Once again, it's time to count our blessings as we gather together with family and friends for Thanksgiving. It's time to remember that no matter how good or bad life is at the moment, it could always be worse, unless you happen to be a turkey.

Thanksgiving is one of the few totally American holidays, which we celebrate by partaking of two totally American pastimes: eating and watching football.

It's turkey on the table and the Detroit Lions on TV. In the old days, before the Pontiac Silverdome, the Thanksgiving Day Classic was often a played in the rain, turning a potentially serious sporting endeavor into a slapstick mud bath.

At half-time, all of the guys in my immediate and extended family would have a game of our own, which would last through most of the second half because it was more fun to play football than to watch it, especially when the Detroit Lions were one of the teams.

Back then, I never thought to ask why the Lions always played on Thanksgiving. It was just one of those inevitable things of life, like death, taxes and mosquitoes. The tradition goes back as far as I can remember, before there were instant replays and free agents, before zone defenses and sack dances, before Astro turf and soccer-style place-kickers, before the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets. It even predates the Dallas Cowboys, who somehow managed to horn in on this Thanksgiving Day Detroit Lions monopoly by playing a second game at 4 p.m.

Though I never questioned why the Lions always played on Thanksgiving as a youth, as a serious, deep-thinking, inquisitive journalist type of adult, I thought it worth looking into. After minutes of exhaustive research, I must admit that I got distracted and never found the answer, which will remain one of the great mysteries of western civilization. But I did find the long forgotten roots of football, which surprisingly have close ties to the Thanksgiving holiday itself.

History has it that football evolved out of a combination of English rugby and American ingenuity. But this simply isn't so. Contrary to popular belief, the original gridiron contest took place in 1620, the same year the Mayflower brought some of our illustrious ancestors to the New World. After establishing their New England niche, the Pilgrims promptly got into a tiff with the local Indians over what bird should be the symbol of our budding nation.

The Indians wanted the bald eagle, due to its speed, grace and hunting instinct. The Pilgrims preferred the wild turkey because it was a big and powerful fowl, and its gobbling voice reminded them of their own beloved minister.

The two sides were unable to come to an agreement but also wise enough not to start a war over such a trivial matter. So they decided to settle the argument on the sporting field.

The Indians' game was lacrosse, and the Pilgrims' was soccer. Since it was unfair to force one team to play the other's sport, they compromised and drew up a new set of rules, using an inflated wild boar bladder for ball.

The Indians wanted to schedule the match for a Sunday, but that was the Pilgrim's holy day. The Pilgrims wanted to play on Saturday, but one lost tribe of nomadic Indians refused to play from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday due to their religious obligations. So they decided on a Thursday, as it turned out, the last Thursday of November. It was a good choice because it gave both groups a long weekend to recover from what would turn out to be a brutal game.

As the game progressed, it became clear that yankee ingenuity would overcome the better conditioned redskins. The Pilgrims played a conservative, ball control offense and held a one touchdown lead going into the final minutes. That's when the Indians brought in their ringer, Running Bear.

Now Running Bear didn't get his name because he was fleet of foot, but rather because he was big, burly and fleet of digestive tract. The Indian captain, Crazy (Legs) Horse, had instructed his "squawd" of cheerleaders to bulk up Running Bear with beans and boiled cabbage during the third quarter. Then he let his secret weapon loose in the fourth.

Needless to say, Running Bear blew the Pilgrims away. He scored two straight touchdowns without having a hand laid upon him.

The Pilgrims left the field sore losers, but the Indians made amends by bringing a feast to the football dance that evening. The main dish was roasted turkey, which the Pilgrims quickly discovered to indeed be more fitting on the dinner table than on the backs of coins.

The game, which the Pilgrims dubbed "feastball" continued to flourish throughout the pioneer days of this country, and there were some classic confrontations as well as some colorful characters, such as a great special teams player named Geronimo. But the white men took the game much more seriously and dominated the Indians almost exclusively since that first game.

The Indians did get the upper hand for a while in the late 1800s when the white man's league split into the Union and Confederate Conferences. Commissioner Abraham Lincoln eventually united the leagues, but not before its ranks were depleted from a series of intensely fought games. Meanwhile, one of the greatest offensive linemen of all time, Sitting Bull, put together a powerful Sioux team and challenged the white men to the first alliance bowl game.

The white men accepted, confident that their star quarterback, George "The General" Custer, would lead them to victory. It was billed as the "Colt 45-Little Big Horn Bowl," pitting Custer's Calvary against Sitting Bull's Braves.

But right before the game, Custer got into a contract dispute with the team owner, H. Ulysses Grant, and refused to play. When the rest of the white men's team tried to follow his lead and walk off the field, the Sioux fans rioted, resulting in the infamous massacre.

Feastball died out after that, but resurfaced several decades later when the Americans revamped the English game of rugby. But Thanksgiving has remained a special day for American football fans, even though we're stuck watching the Detroit Lions play.