Even if the name change to the mock meat vegan alternative is just for one day, PETA said it will draw attention to the treatment that turkeys in the U.S. suffer virtually every day of their lives.

In return, PETA said it will treat the entire town — population 421, according to the U.S. Census Bureau — to a “delicious, healthy vegan holiday feast.”

“Changing the town’s name to Tofurky will remind people around the country that we each can have a delicious, protein-packed, and satisfying Thanksgiving meal without supporting animal abuse,” PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman said in a letter Monday to the town’s mayor.

But local ABC affiliate KVII-TV spoke to a few locals who bristled at the idea of renaming their town.

“What do I think of changing the name of Turkey to tofu? I think it‘s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Tommy Sims said.

“We are insulted,” resident Carol Redd added. “We like Turkey. We are proud to be Turkey.”

City officials reportedly have no plans to change the town’s name.

The billboards popped up suddenly in Salt Lake City the week before Thanskgiving — all located near public schools. The campaign is expected to get off the ground in the coming week in six other states, mostly in the Midwest and South. Utah was chosen in part because of availability of billboard space and PETA’s ability to get the billboards up before Thanksgiving. The length of time the billboards will run is dependent on the availability of funding, according to PETA spokeswoman Paige Snyder.

“Cruelty to turkeys is a year-round problem, so we will keep this going for as long as there is funding. It is especially present around Thanksgiving, however,” she said. She pointed out that of the 250 million turkeys that are killed in the United States every year, 40 million are for Thanksgiving meals.

Snyder said the group chose to aim its latest message at children because they “naturally have compassion for animals.”

“That compassion gets beat out of children by a bombardment of messages that say it’s morally acceptable to eat animals,” she said. “Fast-food chains and other organizations target children and say eating meat is a moral activity — it’s all they are exposed to. We want to offset these negative influences.”

PETA hopes the billboards will encourage dialogue between parents and children during the holiday season.

“It’s important to start a tradition of respecting the life of animals,” Snyder said. “A lot of times people are used to parents teaching children everything. Once in a while, kids can teach parents too.”

She said the problem is that children do not often realize they are eating sentient beings. If children knew the truth about how animals are treated in slaughterhouses, they would change their opinions on eating turkey for Thanksgiving.

“If kids knew what these animals go through, I think they would realize that they’re really the same as their dog or cat,” she said. “They would care that it happens at all, rather than what type of animal it happens to.”

Snyder expects a mostly positive response from the public.

“People are excited about the idea,” she said. “People love to try new things. You could go one aisle over in the grocery store and get Tofurkey instead of ending up with a dead bird on your plate.”

The campaign is drawing mixed reactions from Utahns.

Vern Ingalsbee said American culture is the only reason children might become upset by how they interpret the billboards. He said children will not have a problem with the campaign unless they are told they should have a problem.

“Kids go to their grandparents’ for turkey on Thanksgiving, but it could just as easily be dog,” he said. “The difference is we’ve taught kids turkey is OK, but dogs aren’t.”

Marianne Tierney agreed that culture impacts Americans’ views of what animals are acceptable to eat.

“I think it’s a pretty strong statement using your dog as an example, when turkey has been eaten for so long,” she said. “I would say it’s pretty odd … I don’t know that I like it.”

Tierney did not think the billboards would negatively impact her children, but said she would not draw their attention to the signs.

That is the opposite of what PETA hopes will happen when the new billboards are rolled out before Thanksgiving, according to Snyder.

“We want to start a dialogue,” she said. “Once people learn how kind, gentle and intelligent turkeys are, they will consider them friends, not food, and think twice about eating all animals.”

“If you did what people do on Thanksgiving to a dog or a cat, there would be animal cruelty charges.”

But can the public ever get enough Burton? Apparently not – because this year a Burton creation will be floating high above the streets of New York on Thanksgiving.

Burton has designed a float for the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving parade.

The creation, called B. Boy, is a stitched together balloon boy who will take flight in the 85th Anniversary Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It is the latest entry into the holiday parade’s “Blue Sky Gallery” series, which invites artists to create flying wonders for the procession. Previous flying art balloons have included works by Tom Otterness, Jeff Koons, Keith Haring and Takashi Murakami.

