It has not always been easy to be a turkey in America.

"In our beginnings as a nation, there was a big argument about what should be the great American symbol," according to Hum Rosen Professor of Folklore and Folklife Roger D. Abrahams. The choices seesawed between the bald eagle and the turkey. According to turkey legend, Benjamin Franklin advocated for the turkey as the national symbol.

But the turkey lost--at least temporarily. The turkey-as-symbol slipped into oblivion for decades before finding a new niche in American life.

"After the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of the major women's magazine in the 19th century, were desperately seeking a holiday that would bring the nation together. Thanksgiving had been a local holiday in some places in New England," explained Dr. Abrahams. "Lincoln declared it a national holiday two centuries after the original Thanksgiving." And, with it, the turkey regained respect and visibility.

Since its inception, Thanksgiving Day has never lost its place in the national repertory of celebrations for two main reasons: It is simultaneously a non-religious, inclusive holiday, and it is an autumn harvesting feast.

"Other holidays, such as Christmas and Easter, are tinged with a connection to a church. But Thanksgiving is the holiday when people from any kind of persuasion feel that they can get together with their families and celebrate. It has succeeded in maintaining old-fashioned family values on one particular occasion," said Dr. Abrahams.

Thanksgiving is one of those times when the family is brought together, even if only in thought. "Since our families are dispersed," he added, "whoever is running the Thanksgiving dinner assigns who's going to bring what to the meal. What you have on the table is an illustration of how everybody in the family is able to contribute to the totality of that family."

Although the turkey is central, it doesn't work unless it is surrounded by as many dishes as possible. "The idea is to illustrate diversity by serving as many side dishes as you can think of," Dr. Abrahams noted. "You judge the success of the meal not only in terms of how much people eat, but also in terms of how many different dishes you can offer at that meal."

All the ethnic flavors of American cooking emerge at Thanksgiving. "It is an additive holiday in the sense that, yes, you have the turkey," he added, "but you also have all the things surrounding the turkey--things added every year that come from different ethnic cooking styles."

Even as the turkey is "all-American," other dishes can be as diverse as the population itself: from pasta to sweet-potato latkes to collard, mustard and turnip greens. "For example, you can have a Hispanic version of Thanksgiving together with many different black versions," Dr. Abrahams pointed out. "So it can be both all-American and ethnic. In the last 25 years, the number of popular ways to stuff the bird is fascinating. Now there is this wonderful argument that goes on: Should it be the traditional stuffing with the old bread and the herbs, or should it be Southern style with oysters? A lot of people say, "well the old-fashioned stuff is great; I wouldn't like to have a Thanksgiving without it. But that oyster stuffing, now, that is really good."

The timing of Thanksgiving--at the point in the fall season when the traditional harvesting is completed--also contributes to its symbolic power. As Dr. Abrahams explained, "The holiday is the beneficiary of all of the symbolism of the various kinds of harvest feasts that were celebrated all over the Old World, Europe and Africa. The gourds, the squashes, all of the harvest autumnal kinds of things."

And, of course, the turkey.

"The turkey is not only a New World national bird but can be stuffed just as the goose or the duck or the pig in England. At every holiday, but especially at the harvest-to-midwinter holiday, you have to have a piece of meat that can be presented as a whole, then cut to pieces and passed around to everybody in the eating group. It becomes the way of stuffing everybody else at the ceremony," he added.

"The idea of the Thanksgiving feast is to eat more than you can possibly eat. All seasonal feasts involve eating and drinking too much. They reduce everybody to the lowest common denominator," Dr. Abrahams said. "You have to eat until you are groaning. The whole thing is about stuffing, overeating, abundance, cornucopia. You are sharing this physical state of overeating. That is the common physical experience which brings everybody together on that day."

From the Native Americans' point of view, this holiday falls at the end of the corn season. Corn was the major crop of Native Americans throughout the Americas. They built their entire ritual cycle around corn.

"The traditional Thanksgiving story tells us about Squanto teaching the pilgrims in Massachusetts how to prepare Native American food. The Thanksgiving story is about how, in the face of superior civilization, the indigenous people gave over the essence of their culture, those powerful elements of their culture, which then were incorporated into the ways in which the conqueror celebrated their taking over of the land," he explained.

"It is a terrible story. It presumes that the Indians willingly gave up their crops. It is the white man's table, it's not the Indian's table. Indians were invited in for that one day only."

Another story of Thanksgiving is a story of resistance. It is as if each ethnic group in America said to the conquerors: "You may think this is your Thanksgiving, but this is really everybody's Thanksgiving. And we are going to add our own family touch to this." In a sense, it is the revenge of the conquered in a very positive fashion, according to Dr. Abrahams.

"So Thanksgiving has become the festival that illustrates us more fully. In this way, it has taken the place that the Fourth of July used to have. The parades and fireworks brought everyone together in terms of sharing the history," he added. "July Fourth celebrated a people's revolution. It doesn't do that anymore. Instead, Thanksgiving has become the all-American, inclusive festival."