Members of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) headed down to the bogs to celebrate Cranberry Day, a longstanding harvest tradition for the Vineyard’s Native American tribe. The day ended with a potluck dinner.

On Halloween morning, Carol Magee, the executive director of the Vineyard Open Land Foundation, gave me my first lesson in cranberry sorting.

Throughout my childhood, I only recognized cranberries as that deep red gelatinous blob that came out of a can on Thanksgiving Day.

Beverly Wright, former chairman of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and current Aquinnah selectman, remembers when Cranberry Day lasted for three days and off-Island tribal members would come to the Vineyard to participate.

She can remember riding on an oxcart to the Aquinnah cranberry bogs, going down dirt paths that no longer exist and cutting across back roads before Lighthouse Road was paved.

Even years later, the excitement of Cranberry Day remains.

When you think of cranberries, no doubt visions of Thanksgiving dance in the head: cranberry orange bread, cranberry relish, cranberry-stuffed acorn squash. Or perhaps you think of the scarlet landscape of bogs you pass while driving through the famed Cape Cod cranberry towns of Carver and Wareham on your way to Woods Hole.

But biting into a freshly picked cranberry right off the vine is an experience all its own. The vitamin C-packed cranberry is intensely sour, so sour it makes your cheeks pucker.

The stock market may be seeing red on Wall street this autumn, but here on the Vineyard there is a bright future in cranberries. On the Island and across southeastern Massachusetts, it is a banner year for cranberries, both wild and cultivated.

I nominate cranberries for the best supporting role in a holiday dinner.