Thanksgiving is a week from Thursday. If you're the man of the house, tradition dictates that you carve the turkey.

I say "tradition," because it's no longer law (or even LDS Church ordinance) that a man carve the turkey. Technically, it can/should be anyone coordinated enough to not hurt themselves with something sharp.

The tradition of the man doing the carving comes to us from ancient times when it was considered unwise to trust a woman with a knife. Nowhere was this more unwise than on feast days.

After a woman slaved all day over the hearth, all it took was a man saying "It's about time" for the handle of that knife to suddenly be sticking out of the front of him. Traditions exist for a reason, people.

Never mind that. If you're a man, and it falls to you to dismember the bird, you don't want it looking like you took a chain saw to a wicker basket. Trust me, it's embarrassing.

I looked up some carving tips in Popular Mechanics . Seriously, these come from PM's new book, How to Carve a Turkey (And 99 Other Skills Every Man Should Know).

NOTE: Other stuff includes how to parallel park, start a fire, use a torque wrench, mix concrete and remove a tick. It's the perfect Christmas gift for today's unhandy male.

Where was I? Oh, yeah -- dismantling a turkey.

There was a time when men instinctively knew how to carve up any animal (including another man), but not anymore. Today, we don't even kill the turkey. We're so civilized that we'd probably lose a fair fight with one.

OK, assume that a turkey cooked to the color of George Hamilton is on the table in front of you. Arrayed around the table are family members fixated and salivating like Labrador retrievers.

Select a sharp knife. A dull one won't do. The idea is to carve (cut) the turkey, not beat it. You may wish to sharpen the knife in advance as most household knives have edges like ball peen hammers.

Steady the turkey with a fork or some sort of clamp. Do not use your hand. Odds are that the bird is fresh from the oven and the temperature of a jet engine. Touching it is where the phrase "turkey trot" comes from.

Using the sharp side of the knife, carefully remove the turkey's legs, commonly referred to as "drumsticks" because most of the time that's what they end up becoming.

Next, lop off the turkey's wings. These are the spindly looking appendages near where the turkey's head once was.

At the other end is a tab of gristle that used to be the bird's tail. Cut this off and toss it to the dog, a brother-in-law or the child you like the least.

You should now have a round ball of meat on the platter. Begin cutting off slices. Depending on your skill, the number of guests, and the size of the bird, the thickness of these slices will range from a millimeter to 4 inches.

Serve with mashed potatoes, yams, gravy, vegetables, rolls, cranberry sauce, pie, ice cream, and a crazy aunt's Jell-O salad so vile that it will drive a starving dog under a bed.

With any luck, you won't have turkey left over. Otherwise, you'll be eating it for a month.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com.