A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Forget about the turkey, the cranberry sauce, the wiggly, jiggly Jell-O salad. Have we got some Thanksgiving traditions for you? Our crack team of researchers have scoured the country in search of atraditional (ph) traditions that'll make you rethink your Thanksgiving. We start in Boston, where turkey isn't just a meal - it is a projectile.
Radio station Kiss 108 has been holding a turkey tossing contest for as long as anyone can remember. Local high schools compete to see who can hurl and catch a frozen bird. And before you cry foul, Kiss 108's Billy Costa says turkey tossing is a whole lot harder than it looks.
BILLY COSTA: It's kind of heavy to just pick it up and throw it like a football. So the motion is that they have their back to the receiver and they bend their knees, and they go into usually a two or three-step pump, you know, pump one, pump two...
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
COSTA: ...Pump three. And then in the air goes the bird. It's frozen solid, by the way. So the impact of the toss usually will knock them down onto their backs.
MARTÍNEZ: So, if someone establishes a successful catch and another team beats them, will the original team be allowed to try and best the other team's length?
COSTA: No, there are no redos. You get one shot, and the school that throws and catches it the furthest wins. And I got to tell you, immediately, pandemonium on the field.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: He did it.
(CHEERING)
MARTÍNEZ: Everett High School has won the turkey toss five years in a row. Football players Shane McKenzie and Dominic Papa were the 2023 champions.
So, Dominic, I know that in football, you're taught to catch the ball out in front and then bring it into your body, because if you catch it with your chest, I mean, that means the ball, typically, or the bird, in this case, will kind of bounce off your chest and you lose. So how much of the way football is played is applicable here?
DOMINIC PAPA: Nowhere near what catching a turkey is. I kind of make, like, a basket, and, like, while, like, it's falling down on me, I kind of, like, fall down with the turkey, so, like, the momentum of the turkey is just coming down with me.
MARTÍNEZ: What would you say, Dominic, are some of the top mistakes that catchers make in the turkey toss?
PAPA: Maybe being too scared of how heavy it is and how, like, it's like a brick.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
PAPA: It can't just be - you can't be scared of the bird.
MARTÍNEZ: Can't be scared of the bird. No, I know. You can't be scared of the bird. Shane - and championships to uphold. I mean, that's some pressure, I mean, for the people that follow you.
SHANE MCKENZIE: Oh, I've played in multiple playoff overtime games, you know, in football in my career. As crazy as it sounds, you have the entire city tuning in to watch this thing. It was the most pressure I've ever felt in my entire life - ever.
MARTÍNEZ: Would it be fair, Shane, to say that this is, at the moment, your biggest accomplishment in life?
MCKENZIE: (Laughter) I wouldn't go as far as saying that, but it's probably number two.
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MARTÍNEZ: All right. If blunt-force trauma to the chest is not your idea of a good Thanksgiving, no problem. I understand. Why don't you head out then to the Santa Barbara Zoo in California? Every Thanksgiving, it gives leftover Halloween pumpkins to the animals. Alli Collip is a senior keeper there.
ALLI COLLIP: We truly only give them pumpkins this one time a year. We love stimulating our animals and enriching them and getting them to engage in things. And the animals at the zoo are intelligent enough to understand when the keepers are giving them something new and different.
MARTÍNEZ: Some animals like to eat the pumpkin.
COLLIP: Our capybaras will eat them entirely. They'll eat every last little morsel of it. We have macaws and cockatoos. And there's one cockatoo in particular - his name is Reggie. He's a sulphur-crested cockatoo, and he loves to destroy the pumpkin.
MARTÍNEZ: Turns out Reggie is a bit of a show off.
COLLIP: He feeds off of people's reactions to him. So I think he has such a blast, not only destroying the pumpkin but having people watch him destroy the pumpkin (laughter).
MARTÍNEZ: Other animals enjoy a more subtle pumpkin experience.
COLLIP: We'll give them to our big cats as, like, a different scent that they love to just, like, smell and rub on.
MARTÍNEZ: The pumpkin love fest draws thousands of visitors to the zoo.
COLLIP: It's almost as popular as a busy 4th of July weekend.
MARTÍNEZ: In other words, it's a gourd-geous (ph) day for all.
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MARTÍNEZ: Now, on to Southern Iowa, where Danish immigrants settled in the 1800s. Two towns, Elkridge and Kimballton, have celebrated Yule Fest the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving for 47 years. It's a festival to kick off the Christmas season. Organizer Sean Sayers (ph) said, Yule Fest wouldn't be Yule Fest without a specific Danish American food, and I'm going to let him pronounce it.
SEAN SAYERS: Aebleskiver medisterpolse, which is essentially for the non-Danish, pancakes and sausage. The aebleskiver is a special round pancake, so it's a sphere rather than flat. And then medisterpolse is a special kind of sausage that in Denmark is not eaten with aebleskiver whatsoever, and Danes actually think this tradition is very odd, but to Americans, it seems more stereotypical or normal.
MARTÍNEZ: He had me at pancakes and sausage, but nothing puts the medisterpolse in the aebleskiver quite like the traditional Danish Christmas drink known as glogg.
SAYERS: I call it drinking a Christmas candle, except without all the carcinogens.
MARTÍNEZ: Glogg is made from a mix of cinnamon, cloves and cardamom, combined with a sweet red table wine.
SAYERS: So if you want to have a, you know, a child-friendly get together or no alcohol involved, you can easily cut it with apple cider. That works really well.
MARTÍNEZ: Then, you heat it up.
SAYERS: Either on the stove or a crockpot, or you can do kind of one of those party coffee canisters. And you take the lid off and just let the steam out, and it fills your whole house with this just wonderful aroma. It's important to us to remind ourselves that we are a community, and this is what we were founded with.
And this is how we link together and showing future generations that this is what being a community means. It's to have traditions, it's to have focal points as a means of coming together.
MARTÍNEZ: Whether you find that community by flinging frozen turkeys, watching animals annihilate pumpkins or drinking too much glogg at Yule Fest, it's OK to be different at Thanksgiving. As Winnie the Pooh's friend Piglet said, the things that make me different are the things that make me me. Happy Thanksgiving.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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