“I’ve always had a fascination with balloons,” stated Burton in a press release about the event. “B. Boy looks forward to his flight through Manhattan on Thanksgiving Day.”

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Burton creation without a dark backstory. B. Boy was not born like any other child — he was stitched together from rejects of old birthday party balloons left over from the many children’s parties that took place on the upper floors of the hospital. With his pointed teeth and uneven stitches, B. was not allowed to play with the children at the hospital. With his spirit deflated, B. withdrew to his basement home and into the world of his favorite film, The Red Balloon. Watching it obsessively, B. hoped that one day he too would be able to fly above the city and bring joy to one small child.

On Thanksgiving Day, B. Boy’s dream will come true.

I will never forget the Thanksgiving of 1975. It was a truly different and unforgettable Thanksgiving.

At the time, my husband David and I were living in our first home and as luck would have it that year, it was his turn to work midnights the week of Thanksgiving. Knowing that we would not be making it to our parents’ homes on the day itself we celebrated with them earlier.

When Thanksgiving Day itself arrived I was rather blue and lonely. Here it was, Thanksgiving, a day to not only be thankful but for our family the very start of Christmas Season and while my husband rested in our upstairs bedroom I watched the Thanksgiving Day parade on TV in a blue fog.

I was positive this was going to be the worst Thanksgiving EVER. Until the phone rang.

It was my dear sister. Her name is Margaret but I call her Nani. She too was lonely, and also had the same blue fog about her. She wondered if she might stop by.

It seemed as though the whole room filled with sunshine right at that moment as I gave her a resounding “Yes!” I could not wait for her to arrive.

When Nani arrived we stayed very quiet, talked, laughed and listened to Christmas music. I was making Christmas ornaments for that year’s Christmas tree from a kit. They were needlepoint ornaments that also had to have batting put in them. I finished a couple while chatting happily with Nani, as we both happily sipped a special warmed cinnamon spice cider.

Nani asked what I was going to do with the left over batting and I told her I would throw it out. She decided to be creative. She asked if we had anything she could use for a “project” while she was there, something that could be cut as she wanted to make an ornament too.

I happened to remember a box of unopened plain white handkerchiefs someone had given David the Christmas before. I went and got one of those and she said it was perfect. I could not imagine what she was going to do. She began cut a tree shape out of the hankie, got some sequins I was not going to use and began to fashion all of this into a Christmas tree ornament.

She sewed the two tree shapes (one for front and one for back of course) with all the care of someone working on a gown for the Queen, carefully placed the batting inside and then sewed the sequins on.

What resulted is to this day one of my very favorite ornaments. Nani says it is the ugliest thing she has ever seen. I say different. It was created on a Thanksgiving Day while two sisters visited and laughed and chatted and when life was all good. It may not have been a traditional Thanksgiving but for me it is one of my most beloved ones.

That ornament still goes as close to the top of the tree in a very special place each year. When I see it, I see those two sisters in my mind, happily enjoying the day and each other’s company. There was no turkey or stuffing, not one ounce of cranberry sauce, not one crumb of pumpkin pie but being together that day fed something in both of us, nourished us in a way physical food cannot.

When I was a child in school it seemed every year we put on some kind of play or program and all of us had to memorize something to recite. I tended toward poems that were shorter because not only did they get their meaning across it was also less likely I would get my tongue caught around my eyeteeth and make a major flub.

Here are some delightful Thanksgiving poems courtesy Thanksgiving World:

Thanksgiving Day – By Anonymous

T for time to be together, turkey, talk, and tangy weather.
H for harvest stored away, and hearth, and holiday.
A for autumn’s frosty art, and abundance in the heart.
N for neighbors, and November, nice things, new things to remember.
K for kitchen, kettles’ croon, kith and kin expected soon.
S for sizzles, sights, and sounds, and something special that abounds.
That spells – THANKS – for joy in living and a jolly good Thanksgiving.

Each year around about August or so I begin thinking about Thanksgiving. I mean really thinking about it.

