The Thanksgiving holiday offers many great features to the boys of Central Catholic. For starters, it offers them their first extended break since the start of the school year. Besides time off from class, it also offers them a break from the repetitive Spider Man lunch boxes and cafeteria bought food. This time of year is synonymous with good eats, which we all know is important to most Central students. With the endless amount of savory options that overflow the dining table, it can be difficult to proclaim which food takes the crown of “Best Thanksgiving Delight”. With so many options, I decided to narrow down Thanksgiving eaters into two sides of the table, those who prefer ham as their main meat, and those prefer turkey. After hearing preferences from faculty and students around the campus, their responses may or may not surprise you. 

Team Turkey:

Eating turkey on Thanksgiving day is probably as traditional as can get. Growing up it was taught that the pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving with a well cooked turkey, not a fatty ham. Math teacher Ms. Hanson agreed with this traditional thinking stating, “Ham should be eaten during the Christmas holidays, turkey is a more classic Thanksgiving dish”.  Mr. Bronder also agreed with this statement saying,” Turkey all day long baby, it’s more in touch with our American History. Benjamin Franklin actually wanted the turkey to be our national bird”. If you let Ben Franklin’s propositions affect your dinner table is entirely up to you, but it should be noted that turkey is in fact a healthier option than ham. Ham’s high level of sodium doesn’t make it the healthiest Thanksgiving option. Some Central students were so disgusted with ham that they had never even bothered to try it before. Senior James Cortez stated, “ Well I’ve never wanted to try ham before, so why should I start on Thanksgiving”? These members of our Central community let the traditional turkey run the table at their Thanksgiving meals. 

Team Ham: 

Who cares what elementary teachers taught us growing up in regards to Thanksgiving? Do they actually know that turkey was the main dish served at the first Thanksgiving? Even if it was, ham has been gaining more and more popularity on Thanksgiving day ever since that inaugural meal. Ham offers great amounts of protein being a red meat, in comparison to the white meat of turkey. More importantly, who would want to spend Thanksgiving day eating dry tasting turkey, when they can spend it enjoying the sweetness and flavor of ham? Mr. A enjoys ham much more than turkey stating,” Ham definitely has more flavor, plus almost all of the time they are less dry than most turkeys tend to turn out”. Ham’s flavor has definitely made this debate as competitive as possible. In the words of Senior Jakob Mayorga, “Although turkey isn’t bad, ham just hits different”  Senior Duncan Mann had strong feelings had towards this debate stating, “Personally I hate turkey, and the honeyness of ham sets it a mile apart from that flavorless meat”. Whether you opinion is as smooth as Mr. A’s, or as harsh as Duncan’s, you can’t deny the fact that ham certainly gives turkey a run for its money for most popular meat. 

When asking over 50 central students, the results were closer than I could imagine. An approximate 55% of students sided with the traditional option of turkey in this argument. Although ham gave it all that had to offer, it may be a long time before ham soars to the throne of “Best Thanksgiving Delight”. Maybe that’s never going to happen, and ham is just going to have to settle with primarily Christmas time. Whatever happens, this argument revealed the fun and varying opinions of our Central community.