Thanksgiving - past, present and, quite likely, future

1. "Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence." -- Erma Bombeck

2. "Thanksgiving is possible only for those who take time to remember; no one can give thanks who has a short memory." -- Author Unknown

3. "On Thanksgiving Day, all over America, families sit down to dinner at the same moment — halftime." -- Author Unknown

4. “An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.” -- Irv Kupcinet

5. “It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is uneatable without it.” -- Alistair Cooke

6. “Thanksgiving is America's national chow-down feast, the one occasion each year when gluttony becomes a patriotic duty.” -- Michael Dresser

7. “Coexistence: what the farmer does with the turkey — until Thanksgiving.” -- Mike Connolly

8. “Thanksgiving, man. Not a good day to be my pants.” – Kevin James

9. “What is sauce for the goose may be sauce for the gander but is not necessarily sauce for the chicken, the duck, the turkey or the guinea hen.” – Alice B. Toklas

10. “A lot of Thanksgiving days have been ruined by not carving the turkey in the kitchen.” – Kin Hubbard

11. “I hate turkeys. If you stand in the meat section at the grocery store long enough, you start to get mad at turkeys. There’s turkey ham, turkey bologna, turkey pastrami. Someone needs to tell the turkey, ‘man, just be yourself.” – Mitch Hedberg

12. “If you want to save a species, simply decide to eat it. Then it will be managed -- like chickens, like turkeys, like deer, like Canadian geese.” – Ted Nugent

13. “Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin pie.” – Jim Davis

14. “I have strong doubts that the first Thanksgiving even remotely resembled the ‘history’ I was told in second grade. But considering that (when it comes to holidays) mainstream America’s traditions tend to be over-eating, shopping, or getting drunk, I suppose it’s a miracle that the concept of giving thanks even surfaces at all.” – Ellen Orleans

15. “Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often.” – Johnny Carson

16. “I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.” – Jon Stewart


17. “What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?” – Erma Bombeck, No One Diets on Thanksgiving

18. “May your stuffing be tasty,
May your turkey plump,
May your potatoes and gravy
Have nary a lump.
May your yams be delicious
And your pies take the prize,
And may your Thanksgiving dinner
Stay off your thighs!” – Anonymous

19. "The turkey that President Obama will pardon this Thanksgiving is from California. The turkey said, "I don't need a pardon. I need a job.'" – Conan O’Brien

20. "Thanksgiving is a magical time of year when families across the country join together to raise America's obesity statistics. Personally, I love Thanksgiving traditions: watching football, making pumpkin pie, and saying the magic phrase that sends your aunt storming out of the dining room to sit in her car." – Stephen Colbert

21. "My mother won't celebrate Thanksgiving. She says it represents the white man stealing our land. But she's not angry, she figures, 'What the hell, we're taking it back one casino at a time.'" – Larry Omaha

22. "You can tell you ate too much for Thanksgiving when you have to let your bathrobe out." – Jay Leno

23. "This was a really, really big year for me. I got to go home for Thanksgiving and sit at the adults' table. That's 'cause, you know, somebody had to die for me to move up a plate." – Andre Kelley

24. "Thanksgiving. It's like we didn't even try to come up with a tradition. The tradition is, we overeat. 'Hey, how about at Thanksgiving we just eat a lot?' 'But we do that every day!' 'Oh. What if we eat a lot with people that annoy the hell out of us?'" – Jim Gaffigan

25. “I’m not so much thankful for this short week of work as I am annoyed I have to come in at all.” – Anonymous

26. “May your turkey be moist and may no one use that word to describe it.” – Anonymous

27. “I’m thankful that I only have to fake working for two days this week.” – Anonymous