I start planning what kind of brine we will use, whether we will have traditional stuffing or a new recipe and whether we will have a Butterball or Honeysuckle White or some other brand of turkey or even not a name brand. We don’t have a lot of family or friends nearby so it is usually just my husband and I with our furkids. So we tend to be very flexible and creative with our Thanksgiving planning.

There are the side dishes — what a variety to choose from! And the cranberry sauce – whoever would think there are so many different kinds or ways or preparing that?

The night before Thanksgiving I always try to get my husband to bring our Christmas tree into the living room so we can assemble it because on Thanksgiving Day it has been my custom on to put up the tree.

He always grumbles about it and tries to put on a mean front, but deep down, and not even all that deep, is a sentimental and kind man who loves the Christmas season as much as I and he always acquiesces to my request for assembling the tree while he gruffly says “Well I’m not decorating it!”

I smile because I know if I asked he would.

I guess you could say that Thanksgiving is definitely the day Christmas starts in our house. I spend hours joyfully putting up the tree while my husband takes care of things turkey-wise while I watch Christmas movies or whatever. First though, I watch the Thanksgiving Day parade as I decorate.

I am not much into Broadway musicals or the type of singing and dancing that goes with them which are a huge part of the Thanksgiving Day parade coverage but I do love the floats in the parade and I guess you can’t have one without the other.

When it is the end of the Thanksgiving parade and Santa makes his appearance, I cry.

At 56 years of age crying because Santa is on the screen may seem a little weird but what can I say? I still believe in Santa and everything he stands for and his first appearance is always a momentous occasion for me. The child in me who is never far from the surface is absolutely jumping up and down as the Man in the Suit makes his very first appearance. Hooray Santa is in town at last!

In addition to all of this the first Thanksgiving always comes to mind each year and what the pilgrims had to endure in order to get to this great land. I know they endured great hardships and it was the dead of Winter when they arrived. Barely half of them lived through that first horrific Winter and when the next Fall came, they wanted to have a feast so was born the first Thanksgiving.

This link gives a wonderful description of the very first Thanksgiving.

To me, it is so important to remember how Thanksgiving came to be. Great sacrifices were made and many lives were lost so that future generations would have a better world. Thanksgiving to me is also a time to think of those not as fortunate as I.

What about the senior citizen who has nobody? What about the homeless woman and her children who have nowhere to go?

This year I plan to do things a little differently. I will more actively include those less fortunate than I in my celebration and in that way encompass what the day is supposed to be about.

When September comes along there seems to me to be something in the air, a kind of excitement that whispers “time to start getting ready for Thanksgiving….”

Autumn has always been my very favorite season of the year. Here in Ohio in November the air is so crisp and the leaves so bold and colorful each year. It is the perfect time for planning a get together, whether it is big or just a quiet meal for a small group.

Thanksgiving doesn’t have to be a time when every relative including our fifth and sixth cousins comes to dinner. It can be a dinner for two or whatever we want. In fact, I actually prefer Thanksgiving dinner with just my husband and my fur-children. We don’t have friends or family over. It is usually just the two of us and our three hopeful canines who all seem to be wearing their very best doggie halos during our dinner, and our Smokey, who is a Siamese cat who definitely thinks we are fussing and cooking the feast for him.

We have a tradition where each of our fur-children gets a “mini” Thanksgiving feast of their own after we have finished. They each get turkey, mashed potatoes gravy, everything that we get (except of course those foods which could be harmful) and they love it.

And why not? After all it is only once a year.

I think it makes them feel more part of everything and after all, they are family.

Turkey and stuffing have always been two of the favorite traditional foods served in our home each year. We never seem to get around to making yams or pies but there is always the turkey. I am a terrible “turkey cook”. Put me in charge of making a turkey and you better have lots of water available because it is going to be a dry experience. I have learned in the last few years the way to have an excellent and tasty turkey is to ask my husband to be in charge of cooking it.

He usually uses a brining kit and brines it for no less than 24 hours. If you have never brined a turkey I highly recommend it. It becomes so tenderized and tasty from the brining and you never have to worry about a dry turkey. There are many recipes for brining on the Internet – from the simple to the very complicated.

