The turkeys, chickens, pigs, fish and other dead animals, portrayed in Sue Coe’s bleak image of “redemption,” dispute Charles
Dickens’s depiction, in his classic story A Christmas Carol, of the impending moral transformation of Scrooge who, under the aspect of the
Ghost of Christmas Present, mounts a pile of rotting flesh “to form a kind of throne of turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat,
suckling-pigs, and long wreaths of sausages.” We thank Sue Coe for creating this startling portrait of the “Meatopian Ghosts” of
Christmas Past & Unhappy Present for United Poultry Concerns. Time to move on, Scrooge.
To learn more about the depiction of turkeys throughout history and human cultures, order More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality by Karen Davis. $14.95 includes shipping.
