The Thanksgiving Day Hype

Or
“What’s all this fuss about turkey?”
By CPVegan

This is mainly directed to fellow Americans.
Question: Is this going to be yet another Thanksgiving celebration-which I might add, unlike Christmas, is devoid of gift-giving and really focuses on family-bonding-where there is an hysterical need for a turkey to be consumed or the celebration isn’t genuine?

By now, you all know my wishes for the vegan lifestyle to influence more souls to elevate their spirituality enough to show more compassion and re-consider their diets to exclude all flesh and dairy. So here’s my next question to the American carnivores:
Why turkey? Why not horses? Why not dogs? Why not cats?
I think it is because these “pets”, these “companion animals” which many of us have formed special bonds with, are held sacred by us in so many special ways that we would never betray them just to appease our lust for the taste of flesh .
But hold on…many people do!
There are actual farms where pets are raised and slaughtered for the flesh trade.
Just Google “eating horses” or “eating cats” for example and don’t be shocked if you get over 32,000,000 results.
Horse-eating countries: Japan, Canada, Slovenia, france, Belgium, Italy
Cat-eating countries: Philippines, China, Peru
Dog-eating countries: So. Korea, So. China, Southeast Asia, Vietnam

So, advertising and marketing has brought society to the turkey-table with clever
slogans to convince us of the absolute necessity of choosing this one species to “celebrate” life with. This is the American tradition. After all, Norman Rockwell's illustration Freedom from Want appeared on the pages of The Saturday Evening Post on March 6, 1943 so it must be the way it’s supposed to be. (This painting is also known as Thanksgiving Dinner. This was the third installment of Rockwell's famous Four Freedoms series.)


I’m certainly not proposing you now switch to horse, cat or dog meat. But I just wanted to see if anyone is awake out there to the slight chance that the “turkey lust” did not really originate in your head. It’s a holiday, as I mentioned above, that should encourage us to be more responsive to recognizing the good we have in our lives through family ties and caring friends. Food isn’t the message for the heart.
The shelters don’t need the turkeys; the troops don’t need the turkeys.
They need US. We all need each other.
Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.