This Thanksgiving, countless families will sit down at the dinner table and either stuff themselves on turkey or ham. But which one of these main dishes is truly better? The Optimist Editorial Board sat down and discussed the pros and cons concerning these mainstays of Thanksgiving, but after much heated debate we came to an impasse. So now it is up to you to decide which is truly the best.

The time has come that we sat down and talked turkey about why turkey is clearly inferior to ham.

For years, cooks across the country have slaved away working on the timely and often dangerous task of cooking turkey. Last year, Allstate reported 15 homes were burned to the ground by people trying – and failing – to deep-fry their turkeys. And who knows how many people have fallen asleep at the wheel after all that tryptophan?

With ham, all you have to do is pick it up from the grocery store and stick in the oven. No messing around with the disgusting insides or the trouble of stuffing it. Just think about what you are doing to that poor bird. Ripping its legs open, gutting it, then shoving all sorts of things about the bird’s bum before finally tying it up and burning it. And let’s be honest, how often do you get a nice juicy piece of turkey – isn’t 95 percent of that bird dry? Then you get to enjoy dry turkey sandwich after dry turkey sandwich for the next four weeks. Then you get to repeat the whole process at Christmas.

Ham is so much simpler, and there’s no need to improve its already succulent flesh with stuffing. At most, all you have to do is add a little glaze. You could be spending time with your families with all that time you save – and isn’t that what the holidays are all about?

Besides, turkey is such a controversial food source. Who gets the legs? Who gets the dark meat? Who gets the breast? And that one item that causes fights across tables every year: who gets to break the wishbone?

Ham’s taste is uniform. Every slice is just as good as the last. And think of your poor four-legged furry friend. Would he appreciate a nice big juicy hambone to gnaw on, or skinny little bird bones that break apart in his throat and kill him?

Eating ham is necessary to keep pig populations in check! Turkey’s are such pea brained creatures, they drown themselves by looking at the sky while it rains. A sow can have up to 20 piglets in a year, and those reach maturity in less than five months. It’s our duty to keep their population down by eating them.

And along with all that, traditional Thanksgiving is a misnomer anyway: the date has been changed so many times that the only semblance to the original is the fact that people enjoy stuffing their guts. So if turkey is hailed as the prime Thanksgiving food, why were the pilgrims so happy about King Massasoit and the native Americans bringing in five deer for them to eat? From the very beginning, turkey was shoved to the side to make way for better meat.

If you’re tied down to a traditional Thanksgiving, then why is the football game on? What’s this cranberry sauce on your plate, and how much pie are you shoveling in your mouth, turkey eaters?

Thanksgiving has changed so much over the years, and we shouldn’t still be stuck with such a fowl main dish.

Opposing argument can be found at http://www.acuoptimist.com/2010/11/the-bird-is-the-word-at-thanksgiving/