Even though 58% of those polled do NOT like cranberries, 90% reported serving them at Thanksgiving.
My interpretation of this data:
1. We’re tradition-driven.
2. We’re catering to the few.
3. You had leftovers of the cranberry sauce/relish/jelly (whatever you want to call it.)
4. This could very well be a snapshot of society-at-large. 😉
5. Cranberries just don’t taste very good.
6. We all gained weight over Thanksgiving . . . wait! That’s not related . . .
7. There is a conspiracy by cranberry growers to brainwash Americans into believing we MUST have cranberries at Thanksgiving.
Anyhow, these are just my biased, first-glance findings. Please share your own interpretation, I’d love to hear.
And as a little factoid, did you know that polls suggest that as many as 80% of Americans believe JFK’s assassination was a conspiracy? Important information, people. Right here.
So I just spent the last hour serving Cranberry Sauce (though it looks more like Cranberry Jelly) in the cafeteria of London’s elementary school for their Thanksgiving dinner. I found it very interesting to see who took it and who didn’t. Here’s what I noted:
– Cranberry Sauce is an extreme dish, meaning that people either love it or hate it.
– On average, only about 1 in 10 people took it.
– Like or dislike had no apparent tie to ethnicity or culture (and there’s a broad range in London’s school).
– The universal sign for dislike is wrinkling up your nose.
Then suddenly I was curious about the whole cranberry phenomenon. Why do we always serve this dish at Thanksgiving dinner when only 1 in 10 people eat it anyway?
And having just asked, “Would you like Cranberry Sauce?” a hundred times or so in the cafeteria, I feel like I’ve already conducted a poll, so I thought, “Why not? I’ll put a poll on my blog!”
So here’s the question:
Cranberry Sauce: yes or no?
And as a follow-up:
Does your family include it as part of Thanksgiving?
Please weigh in on the issue (see sidebar poll). This is important stuff!
And just as a little tidbit about cranberries, did you know that cranberries are native to northeast North America? They grow from the mountains of Georgia to the Canadian Maritimes. And in 1620, the Pilgrims learned to use them from the Native Americans who used them as food, dyes, and medicines.
Now you’re smarter for having visited my blog. 🙂