Ah, that terrible sacrilegious, un-American name for Thanksgiving, Turkey Day.

What an awful thing to do to our hallowed tradition of....uh, turkey as the main course and last-minute shopping for that feast as a great economic stimulus. The tradition that came directly from our forefathers, those righteous, brave, spiritual Pilgrims -- might as well include the Puritans -- based on the legend of those forefathers with their peaked hats sitting down at that long table with those friendly Indians.

Of course, as Emmet Meara recently pointed out -- as have others -- in his October 29-30 Bangor Daily News column, "Ruining every holiday, starting with Thanksgiving," that first feast likely didn't include turkey or those friendly Indians.

Hey, what's up? Is it Thanksgiving yet? Milt Gross photo

And the giving thanks part, wrote Meara, was that their guys had recently killed a large number of Rhode Island Indians during a raid on those Indians in which they took part.

Gosh, no turkey, no Indians, and being thankful for what? Killing Indians? Those first Thanks givers really slaughtered Turkey Day!

Kind of reminds me of those Thanksgivings around our family table when I was a kid. My brother always found a way to begin an argument, and it didn't matter much which family member or members with whom he found it. Maybe he knew more about the original Massachusetts Thanksgiving than did the rest of us.

Good thing Dolores and I are fighting back for the keeping of our tradition by accepting an invitation to dine out Thanksgiving with friendly relatives, who aren't Indians, by the way, at a fancy-- might be, we haven't seen it yet -- inn in Cushing or St. George or somewhere way down yonder.

Both of us are thankful, yes, for the invitation, even though I have to don a necktie and sport coat, which I haven't donned since the good old days when I was a news reporter and occasionally donned such attire for the dinners of various sorts to which I was invited to eat and write. We're thankful because this invitation has set aside our yearly disagreement on what to eat on Thanksgiving. Dolores doesn't eat turkey -- well, yeah, sliced turkey in a sandwich from the supermarket is okay -- and I do, traditionalist that I am.

I won't go into what we've finally dined on during past Thanksgivings, but thankfully our disagreements were never enough to keep us from enjoying the idea of Thanksgiving.

Of course, Meara's column and other stuff I've read have pretty much ruined that tradition of Thanksgiving for us. Even though this year we're both thankful to not have to resolve that disagreement while we're being thankful. I'll have turkey, and Dolores will have....well, whatever the menu may offer that isn't turkey.

Not too long ago we dined at a fine restaurant in Camden. I had my traditional once-a-year-out clams, and Dolores ordered a salad. Apparently salading wasn't the cook's specialty. She was served with a bowl of lettuce.

The view of Camden Harbor was satisfying for both of us.

Our turkeys are probably thankful we don't insist on turkey at home on Thanksgiving. If they were unsure of our non-turkey Thanksgiving tradition, they probably wouldn't chow down several times a day on the sunflower seed we sprinkle about the yard for the birds and squirrels. No, we don't mind feeding squirrels. They get hungry too just before Thanksgiving and need to chow down a lot and hide a lot of seeds for their winter survival.

Some turkeys seem to enjoy their own feast, Thanksgiving and other, without worrying too much about becoming the feast. Milt Gross photo.

And turkeys are birds, so we're feeding the birds. They're just a lot bigger than most of the wild birds that gather for their Thanksgiving and every-other-day meals in our yard. Big enough that our kitties just stand and stare whenever they find themselves sharing the yard with those wild turkeys.

I just know that part of those kitties' minds is saying, hey, we just love to chase birds. And another part is saying, but not those guys. Yikes, their five or six times bigger than we are. Who wants to chase a bird that's five or six times bigger than you are? What if we caught it?

The first wild turkey I ever encountered was while I attended a youth church camp a couple of hundred years ago back in Pennsylvania, which I believe means Penn's Woods with or without Turkeys. We were on a "hike," one of those walks in the woods that everyone calls a hike and no one except my grandfather ever called a walk in the woods.* A turkey rose loudly from nearby brush and startled me so much I was afraid to think about Thanksgiving -- even had I thought about it that July or August day if I hadn't been so startled.

Thankfully, I learned while a reporter back in the 1980s that there were few turkeys in Maine. A Maine Department of Inland Fish and Game biologist explained to the Norway-Paris Fish and Game Association to which I belonged because club members made me join so they would no longer have to give me free wild-game at their suppers, as they had when I was just a reporter covering their events.

This biologist told us there were turkeys in southern Maine, but that they would never spread to the rest of the Pine Tree State because the climate was too cold. (Yesterday I viewed 15 of the big, dumb-looking critters while driving my bus. And just an hour ago, I took photos of the half-dozen chowing down by our front porch.)

Hey, a Thanksgiving object for thought, global warming. I don't know whether to be thankful because we're seeing these clumsy-appearing-while-actually-quite-nimble-and-fast critters so close or because global warming has made that possible.

I don't really enjoy being cold.

But nor do I enjoy all those crazy storms that global warming seems to bring -- at 5:30 a.m., when I'm trying to hi ho, hi ho, off to work I go.

At any rate, this Thanksgiving I'll be thankful that Dolores and I found a great way to resolve our annual difference over what to eat on Thanksgiving -- at that nice comfortable inn where those Massachusetts forefathers would have wished they could have enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner, had there been any nice comfortable inns open that first Thanksgiving. I can have turkey. Dolores can have whatever.

And the turkeys outside our house will be happy they aren't on the Thanksgiving menu.

• *My grandfather used to love to walk in the woods in the fall, scuffing those leaves with his shoes. He may be the one I can blame for my similar enjoyment of that autumn sport as well as other walks in the woods and up mountains.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@midmaine.com.

Milton M. Gross Copyright 2011