News-Letter

Thanksgiving may be the most homogeneous of all the major American holidays. Barring any bizarre family quirks, everyone mainly follows the same routine on Turkey Day. You stuff your face with a smorgasbord of turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and potatoes until intense abdominal pain forces you to unbutton the top button of your pants. You listen to Grandma tell you how proud she is of you. And at the end of the afternoon, you plop your fat, dumb and happy self on the couch and pass out watching the Detroit Lions lose another football game.

Football is the only sport to my knowledge that has become a major part of an American holiday, and to take it further, the NFL has even created a holiday of its own in Superbowl Sunday, a night of nachos, Buffalo wings and cheap beer; America at its finest. Similar to Thanksgiving, Superbowl Sunday leaves you sprawled across the couch in a catatonic stupor, half-undressed and face smeared with the orange-ish blend of nacho cheese and wings sauce. In no other sport does "the big game" reach such a level of popularity as in football. Maybe this is because the championship rests on one single game rather than a series. Maybe it's because there's some unexplainable link between football, gluttony and drunkenness. Whatever the reason, it is almost certain that wherever you end up on Superbowl Sunday, there will be a crowd.

Football in this sense brings people together. Over dinner, you may have bitterly argued with your crazy uncle about whether or not an Obama victory will bring about the apocalypse. You may have even flung a gravy-saturated lump of mashed potatoes in his face. But when the game is on, you'll find yourself cheering alongside him, cringing over big hits with him and sharing the thrills of victory or the woes of defeat.

Football is also the perfect way to bring your high school friends all together at the same time. The pick-up football game has become a tradition in my town. Each year, the day after Thanksgiving, we meet up in the local park, reminisce about old times, crack a few jokes and proceed to bludgeon each other to the ground for three hours. It's the friendliest violence in which one could ever hope to participate.

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