And it's good because it's brined and/or peppered. People need to brine their turkeys.

[Whips open one side of long coat revealing a display of smokey smelling rats]

Mesquite, hickory or applewood?

My point is, if you gotta do that, it’s not good meat.

I ate turkey in Germany in the '80s already. It wasn’t super-common, but it was there. My family tended to have goose at Christmas dinners, but turkey was an option that was frequently used by others.

Wackypedia says:

• Turkeys are traditionally eaten as the main course of Thanksgiving dinner feasts in the United States and Canada, and at Christmas dinner feasts in much of the rest of the world (often as stuffed turkey).
• Turkey was eaten in as early as the 16th century in England.
• While the tradition of turkey at Christmas spread throughout Britain in the 17th century, among the working classes, it became common to serve goose, which remained the predominant roast until the Victorian era.

Here’s a turkey farming operation in Ampfing, Germany. That one operation slaughters and sells 3000 tons of turkey a year, apparently.

Turkey consumption per capita statistics show that Germany, for example, is about 3.4kg annually per capita vs. the USA’s 7.5, Hungary’s 9, and Israel’s (?!) 13.

Unfortunately statistics on this seem a bit incomplete. The first site lists 11 nations only. Over here they list 7, but barely have any overlap with the first site. More information gives some solid figures on the production and export of turkey meat. … And so on and so on and so on. So yes, turkeys are raised and consumed worldwide.

It could also be because fewer Americans have time to spend cooking dinner, and turkeys are large, cumbersome, and time consuming to cook well. I love to cook, and I love to cook turkey. I’ve converted a good amount of people over the years who said they don’t enjoy it.

All that said, I only make it three or four times a year for the reasons above. That, and it’s not practical when you’re cooking for two unless you can find butchered pieces. I’m making a duck instead today, but I wish I was making turkey.

The logic here doesn’t work for me. Moon cakes are generally eaten only in the week surrounding the Mid-Autumn Festival here in China. It’s traditional, see. Yet they’re incredibly yummy and were they available at other times they’d likely be consumed cheerfully. In Hubei there’s a special dish of “birthday noodles” eaten basically only on your birthday. (And only by you; the rest of your family doesn’t get them.) They’re also incredibly delicious … and literally eaten only once a year.

The fact that something is eaten only seasonally or by special occasion doesn’t mean that it’s not tasty. It means that it’s special, nothing more.

That just not true, people eat turkey all the time. Every sandwich shop has a turkey sandwich year round. Now do people cook a 15-20 pound turkey regularly? Absolutely not because it’s time consuming and you would need a gathering every time because a normal size family is not gonna eat that much food hence why we cook them a few times a year.

To be fair, I have had fugu in Japan and it is incredibly bland. People are only interested in it because it's poisonous if you don't prepare it just right.

“I don’t like vegetables” vs “I prefer other meats to turkey” is vastly different. I agree that the I don’t like vegetables people are dumb, but comparing that to this is a huge straw man. I guarantee you that I would vastly prefer the best brisket in the world to the best turkey.