Well here it is again, Thanksgiving Eve, when we, like our forefathers, carve ham-o-lanterns to set in the window and go from door to door collecting drumsticks from old people who live in our neighborhood.  Okay, not really, but this time of year is all about imagining how perfect things could be, so I’m sticking with my ham-o-lantern fantasy.  What really happens on Thanksgiving is that bloggers, columnists, and some of your more eloquent tubers get all serious and try to write moving articles about the value of family togetherness and saving the whales and wearing hats with buckles on them (or possibly articles about how The Eloquent Tubers would make a totally awesome name for a band).  And that’s all okay, but that would be a total buzz kill, so instead I’m gonna go for the historical appreciation route and relate unto y’all the story of the first Thanksgiving, which, by the way, happened here in Virginia some like, ten years before Massachusetts even rose out of the primordial deep and became infested with Pilgrims.  So pull on your learnin’ trousers kids, its time for A Very Teacupmammoths Thanksgiving.

            It all started way back in the day, in 1619, when a bunch of English dudes (Who, unlike the Pilgrims to the North, came here to kick ass and chew bubble gum.  However, when they got here, they were dismayed to discover that Virginia had no natural bubble gum mines, forcing them to adopt a program of systematic ass-kicking which has remained the Virginia way ever since) decided to build a plantation on the banks of the scenic and kayak-infested James River.  You see, for quite some time, these first Virginians had been farming tobacco to send back to England, the plan being that not only would England regularly pay them for it, but it would also get all the English all emphasymatic, so that years later in the American Revolution, we’d just be able so run up a gentle slope to escape from them if things weren’t going well.  This plan worked out so well that after a number of years, the Virginians decided that maybe there might be a better way of growing tobacco than just running around in the woods hoping to find a vast field of it that had just sprung out of nowhere.  As a result, George Washington, Head On A Stick Guy, Bob Dole, Thomas Jefferson Airplane, and Abraham Lincoln all got together and decided to build a plantation.

            These days this would be no great challenge, but since the first home improvement emporium in North America wouldn’t be built until 1644 (Manny’s Log Cabin O’ Savings), they had to cut down all their own trees using nothing but fire and their own mighty incisors.  Also, the Pharaoh of England, Yule Brenner VIII, wasn’t letting them have any straw for their bricks right then either, so construction was rather arduous.  To make a long story short, the situation was grim until a friendly Indian princess, Pocasquantojaweea, who had run away from home because her parents gave her a stupid name, taught them how to make houses out of raccoons, which the Indians called, Maize.  So Berkeley Plantation was finished, and they decided to have a major league party to celebrate that they didn’t have to all just sleep in the back of Bob Dole’s Winnebago any more.

            At first, they planned on having a proper English feast, composed of nasty-looking English foods with odd names, but since the Pharaoh also wasn’t shipping and spotted dick or bangers and mash over at the time, these brave explorers had to kind of improvise.  George Washington, for instance, had just built the world’s first potato gun, and soon discovered that the spent ammunition from his creation was edible, thus was the mashed potato born.  Abe “The Emancipator” Lincoln was busy practicing his choke slam technique on the local Spanish spies, and just so happened to choke slam one Juan Valdez right into a fortuitously located barrel of cranberries, thus was cranberry sauce invented.  Head On A Stick Guy, meanwhile, was just kind of hanging out when their next door neighbor, Ben Franklin, came over from the craft store he was building to show off a kite he had made to fly turkeys around, his choice for the new national bird.  As luck would have it, a random bolt of lightening struck the kite, cooking the turkey, which Head On A Stick Guy quickly besnaggled and took back to the kitchen.  And Bob Dole brought the Pepsi.  Finally, when they were all sitting around the table and waiting for supper, they discovered that nobody wanted to be the one to go bring the food in.  Thomas Jefferson in particular was busy drawing up plans for a preppy university he hoped to build some day, and decided to put an end to the matter by inventing slavery.

            After supper Abraham Lincoln made a proclamation of awesomeness, declaring that every year after that, the President would go and set aside a day at the beginning of shopping season to do all the stuff that they just did.  Following his example, every President since has proclaimed the same thing every year, except one time Martin van Buren overslept and forget to.  The next year, the people of America decided to make sure he was awake by making a lot of giant balloons shaped like cartoon character and threw a big parade in front of his house.

            Well, now you know the true story of the first Thanksgiving, so when you sit down at the table tomorrow to enjoy some family togetherness and/or deep fried Twinkie sandwiches, you’ll know how much your forefathers had to go through to fix dinner.  And then go worry about saving the whales.