wretched daughters.  A distant relative sends you some pathetic email about the blessings that God benevolently endows on the suffering children in that dilapidated continent that is considered a country, and you set aside your religious doubts and recognize the unfathomable suffering those children (who do exist, unlike G--) and all the unjust torments they are destined to experience.  In this rather shallow yet genuine moment of humanity you are enticed to consider, too, the unfortunate families that in the past year have lost jobs, and with jobs, homes, and with homes, sanctuary, and with sanctuary, dignity.
And you begin to realize that perhaps your job doesn't need to be such a burden as you make it out to be; and perhaps your family's incessant nagging is an acceptable condition of their unconditional love; and maybe your girlfriend is all the more precious to you because she is an individual and does not act in conjunction with your every whim; you remember that an education is a privilege and not a birthright in some not-so-distant lands, and you accept that mole on your brow and the handles on your haunch as visible evidence of who you are right now.  And then, all of a sudden, your soul begins to grin with the warm expanding sensation and a sense of impeccable beauty that surpasses description.  And you sit, or you stand, marinating in the lemon-fresh batter with a gentle smile on your face as you feel your corners being smoothed and your jagged edges softened.  Your being exfoliated, you wonder at the meal shared some four centuries ago and you ask yourself if this was perhaps how the Native American Indians felt when they decided to share their food, land, and company with the pilgrims.  And you realize the true meaning of the Thanksgiving holiday is simple and good.
But every shaft of glittering moonlight has its shadow.  You recall the fact that the Native American Indians who weren't killed by ruthless indiscriminate violence or blankets were cordoned off into Reservations and stripped with great relish of their language, culture, and identity as they burned at the base of the Melting Pot.
Ah, well.  Happy Thanksgiving.