I would recommend whichever one fits into a person’s busy schedule, of course, but we just use a brining kit. It has everything you need – spices, a huge bag for the turkey, everything, except the turkey itself that is.

The most important thing about planning for Thanksgiving, I think, is to plan to take a moment to remember and enjoy and be thankful for the bounty that we all have not only in terms of the feast on the table but all the blessings we have despite these hard times that we have all been through.

Planning for Thanksgiving can be fun or it can be a real chore. I always being by reflecting back on the best Thanksgivings of my life.

Each year in the Fall when Thanksgiving was on the way when I was little I can remember my Dad absolutely being like the dad in A Christmas Story about turkey. The man was an absolute turkey-a-holic! My mother had barely begun to plan our meal for the coming season before my dad would be ready at the table, napkin on, pants undone to make room for all the succulent turkey, stuffing and other scrumptious delights that would be served on Thanksgiving.

My mother, Susy, was a wonderful cook. She did everything by hand when I was little. I don’t know she did it because she also held a job outside the home. She made homemade sweet potatoes with a delicious brown sugar coating, mashed potatoes with NO lumps, (a task I have never achieved), biscuits that were as light as feathers and the turkey — oh that turkey!

She planned for weeks how she would do the turkey each year. In those days there were not as many options as there are now. These days you can deep fry, brine, brine and deep fry, smoke it, steam it, grill it, or even cook it on a rotisserie and on and on.

In the early 1960s there was but one way to prepare Mr. Tom Turkey and that was to simply roast it. But Susy’s turkey was just the start of the meal. My mother’s table and the decor on it was always so inviting and warm especially on Thanksgiving. She would always decorate with a Fall theme or perhaps a theme with Pilgrims and Indians. She used her imagination.

She didn’t have a lot of money to spend on decorations either. She would find ways to make her own or buy simple ones at Wolworth’s 5 and 10 cent store.

I can’t describe what my home was like at holiday time. When you walked into my house at Thanksgiving, the fireplace would usually have a gentle but very warming and welcoming fire, football would be on TV (of course) and there was a kind of glow about the whole house. A glow that said love and family. There were big overstuffed chairs and an overstuffed couch to peacefully and happily melt into after the wonderful meal and wonderful togetherness that they brought.

It never took a lot of money in those days for our miraculous Thanksgiving. It did take a bit of time, planning and thinking ahead by my parents. It was pure magic. That is the word that comes to mind when I think of not only Thanksgiving in our house but all the holiday season that comes after Thanksgiving.

I was allowed later on to help my mother plan for the big day. I would help pick out decorations for the table, choose the tablecloth and be involved in helping make the meal. Thanksgiving with my family, my mother Susy, my dad Andy, my dear sister Margaret, and my brothers Andy and Julius were and are a part of why I am so thankful to this day and every year on Thanksgiving. If I close my eyes, I can almost feel myself transported back in time to the Thanksgivings of my childhood. It just takes imagination.

For me, planning always begins with picturing what I want to accomplish. My mother planted that firmly in my head by giving me those memories. I know just what to do.

However, due to a whimsical twist of fate, in their jubilation and rush to spread the word on this wondrous milestone of America’s Parade, the elves left Santa’s workshop without a speck of color. Once they realized their error, the elves took refuge at various locations across the country and now wait for some holiday help to arrive from Parade fans in all 50 states, as well as Guam and Puerto Rico. To rectify this magical mishap, Macy‘s Great American Elf Adventure kicks off on Tuesday, August 9th. Find one of Macy‘s Parade’s missing elves, give it a makeover and you could see your winning elf design transformed into a Macy‘s Parade Balloon, as it soars high on Thanksgiving Day in front of over 3.5 million live spectators and more than 50 million television viewers nationwide.

