As we all prepare to spend the next 24 to 48 hours in the traditional American fall feast, I thought I'd take a moment to pay homage to the animal that makes our gluttony possible: the turkey. Design is a world of putting meaning to symbols and images, and/or appropriating already meaningful symbols and images, so it seems appropriate to consider what this bird is really all about.
With thanks to "whats your sign dot com", and a few other sites, (Wikipedia, of course), it seems our noble bird has quite a long history of reverence in a variety of cultures. Long before us European white folks descended on the shores of what became the U. S. of A., native cultures were already "honoring" the noble turkey by making it a sacrificial symbol of abundance and fertility. To extend this metaphorical meaning, turkeys are associated with harvest, abundance, and -- not surprisingly -- virility. Turkeys are also enjoyed in ancient and modern Mexico, and among the ancient Aztecs, "turkey was associated with their trickster god Tezcatlipoca, perhaps because of its humorous behavior," according to Wikipedia. And to think that today's youth assumes they invented body piercings and wacky hairdos....
Turkeys are not the stupid -- or flightless -- creatures they are sometimes depicted to be. Ask anyone who has tried to hunt an undomesticated bird out in the woods -- they are considered difficult quarry because they are wiley and smart. In the wild, they can and do fly, at least short distances. In my part of the world, in the fall, they can often be seen in a "rafter," or group of birds, their handsome dark , elliptical shapes punctuating the flat dun of a cut field of corn.
So on your own Turkey Day, enjoy the abundance and give thanks not only for all that you have, but also for what this noble bird gave! Happy Thanksgiving!
