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Am I poised to ruin Thanksgiving?

Christopher Testani/New York Times

Cooking is love. Everyone knows that. But what about reheating? Does that count? Please let it.

This is not a casual question for me. For a variety of reasons — including but not limited to fear of salmonella, competition for oven space, and Thanksgiving psychosis — I began dreaming recently of laying my holiday table with a precooked bird.

Do you know how easy it would be? I could go online, browse roasted birds on Wegmans or Whole Foods or Russo’s, and with a simple click order one for pickup.

Guess who’s not going to have to get intimate with a raw turkey? Look who just bought herself six hours of freedom on Thursday!

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And yet, with ease comes shame. Thanksgiving is a food-oriented, family-based holiday, so if there’s one way to violate its meaning, it’s with the intrusion of a commercially prepared dish, said Merry White, a professor of anthropology at Boston University.

“In a strange way for a non-religious holiday,” she said, “the precooked turkey is sacrilegious.”

My little plan was starting to sound less appealing, and yet I couldn’t quite give it up. I looked for permission elsewhere.

“So you’re wondering if you’re going to ruin Thanksgiving,” a friend said when I sought her opinion.

Basically, yes. Why is it that a populace that has grown to accept gluten-free stuffing and vegan mushroom gravy, that is divided over Trump and parking-spot-savers in Southie, is united in condemnation of preroasted turkey?

“I guess it could be considered a personal failing,” my brother said.

As a family member who would not only be served a take-out turkey, but who is flying from California for it, he has a lot at stake. But he was kind.

“It sounds like a good idea,” he said, “although we’ll miss the part of the Thanksgiving where the person who cooked the bird apologizes for it being too dry, and the guests say, ‘no, no, no, it’s delicious,’ and everyone feels warmly towards each other.”

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Suddenly I was Charlie Brown in a Peanuts Thanksgiving special, learning the true meaning of the holiday. I almost expected to hear the opening notes of the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s “Linus and Lucy ” theme song.

We Americans like to think of ourselves as celebrating individuality. But even so, there are some things you don’t mess with. For the sake of keeping my family together, I apparently need to buy an uncooked turkey.

I Googled safety tips and descended into a swirl of anticipatory anxiety as I imagined making the potentially fatal mistake of washing the bird before cooking.

“Research tells us that bacteria-laden water splashing from the bird bath can travel more than 2 feet in either direction of your sink, cross-contaminating the area,” Joan Salge Blake, a clinical associate professor of nutrition at Boston University, wrote in U.S. News and World Report.

We’re looking at a 30-square-foot kill zone and I’m the bad person?

“You could pretend you cooked it,” suggested a friend from junior high, and also everyone else who knows me even slightly. “Although I guess it does raise questions of ethics.”

Here’s what I don’t understand: Society celebrates the person who sneaks away from the Thanksgiving table to badmouth her own relatives on Facebook, but if surveillance footage captures you leaving Whole Foods with a roasted bird, look out!

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Area woman too lazy to cook own bird! SAD

Or is it? Sherry Kuehl, author of the Snarky in the Suburbs books, said the only way to go precooked is to own it. She’s made turkey precisely once. “The turkey is a freakin’ diva,” she said. “I’m not going to play that game.”

Despite the fact precooked birds are readily available from mainstream retailers, for the most part they fly under the radar. Kyle Marie Carney, a Cambridge therapist who spends the run-up to the holiday helping patients with angst, didn’t even know you could buy yourself out of the poultry part of ordeal.

A chef who heard what I was considering, and was called in for re-heating advice, asked if I owned an oven.

I was about to shout “What kind of working mother of two doesn’t own an oven?” when I realized his question was legitimate. On a holiday that is all about food, buying an already made turkey is so baffling that maybe an oven-free home is the only explanation.

The sad truth is that in addition to the deeper issues with the precooked bird, it doesn’t even spring you from that much hassle.

You could buy a gourmet mail order bird and it could get lost in transit, putting you in the same situation as the hostess who waited too long to start the defrosting marathon.

Even if your bird does arrive, you’ve still got to heat it, set the table, handle sides and beverages, and clean up.

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A friend relayed a cautionary tale about her aunt. Always exhausted by Thanksgiving — and by hosting, though no one wants her to do it in the first place — the aunt last year bought a ready-made bird. “But she was just as martyred as always,” my friend said.

“This year,” she added, “we’re eating out.”

Which gets us to the real problem with the already cooked bird. It’s the start of a slippery slope that inevitably ends in the something’s-gone-wrong-with-our-family restaurant Thanksgiving.

One year Williams Sonoma is making your turkey, the next, Open Table is part of your holiday tradition.

I saw my future — sad and lonely, all because I didn’t want to clean a roasting pan — and I ordered a bird. Not to boast, but it’s raw.


Beth Teitell can be reached at beth.teitell@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @bethteitell.