Quite honestly, it’s the turkey’s fault. The bird, you see, is bland. As the centerpiece for the year’s most monumental meal, you’d think tradition would demand a tastier carnal sacrifice. Steaks, for example; while the butthole of a carved-up cow is slightly more difficult to stuff with celery and bits of crumpled bread, the reward of a red meat repast is well worth the effort. (Of course, the first problem with this scenario being the location of the moo-moo’s poop-chute. I mean, is it in the ribeye, the KC strip, the sirloin or the club steak? My god, have we been salivating all the years over filet mignon only to discover we’ve been duped by Bessie and her co-horts–a final jest of tasty ordure delivered to our unsuspecting palates as we sizzle her flank and roast her rump?) Serving steak, one separate plate per person, also imparts the dignified notion that each one of us is different, that we don’t all have to feed at the same flighty trough. And, with the turkey you have racial decisions with which to wrestle (dark meat! white meat!), but with steak, why, it’s all pink in the middle.

The Insta-Princess worships Thanksgiving. The pies, the bird, the trimmings and the drinks, she’s a big fan of all of it. “Good Eats” is her motto this time of the year, and although I respect her love for the holiday, I’d be just as happy to kick it out of the pantheon of days off during the year and replace it with, I dunno, maybe something like my birthday.

Bingo.

I’ve been bored by Thanksgiving for as long as I can remember. As a kiddo (I was frickin’ adorable) I was forced to get dressed up and go forth to a family member’s house (usually my maternal grandparents) and do absolutely nothing. Oh, sure, we were allowed some cuts of dry meat and horrible gravy, but after dinner in a house full of adults who, frankly, weren’t paying any attention to us, there was nothing to do. The one television was hidden behind a swarm of aunts and uncles; the only toys in the house were leftover Barbies circa my mother’s childhood; running outside was forbidden lest we bring holy ruin to our clothes; and if the television ever did make an appearance, it was tuned to a football game. No books, no games, no wrestling, no races, nothing.

Worst of all, no gifts.

There, I said it. I despise Thanksgiving to this day because I got absolutely zilch out of it as a wee one. I mean, hey, Easter was slightly worse in some ways (had to sit through an hour of hard wooden pews and boring sermons before our ecclesiastical sentence was lifted for the day), but you ended up with chocolate galore and plastic Easter eggs filled with yet more treats of both the cash variety and the edible kind. (Fittingly enough, if all eggs weren’t found you could hunt for them up to three days later, thus introducing a special brand of divine ressurrection.) Thanksgiving, however, there were no bright baskets holding a tasty Peter Cottontail prisoner in an equally bright box; there were no gifts under a tree waiting to be unwrapped and fawned over; there were no candy hearts and Scooby-Doo wishes for a Happy Valentine’s Day; there were no birthday cakes and no candles to blow out. No, there was just boring old turkey and the official colors of Thanksgiving: brown and more brown. Blah, I insist, it’s a blah holiday.

Blah-humbug.