Turkey post mortem

Is it me or did you hear a lot more neighbors, advertisers, and restaurant Thanksgiving buffet come-ons bellow "Happy Turkey Day" than "Happy Thanksgiving Day" last week? Alright, the first few hundred times it was cute-in a pre-school sort of way. And even until this year it was only mildly annoying to hear the puerile pun perpetuated.

But then a friend of mine suggested that maybe it's not just being "cute." Just maybe, rather than juvenile, brainless comics, I should be picturing humorless men with briefcases on Madison Avenue, cynically massaging a cultural makeover, one "Happy Turkey Day" greeting card at a time, under the cultural radar. In a few years it will be a fait accompli, and the spiritual origins of Thanksgiving reduced to a historical curiosity, a stumper on "Jeopardy," a footnote in children's books on early Americana.

Did Humpty Dumpty fall or was he pushed is what I'm wondering. Was it a slippery slide in the general culture, or more orchestrated? Everybody knows God has been run out of Christmas town by Santa's sled, and stuffed down a rabbit hole by the Easter Bunny. But I am just pondering the degree of conscious deliberateness behind the crime of Turkey Day.

First degree or third degree murder, doesn't matter much. They're both covered in Romans 1:21: "They did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking." Stay tuned and see what they do to Christmas. Happy Santa Day.