Thanksgiving is a time of celebration filled with food, family, friends and football. Benjamin Franklin fought hard to have the turkey adopted as the symbol of the new United States in Congress Assembled (that was our nation’s first moniker – believe it or not). Franklin thought that Americans should have a uniquely American bird as its symbol. Eagles were used as the national symbol by Europeans, in Austria and Germany as well as in Imperial Russia for example. The other Founding Fathers overruled him, so we revere the Bald Eagle as our national symbol and eat the Turkey as our national bird.
The first Thanksgiving was celebrated by people who were truly thankful, thankful that they survived in a hostile environment far from where they formerly called home. The Separatists, people that we call “Pilgrims”, arrived in this country primarily to practice their religion in their own way “separate” from the Church of England. There were 102 of them who came across the Atlantic to this New World on the Mayflower and a year later there were only 53 left. Just five women survived that first winter and only four made it to that first Thanksgiving. Those four women did all the cooking, by the way.
Their survival was due to Native Americans. The Pilgrims met an English speaking Native called Samoset. He returned with Squanto, who spoke better English. Squanto was the last surviving member of the Pawtuxet tribe. Squanto taught the Pilgrims to plant corn, squash and beans. That’s one of the reasons that corn and squash tend to be traditional side dishes at contemporary Thanksgiving tables.
That first Thanksgiving featured foods that will be familiar to us today. In addition to corn and squash, the Pilgrim table featured carrots and onions, corn bread and pumpkins. They didn’t have pumpkin pie, rather the Pilgrims served pumpkin stew or even pumpkin gravy. The main reason for no pumpkin pie was that Pilgrims had no ovens, and that complicates pie baking tremendously.
Their main dish was mainly fowl, but probably not turkey. Turkeys, in the wild, are wily birds and tough to track down successfully compared to other fowl like ducks and geese. The Pilgrims may even have had swans on the menu. They lived in Plymouth, Massachusetts so seafood was also on the table like cod, bass and lobster. Originally, lobster was considered to be “poor man’s food” and often was the main staple of the kitchens of prisons in New England in the early days of our country.
The Pilgrim men were celebrating by having a marksmanship contest while the women cooked. That aroused fear and suspicion of the neighboring Wampanoag tribe who arrived to see what the hoopla was about. The Pilgrims invited the 90 Indians to dinner. The Natives, perhaps beginning the tradition of considerate guests asking, “What can I bring?”, immediately went out hunting and brought back five deer as their contribution to the menu.
Contemporary “church night” is on Wednesdays these days. In Pilgrim times it was held on Thursdays. That’s why Thanksgiving is celebrated on a Thursday. After all, the “thanksgiving” is to God so it should be done on His day. Sundays were the Sabbath, reserved for “regular” service to the Lord so Thursday became the traditional day for special observances, like Thanksgiving.
For a long time, Thanksgiving was like celebrating a birthday. It was something to be looked forward to, always on the calendar but never an “official” holiday. Texas was the first state to make Thanksgiving a state holiday, back in 1848. Sarah Josepha Hale campaigned vigorously to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. She went at it for years, finally convincing President Abraham Lincoln to make it an official holiday in 1863. It was her greatest achievement. Sarah Josepha Hale’s second claim to fame is she is the author of the nursery rhyme, “Mary Had A Little Lamb”.
The Pilgrims had no forks, so they ate with their hands. Forks were for those rich, hoity-toity people too dainty to get their hands dirty. That’s changed since Pilgrim times. Kids used to stand to eat at the table while the adults sat. That was because there was a dearth of chairs and kids tend to have more energy and stamina than adults. While children got to eat sitting down well before the 19th Century (the 1800’s) it was during the 19th Century that the tradition of the Thanksgiving “kiddie table” got started.
The first football game to occur on Thanksgiving took place in 1869 in Philadelphia. The NFL played its first game on Thanksgiving November 25, 1920. The Detroit Lions began playing on Thanksgiving in 1934. With the exception of the World War Two years, the Lions have played on Thanksgiving every year since then.
Macy’s Parade began in 1924. This year marks the 98th Macy Thanksgiving Day Parade, They took a couple of years off during World War Two, so it has been a century since the first one but not quite 100 years of continuous parades. If you watch the Christmas classic movie “Miracle on 34th Street”, at the beginning of the movie little Natalie Wood is watching the Macy’s Parade, that her mother – played by Maureen O’Hara – has organized for Macy’s Department Store, from their neighbor’s (played by John Payne) apartment window which overlooks the parade route. He uses the experience to finagle an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner.
Thanksgiving used to be the start of the Christmas shopping season. I grew up in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota and the transition was magical. The day after Thanksgiving the municipal decorations went up and the Salvation Army bands (trios usually) began playing carols on the street corners of St. Paul. The “Christmas floor” at the Dayton’s Department Store (later Macy’s, once Dayton’s sold out to them) in Minneapolis, on the 8th floor if memory serves, with Santa and decorations made its appearance (very much like those that Will Ferrell constructs during his department store employment in the movie Elf) with lines of excited children waiting to tell Santa all of their Christmas desires.
For decades, Thanksgiving was the traditional start to the Christmas shopping season and the holiday season is so important to retailers. That’s why President Roosevelt messed with the date of Thanksgiving. Things are different today with the Internet and “Black Friday” events happening two weeks before Thanksgiving Thursday etc. but even so, according to a Constant Contact study, for retail and ecommerce businesses the holiday quarter (October through December) accounts for as much as 75% of their business for the year.
In the “olden days”, as the kids would say, Christmas shopping didn’t start until after Thanksgiving. If you watch classic television shows from the 1950’s you’ll see that the tradition of shopping for Christmas presents, as well as putting up and decorating the tree were both done on Christmas Eve. President Franklin Roosevelt was cognizant of this, he was President during the Great Depression, and consumer spending has always been a crucial element in the American economy. Even in the Depression, people tried to provide as good a Christmas as they possibly could. So, in 1938, Roosevelt tried to kick start the economy by moving Thanksgiving one week earlier, to give merchants an extra week in this critical time for retailers.
Critics called the shift in dates “Franksgiving”, a play on Franklin Roosevelt’s first name and on Frankenstein. Of the 48 states in the Union at the time, 23 states and the District of Columbia celebrated on the new earlier date, 22 stuck with the traditional fourth Thursday in November date and a few said, “What the heck!” and celebrated twice. In 1941, Congress settled the controversy once and for all by establishing by law that the fourth Thursday in November is the date of Thanksgiving.
When I was a kid, Thanksgiving was the time of big announcements. Before the days of “save the date” cards announcing weddings, gender reveal parties, social media and all of the other modern things that have stolen the thunder from in-person kinfolk pronouncements, Thanksgiving used to be the time to impart “big news”. After all, the whole family was gathered round, and the momentous news could be proclaimed to everyone at once with the joyous reactions and congratulations experienced in person and in real time.
When I was a kid, babies “sat” at the adult table because they had to have their Moms feed them and Grandparents wished to ooh and aah over them. The rest of us kids, in my family anyway, were banished to the kiddie table in the basement. Away from the adults, away from the food, away from the television carrying the football game and a trek up the stairs away from seconds. There was limited seating at the adult table so, in my family anyway, someone literally had to die before a “child” could move up. By the end of my time at the “kiddie” table, there were some pretty tall fellow “children” (my cousins) and more than one “kid” who was shaved that day before arriving for dinner who still ate at the “kiddie” table.
I hope you have a happy, bountiful Thanksgiving. While you’re at it, consider adding another chair or two to the adult table.