
Somewhere in the United States this moment, a large turkey—with glorious plumage, I would like to imagine—doesn’t know that he’s already been selected for presidential pardon for the American Thanksgiving holiday next week. In classrooms across the country, kids are consuming read-aloud picture books about other turkeys running from feast centerpiece fates. Many classroom games and educational activities are built to the theme of staving off the imminent death of the turkey—hide the turkey, disguise the turkey.
Can you, young schoolchild, alter this bird’s fate and save his life?
It’s all fun and games, and then we expect the child to happily go home and eat the lifeless turkey who has failed to escape that fate.
But it does illustrate that even such a sedate* holiday—as Thanksgiving in America is associated with a single meal, then a football game while people crash from turkey’s legendary tryptophan* triggering tiredness—can easily be mined for horror. After all, aren’t those children’s turkey read-alouds a kind of (extremely) mild horror in themselves?
*The sedateness refers to the holiday in pop culture, and this post will cover holidays more generally. If you wish to look to the specific darker history of Thanksgiving, the National Day of Mourning, for horror, tread carefully and educate yourself to make sure you’re respectful. American Indians in Children’s Literature is a good place to start.
*Tryptophan as a sleep-maker has been debunked, but the idea persists. However, there is evidence that tryptophan can give more vivid dreams, so perhaps horror writers can generate story ideas by doping on turkey to dream ghastly inspiration?

Above: Run, Turkey, Run! by Diane Mayr and Laura Rader; Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano and Lee Harper;
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