Sure, everybody loves turkey. Actually I (Nicola) don’t. And my vegetarian family members don’t. And my Asian and Hispanic friends are less than keen. And my small child, who keeps bringing home colorful pictures of turkeys in top hats and spats—or of papa, mama, and baby turkey cavorting about the forest—is horrified by the idea that Tom is going to end up on the table. So . . . Turkey Day seems outdated as a holiday moniker. Yet T-Day can still stand, because who doesn’t love the letter T? It’s strong, upright, and true, not to mention useful (integral as it is to the words strong, upright, and true, as well as integral). Thus the CR staff offers you, on this day of celebration, a post teeming with T words.
Don Bogen: The tintinnabulary clatter of multiple gleaming utensils as they thrust into platters of aromatic foodstuffs preceded the ecstatic bite-by-bite transport of the feast to expectant tongues soon engaged in gustatory delectation, shared compliments, and eventual torpor punctuated by faint utterances of No more, thanks.
Michael Griffith: Terence was traduced by Ted—traitor!—and thanks to that tomato-faced tosser, his tapir-tupping took the town into a tizzy of tsking.
Nicola Mason: The troglodytes, having no cave-dwelling fowl to feast upon, fashioned a faux turkey from a trove of tiny sightless fish (tacked together with toothpicks of flint) from a deep dark tarn, and toasted their triumph with a tincture of toadstools and slime.
Matt O’Keefe: This T-word whose daily job is odious on T-day needs to be extra commodious.
Becky Adnot-Haynes: After considering trivet, tureen, and tryptophan, I chose for my favorite T-word tetchy, because it’s something nobody is on Thanksgiving, after the roasted fowl and the two preparations of potato and the can-shaped glob of cranberry jelly—unless they play football with my family, which is disgustingly competitive (cue last year’s game: a touchdown pass headed for the arms of my 92-pound mother; my dad, on the opposing team, flying in front of her to emphatically bat it down and then pound his chest, Tarzan-style).
Lisa Ampleman: The aunts in self-knit holiday cardigans—pilgrims, pumpkins, and cornucopiae—spoke in terza rima as they stirred the gravy, uncanned the cranberry sauce, and burned the pecan pie, finishing each other’s sentences and weaving a tale of the everlasting fire and perdition of middle age.
Brian Trapp: Gustav was on his way to festive caroling when the baron’s runaway troika struck him in the upper-body, caving in his sternum and causing him to drop his pot of chicken liver stuffing, all of which made his serfs rejoice.
