One day her daughter asked her, "Mom, why do you cut the turkey in half?"
Her mom said, "Hmm, I don't really know, that's just what my mother always did."
So her daughter called her grandmother: "Grandma, why do we cut the turkey in half?
"Lands, dear, I don't know. You'd have to ask my mother."
So her granddaughter wrote to her great grandmother: "Great Gran, why do we cut the turkey in half?"
And her great grandmother replied: "Oh, sweetie, our oven wasn't big enough for the whole bird."
That's my treat for readers today. And you didn't even have to put on a witch's costume and come out in the dark to knock on my door.
November 4: Follow-up on the silliness of Halloween
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Thanks to William B. Ross, MD, for the anecdote, which he told me in about 1973 in order to illustrate that just because something is a tradition doesn't mean there's a sound basis for continuing to observe it. It has continued to instruct and guide, reminding me to look for reasons for doing things rather than to follow unsound habits.
