In my family, we don't buy our turkeys at the store. Nope. We like to chase the fat fools down with our SUVs on the highway and haul 'em in fresh. They're so big and slow, it's like playing tag with a toddler. And nothin' beats the juicy smell of freshly-slaughtered turkey meat in the oven.

No wonder Benjamin Franklin once suggested turkeys be the national bird.

But that's not the reason Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, nor is it because we get a few days off. In fact, neither of those reasons have anything to do with why I enjoy celebrating every fourth Thursday of November.

The real reason I love Thanksgiving so much is because of what we're celebrating - the arrival and survival of European settlers in the New World.

Every November we join together with friends and family members to give thanks for our health, wealth and place in the world.

Consequently, we serve up massive helpings of disrespect to an overwhelming number of people.

News flash: This just in - Christopher Columbus did not discover America.

I really hope this doesn't come as a shock to you.

He didn't discover anything, as a matter of fact. He ran into some islands in the Caribbean, mistook them for a country halfway around the world, and proceeded to misname and mistreat the island's native inhabitants for personal gain and fame.

When everyone else in Europe saw how well it worked, they decided to jump on the bandwagon. Shiploads of societal outcasts began pouring into the New World.

It was rough at first, especially in the winter. Being unsuccessful at everything they had ever tried in Europe, the settlers - very unsurprisingly - at first had little luck with farming.

Fortunately for the settlers, the natives took pity on them and brought them corn and squash to last them through the winter. The settlers were so grateful they returned the favor by slaughtering the only native creatures they could catch - turkeys - and sharing the resulting feast with the helpful natives, or so the story goes.

Unfortunately for the natives, the settlers also shared their diseases, and many died as a result. Those were, of course, unintentional deaths - deaths that occurred before the genocide started. (It would be a few years before the systematic slaughter of natives would begin.)

And so we celebrate with a massive feast the survival of our kind on this vast expanse of land we know as America. Forget that it was at the expense of millions of people who actually understood what it means to live in harmony with nature.

Hmm... Could somebody please pass the Tofurky?

Kristina Woiderski, State News wire editor, can be reached at woiders5@msu.edu