If your Thanksgiving table doesn't prominently feature a beautiful dish of ruby-red cranberry sauce, then you are uncivilized, un-American, and I sincerely hope you slide into a tryptophan-induced coma right before your favorite football team makes the winning play.
Cranberry sauce is the queen of Thanksgiving side dishes—not just because she is easily the most attractive of them all, gleaming jewel-like at the side of her golden-roasted consort. Not just because the bright, zingy taste of cranberry sauce livens up even the driest cut of a famously dry bird. Not even because it is the Thanksgiving side dish least likely to cause gas.
Cranberry sauce is also the most American side dish.
Unlike your European and South American imports, cranberry originates right here in the U.S. of A. In fact, the U.S. is the world's top producer of cranberries, and most of those cranberries are grown in Wisconsin and Massachusetts.
Do you know what else those states are famous for producing? Presidents and cheese. Both excellent things!
Now, some people claim their favorite Thanksgiving dish is the stuffing. I'll grant you, it can be pretty tasty. It has quite the pedigree too; did you know that ancient Roman cookbooks included recipes for stuffing?
You know what else ancient Romans had? Slaves!
If that hasn't convinced you (why hasn't it?! Are you a fascist?!) cranberry sauce is also the only Thanksgiving leftover that can be eaten for breakfast the next day. Try some in your yogurt, or on your pancakes. It's delicious. You can't do that with mashed potatoes, can you?! (Well, maybe you can. You animal.)
As if all that wasn't enough, cranberry sauce carries a host of health benefits. For example, cranberries contain antioxidants, and I don't know what those are, but I've been told they are good for you.
Cranberries boost the immune system, which will come in handy for when you are sitting around a table with a bunch of people who got off a plane two hours ago.
And cranberries have been shown to lower blood pressure, which will come in handy for when those people ask you why you're not married yet.
Much like Lady Gaga, cranberry sauce is an inspiring exemplar of self-reinvention. Look to cranberry sauce for a lesson in graceful versatility, for while it can be a plain-hearted expression of love for that noble child of the North American bogs, it can also be an exhilarating whirlwind of diversity and multiculturalism. (You could, like, put orange peel in there. Maybe some cloves?)
Cranberry sauce can be sweet. It can be tart. It can be thick enough to stand a knife in, or run fluidly off a serving spoon like the blood of your enemies. It is a classic, it is an icon, it is what our ancestors died for, mostly of untreated UTIs.
It is not to be forgotten.
(Not sponsored by Ocean Spray. Unfortunately.)
Renata Sokol is a cranberry sauce enthusiast.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
