Give thanks with a punch to the face!

Stuffing, Virginia - The National Thanksgiving Foundation reported Monday that the tradition of having holiday 'melees' -- donnybrooks, brouhahas or flat-out broken-bottle bar fights that symbolically represent the tussles the Pilgrims had with the American natives hundreds of years ago -- is undergoing a huge resurgence. The Detroit Pistons and Indianapolis Pacers got the holiday week off to a festive start last Friday with their reenactment of "The Stealing Of The Cranberries," a skirmish between Protestants and Iroquois Indians in which Sir Fensley Pumbleton stormed the benches of Indians attending a Thanksgiving feast in search of a stolen cranberry dish, maiming dozens with his musket. The cranberries were later found in the garbage, secretly tossed their by Pastor Astor Greymutton, who detested the side dish. Pacers forward Ron Artest played the part of Pumbleton during the reenactment at The Palace in Auburn Hills, "with some ass-kickin' verve," according to Detroit Free Press theatre critic Eddie Lee Fletcher, adding, "Our own Ben Wallace was a muthaf$%&ah as Greymutton." Then Saturday, The South Carolina Gamecocks and Clemson Tigers halted their college football game to pay tribute to "The Pummeling Of The Turkeys," a 1687 incident in which the men of Jamestown settlement, thinking the Indians showed up empty-handed to the celebratory feast, ran through Indian fields stomping hundreds of birds at random and cooking and eating them in a gluttonous rage. (It was hours later when the women of Jamestown revealed that they had asked the Indians only to bring yams and a dessert.) Gamecock and Tiger players pranced up and down the full length of the field pounding on designated "turkeys" from each team. "With any luck at all," said Garbie Lemmuell of the NTF, "the Melee is back and here to stay. Which is good, 'cause them parades are kinda gay and start way too early in the morning."