“Macy‘s Great American Elf Adventure is a fantastic way to kick-off our 85th Anniversary celebrations,” said Amy Kule, executive producer of Macy‘s Thanksgiving Day Parade. “Since 1947, the iconic Macy‘s elf balloons have been fan favorites and for generations have served as an emblem of the Macy‘s Parade. This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help create a key element of America’s favorite parade is one that aspiring artists should not miss. We can’t wait to see all the inspired creations and look forward to the winning design joining the rest of the Macy‘s elf family in the Parade this year.”

To become a Macy‘s Parade balloonatic (a.k.a. Macy‘s Parade balloon designers) and help the stranded little ones make it to the Parade, first you must find an elf and let your imagination take over as you paint and transform it from a colorless gnome, into a multicolor creation of wonder.

Over 10,000 of Macy‘s Parade’s ever rambunctious elves have magically taken residence at Macy‘s stores nationwide and at other locations in select cities. To find one, look for clues on Macy‘s Facebook page (Facebook.com/Macys) and via Twitter @macysevents or #macyself. Each day from August 9th – August 24th, Macy‘s will post a clue and password that will help reveal the location of elves at 669 Macy’s stores across the country or at other special locales. For the clever adventurer, these clues will point to various in-store departments where elves have found shelter. Once elf hunters have deduced the location, they must tell a department sales associate the daily password to receive their coveted sprite. The daily clue and password can also be received by texting* ELF to MACYS (62297). A helpful hint for elf hunters is to check Macy‘s Facebook page often to see if there are any elves left to be rescued at their nearest Macy‘s store.

In addition to the mass elf invasion at stores nationwide, 10 cities will get in on the elfin’ fun when they host Macy‘s Elf-Apolooza, a fun-filled event for the whole family. A few of the more high-spirited gnomes decided that a road trip across the country to visit fans would be a good way to celebrate the upcoming Thanksgiving Day milestone. Starting on August 9 in New York City and Jackson, MS, the elves and some helpers will hit the road and visit Los Angeles (August 11); Omaha, NE (August 12); Detroit, MI (August 13); Little Rock, AR (August 14); Greenville, SC (August 17); Des Moines, IA (August 18); El Paso, TX (August 19); and Anchorage, AK (August 20). At Macy‘s Elf-Apolooza, elves will be distributed to fans from a custom designed mobile unit, along with Macy‘s Parade items and other giveaways.

After the hunt is over, and a budding Macy‘s Parade artist has one of the coveted elves, it’s time for the magic to begin. With splashes of color, fans are asked to let their imagination take flight and design what could be the newest member of the Parade elf family that will join C.J., Kit, and Charlie Elf in the holiday spectacular. Once the masterpiece is complete, the artist should submit a detailed front and back photo of their creation. To enter the design, participants will need to “Like” Macy‘s on Facebook and then proceed to download the “Elf” application. Entries must include the identification serial number found on the packaging containing the elf (all real Macy‘s elves will have one) and upload their photo/complete application by Wednesday, August 24 at 11:59:59 PM ET.

From the received entries, a judging panel from Macy‘s Parade & Entertainment Group will narrow down the entries to the Top 85. These entries will be posted on Macy‘s Facebook page on Tuesday, August 30th for fans/friends to begin casting votes on their favorite. The Elf design with the most votes as of Tuesday, September 6th at 11:59:59 PM ET, will be announced in mid-September. From here, the design will be transformed into a helium wonder by the magicians of Macy‘s Parade Studio. Besides designing the next elf balloon, the winning artist and three guests will receive a trip to New York City to see the Parade live and enjoy their elf’s maiden flight in the holiday spectacular.

The 85th Anniversary Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade airs on Thursday, November 24, 2011 from 9 A.M. to 12 P.M., in all time zones on NBC-TV.

For the complete entry rules/regulations for Macy‘s Great American Elf Adventure, are available in-store or by visiting Facebook.com/Macys.

Police Chief Timothy Lee tells The Standard-Times the measure is designed to protect shoppers and workers from stampedes caused by eager bargain hunters that have occurred elsewhere.

The bylaw, which needs state approval, will not apply until 2011.

Stores face fines of $100 per minute for the first 30 minutes, $200 per minute for the next 30 minutes, and $300 per minute after the first hour they are in violation of the law.