I’ve been cooking turkeys since I was 15.
YES it is required, even if it isn’t Thanksgiving.
Stuffing is too, if for no other reason than to season the bird from the inside. Even if you, ah, throw it out when you are done (shudder). Some do that.
I almost never eat the cranberry sauce during the meal. Gelled or in berry form as a relish, either works.
I ALWAYS have it the next day. I buy good sourdough bread. I toast it in the oven. I put the bread on a plate, and I slice or spoon the cranberry onto one of the slices. I put the turkey down on the cranberry. I put the gravy on the turkey. I put the cream cheese slices on the gravy. I put more cranberry on the cream cheese. I put the other piece of sourdough on the cream cheese.
Then I eat.
Jesus Marimba - that is one good sandwich. Even if they don’t cook the bitterness out of the cranberries well enough, the gravy and cream cheese take care of it.
Follow it with a goodly piece of pie - any kind will do, and that’s lunch the next day.
When I was in the USCG on Governor’s Island, NY I was living in the BOQ, which was a tenement full of studio apartments, with a kitchen efficiency, etc.
The oven was big enough to cook a turkey. On Tuesday nights, about once a month, I’d host the Twin Peaks viewing party at my little place. The location would rotate among junior officers on the Island. I’d cook the turkey, put it out on the coffee table, and you’d just slice off, or pull off, a piece. Paper plates. I still served cranberry. That and some cream cheese and you don’t even need the gravy (though the gravy is a gigantic plus). A dollar loaf of wheat bread I’d put out there and people would make sandwiches right then and there. They’d dip pieces of the sandwich in the drippings.
Good times.
Been making the stuffing since I was a wee child.