Nov. 17—In just a few short days, the feasting, football and family festivities will begin as Thanksgiving Day is nearly upon us. It's a day near and dear to the hearts — and stomachs — of the quintessential American male.

If you're like most guys, you may wake up Thursday morning to find your wife, mother, grandmother or girlfriend already in the kitchen, sorting through cookbooks, dusting off ancient family recipes, attempting to thaw 50 pounds of frozen turkey with a hair dryer, frantically dialing the Butterball hotline or cursing like Gordan Ramsay because there's no thyme in the spice rack.

And, if you're like most American men, you'll know it's Thanksgiving because that's the only day the Detroit Lions play in a nationally televised football game. (Actually, unlike most years, the Lions are not the doormat of the NFC, and they've been on TV often this season).

In some ways, Thanksgiving is the most male-friendly of holidays. Sure, Independence Day is a guy's holiday, too, because we get to play with fire, burn meat on the grill and blow stuff up, all in the name of 'murica.

But Thanksgiving is even more special to American men in these days of political correctness. Even in a time when we can be branded "sexist" for holding the door for a woman or calling someone "ma'am," on Thanksgiving we actually can get away with reclining on the couch, unbuttoning our pants to let our bloated bellies hang over our belts as we burp our thanks in unison for the bounties we have reaped.

It's a tradition that has been carried on since olden times. We follow in the footsteps of our forefathers who would gather around their black-and-white TVs with aluminum foil on the rabbit-ears to watch the Lions and the Vikings do battle (the only difference is those were actual lions and actual Vikings) while our foremothers did the dishes.

Please don't think I'm a "women's-place-is-in-kitchen" dinosaur. Even at the risk of being harpooned in the, er, giblets by a meat thermometer, most of us guys do try to help. But the mysterious Code of The Female dictates that men be banished from the kitchen on Thanksgiving Day, except maybe to sample the dressing to see if it needs more salt or sage, or to do the honors of carving the turkey.

All bets are off for guys named Emeril or Wolfgang Puck.

Based on personal experience, I have concluded that Thanksgiving is the one day when many of the female persuasion actually want to be slaving away over a hot stove, doing and doing for you, and this is the thanks they get.

One of my favorite family photos is an early 1970s Polaroid of my grandmother in the doorway of her small kitchen — head buried in a cookbook, permed hair covered with flour, apron dripping with brown goo after an unfortunate blender accident — with her hand out like a traffic cop stopping brother Scott on his way to ask the great unanswerable: "Grandma, when do we eat?"

The expression on her face said it all — don't dare venture into my domain, young man!

That's why we men cover our chestnuts and run for the safety of the living room on Thanksgiving. Yeah, we may be asked to deal with an uncooperative jar of olives or take out the umpteenth bag of trash. On rare occasions, we might even participate in the food preparation by peeling potatoes, shucking corn, opening a can of what Bart Simpson called "cranberry goop" or running to Ingles to pick up a bottle of thyme that led to the cussing outbreak back in paragraph two.

But we know the kitchen is off-limits to me and my testosterone-laden ilk, and it's off to the den to keep tabs on the Lions.

Over the years, I've learned to accept it, to simply grab my frosty beverage and slink back to the couch, knowing I have the awesome responsibility of keeping other males out of the kitchen and in front of the TV where, together, we can do no damage to the pre-feast proceedings. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it. Who am I to argue with tradition?

So please pass the remote control and a turkey leg, for which we are most thankful. And whether you are preparing a family feast or rooting for the Lions, have a happy Thanksgiving.

Bill Studenc, who began his career in journalism and communications at The Mountaineer in 1983, retired in January 2021 as chief communications officer at Western Carolina University. He now writes about life in the mountains of Western North Carolina.