The (Columbus) Republic
The holiday season is upon us, and we at The Republic would like to take this opportunity to wish readers an abundance of cheer and good tidings.
We are looking forward to Thanksgiving, reuniting with loved ones, and sitting down to a dinner that, in the immortal words of Arlo Guthrie, couldn’t be beat.
Thanksgiving is a tradition that we take seriously here in the Hoosier State, so much so that Indiana Farm Bureau helpfully tells us each year how much we can expect to shell out for the annual holiday spread.
“Indiana Farm Bureau’s annual Thanksgiving market basket survey shows that Hoosier shoppers can expect to spend approximately 10% less at the grocery store than in 2022,” Farm Bureau proclaimed. No fooling: They made their list and checked it twice, compared it to last year, then got sticker shock, but in a good way for a change.
“According to this year’s pricing survey, Hoosiers are paying an average of $54.64 for a Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people, or $5.46 per person. Indiana’s market basket price also is approximately 11% lower, 66 cents less, than the U.S. average price of $6.12 per person,” Farm Bureau said.
Your holiday tab may vary, but after years of inflation, we are not about to quibble with falling prices at the grocery store.
Being in the news business, we get all kinds of information sent to us of varying usefulness and reliability, and that goes for Thanksgiving news too. For example, we know we can trust the Indiana Farm Bureau and its aforementioned research. It’s Farm Bureau. They have been doing this annual Thanksgiving market basket survey for as long as even some of our AARP-eligible staff members can remember.
Conversely, we don’t know much at all about some outfit called WhitehotPR.com, which nonetheless has entered the turkey day research chat. They sent us an email with a headline that screamed at us: “Hoosiers are willing to travel 5.9 hours for Mom’s Thanksgiving Cooking, Finds Survey.” (That is their capitalization, not ours, which instinctively raises our editorial eyebrows. And, astute though this research may be, we note that this survey’s sponsoring entity is a Mazda dealership in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Make of that what you will.)
In any event, we pass along the findings because they, too, support our proposition that we Hoosiers love us some Thanksgiving, though not apparently as much as people in Wyoming. The WhitehotPR survey says Wyomingites will drive 14 hours to get to a Thanksgiving dinner.
Fourteen hours? That is right up there with the man Perry Como met who lives in Tennessee and was heading for Pennsylvania for some pumpkin pie.
There’s no place like home for the holidays, the survey seems to suggest.
Rhode Island, this survey also suggests, may be the least thankful for Thanksgiving. Its residents reportedly are only willing to drive one measly hour to feast with family. One hour? We’re going to deploy our Hoosier hospitality here, make nice and suggest that living in the nation’s smallest state, Rhode Islanders have less far to drive. Because the last thing we want is an argument at Thanksgiving.
No matter how far away you roam, we wish you safe travels and a warm and wonderful Thanksgiving.
The (Columbus) Republic is a sister newspaper to the Daily Journal. Send comments to [email protected].
