It is the holiday tradition practiced around dinner tables throughout the country. What are you most thankful for this year?

Last week an astute and brave man sitting at my holiday get-together plainly and matter-of-factly expressed his appreciation for the life of the turkey sitting on the table. Everyone in the room looked at the poor man like he had three heads for bringing it up.

As the nation winds up another Thanksgiving and prepares for Christmas feasts, let’s consider for a moment the 80 million or so turkeys to be slaughtered and served for traditional main courses.

While many people consider themselves animal lovers, there’s a persistent barrier to getting those same people to acknowledge turkeys as conscious and sensitive creatures. Like their cat and dog counterparts, they posses desires and experience pleasures and endure suffering. One reason we disassociate our feelings for turkeys is because we buy them as a processed, frozen package at the supermarket.

Although turkeys raised commercially never see their mothers, in nature young turkey siblings, called poults, stay close to their mother for four or five months after they are born. She is the center of their universe.

When the maternal family is out for a stroll, if one of her poults starts peeping distress, the mother bird clucks reassuringly and rushes to comfort her little one. When her youngsters grow cold and tired, she crouches to warm and comfort them under her great, enveloping wings. When the family travels together through the woods and fields, should a little one stray, upon discovering that they’re alone, the poult looks nervously about and calls out anxiously to its mother.  This is known as a “lost call” – the call of a frightened young turkey, calling out for its mother. When she answers his searching cry he calls back to her in relief, opens up his wings, flaps them joyfully and runs back to rejoin his family.

Whenever I think of baby turkeys in the mechanical incubators, hatchery mutilation rooms, filthy sheds, terrifying trucks and slaughterhouses, I imagine the lost calls of all the turkeys in the world that will never be answered. For them, there will never be a joyous flapping of wings or a vibrant turkey family reunited and on the move.

“Historically, meat-eating was almost entirely sacrificial,” says Brian Luke, author of Brutal Manhood. “People did not eat meat unless it was ritually sacrificed. Whereas in our time, it’s just a product on the shelf with, for a lot of people, no lingering images of sentience or evidence of the creature that had to be killed. We live in a society where we’ve largely forgotten that animals are sentient before they’re turned into meat.”

Rather than cutting into an animal that’s bred and drugged with ractopamine to grow so large that it is crippled under its own weight.  Think about sparing the animals, the land and people. Consider making compassion the centerpiece of your holiday this year.

There is a bounty of wonderful plant-based recipes found in an ever-growing selection of vegan cookbooks. There’s no need to sacrifice for a delicious meal this Christmas.

We may even pause to reflect.

When we reflect.  A lot went into this dinner.  Someone raised, killed, cleaned, packaged and delivered this animal to me.  Or would we rather contemplate; someone rallied for increasingly cleaner local production, someone who fought for better conditions for the worker, the consumer and the animal itself.

Worth it?

After all, holidays are really about rejoicing and celebrating life with family and friends. Why would we make the centerpiece of the season the suffering of others?