Despite what the poultry pushers over at Butterball might have you believe, turkey isn’t a strictly universal Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner standard in various corners of America — and it definitely wasn’t always on the holiday table here in Bonac.
Roast goose and well-dressed duck were at least as likely to be presented alongside the Walking Dunes cranberry-and-ginger relish back in the day. Oysters. roasted or raw, were a centerpiece, And sometimes the meal got a little weirder. For instance, in 1917, The Star reported that people in nearby coastal Massachusetts were hunting, and eating, raccoons for Thanksgiving! (And if you are a dubious doubter, be assured, that story is true. It is corroborated in other historical reports, like those about then-President Calvin Coolidge declining to feast on a raccoon presented to him for the White House Thanksgiving table by a woman from Mississippi who described the flavor of roast raccoon as “toothsome.”) To give another example, 60 years ago in a Star column called “The Way the Wind Blows,” Capt. Frank Moss of the fishing vessel Kuno mentioned that many Montaukers preferred codfish at Thanksgiving, calling it “Block Island Turkey.”
We at East aren’t often accused of being conformist. In fact, we have a tendency towards monkey business and tasteful misconduct, as fans and readers will have noted. And so, with gusto this year, we tilt our compass heading towards the unconventional as we twist the dial on our Jingle-O-Meter up to eleven. We have reports in this issue on East Hampton’s long tradition of good-humored pranks (“Naughty by Nature,” page 25) and on the distinctly rambunctious midwinter practice of wassailing (“A Toast to Mischief,” page 61). Dig into the truly strange story of Berton Roueché, a New York writer, who was inspired by an Amagansett stray cat colony to write a pre-Stephen King horror tale called Feral (page 80). Light rebellion even edged into our holiday booklist (“A Librarian’s Gift Guide,” page 47), where our literary expert turned up books for true-crime lovers, horror fans, and even moody teenagers.
If you feel inspired, well, we can’t be held responsible for what you do next. Just make sure you don’t get carried away with the ‘nog and nonsense and land yourself in the police blotter. — The Editors