Thanksgiving stirs all sorts of emotions, some you may have never associated with the holiday.
If you don’t believe me, consider this item from the online betting company, Betway.
According to its survey, Thanksgiving is not only about consumption, but conception as well.
For reasons I do not understand, someone at Betway decided to look into how many babies were born nine months after Thanksgiving in each state.
Utah leads the way with 1.252 births per 1,000 people. This should not be surprising, given that much of the population are Latter Day Saints. LDS couples have children at almost twice the rate of the national average. You know what they call an LDS couple with six kids? Slackers.
Mormons take the scripture passage “Be fruitful and multiply” seriously.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, the Thanksgiving conception rate among those in Maine is 0.805.
Mississippi, incidentally, is ranked No. 9 on the list with a birthrate of 1.084 babies conceived on Turkey Day.
This does serious damage to the Norman Rockwell scenes I have always associated with the holiday. To each his own, sure. But it bothers me to realize that while I have been singing “Over the River and Through The Woods” there are people who, unbeknownst to me, are dropping the needle on Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” and letting nature take its course.
I don’t know any of these people, though.
Thursday will mark my 64th Thanksgiving. I do not recall any of those gatherings resulting in anything that would bear even the slightest resemblance to a romantic encounter. My Thanksgivings have always ended up the same way — with all of us lounging around in swollen stupors like the bloated carcusses of so many water buffalo, rigid and rotting on the savannah.
Sure, Thanksgiving may result in an orgy, but it’s strictly an orgy of eating. One does not quickly recover from this kind of binging behavior.
Done right, the holiday produces groans, not moans. Many is the time I have pushed back from the Thanksgiving table and cooed, “Pardon me while I slip into something more comfortable, like a coma, maybe.”
I realize I may come off as a bit of a prude, but I’m with Maine on this one.
I don’t think I’d want to attend a Utah Thanksgiving. The fare would be necessarily light in order to facilitate the pending romantic interlude.
While the rest of us are enjoying a proper Thanksgiving meal – turkey, ham, stuffing/dressing, casseroles, potatoes/yams, gravy, rolls, cranberry sauce, macaroni and cheese, pecan and/or sweet potato pie – it’s all “A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou” for frisky Utahns.
That Mississippi makes the Top 10 on this list surprises me, frankly. We are a state of enthusiastic cooks and ravenous eaters, especially on holidays. As noted, lust and gluttony are strange bedfellows.
A lot of you are probably thinking, “I don’t care what the survey says, that’s not the kind of thing that happens on Thanksgiving in my family!”
Oh yeah? How many of you have August birthdays? It’s something to think about.
I’m a July baby, so I’m in the clear here. I could be a Halloween baby, I guess. My parents were in their 40s when I was born, so maybe I was the product of a trick-or-treat exchange that went too far.
Tess, though, is an August baby, which will provide a fun conversation-starter when I see her mom on Thursday.
I don’t know what prompted the folks at Betway to explore this topic, but I hope they are content.
I really don’t want to know what folks are up to on Christmas.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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