Happy Turkey Day!

[3113]

For everyone in the U.S. and to all those from the U.S. living elsewhere, a very Happy Thanksgiving. Contrary to popular belief, THIS--not the shopping day that follows it (aka: Black Friday)--is the actual holiday. I know commercials and news reports make it seem otherwise, but the Pilgrims did not celebrate their success at surviving in the new world by going out to a sale at Walmart.

Might have made for more interesting history if they did, but I'm afraid all they did was have a big meal with the local tribes.

And to everyone here at the AH--if you haven't been invited elsewhere--or even if you have and you return later, please feel free to come here, have a seat, and enjoy our virtual Author's Hangout Thanksgiving. We'll be waiting for you with a cocktail or two and a slice of your favorite pie.

Enjoy!

 

[Stella_Omega]

I am looking forward to my tryptophan overdose this evening

 

[Derroreaper]

I am looking forward to my tryptophan overdose this evening

We're going with a nice big rib roast (prime rib) this year. Cost a bit more, but worth it every once in a while

 

[Stella_Omega]

We're going with a nice big rib roast (prime rib) this year. Cost a bit more, but worth it every once in a while

Bon Appetite! What are your fixings?

This year, it's very simple and traditional because some of us need comfort food.

But I did insist on one thing-- I pureed a big handful of herbs along with garlic, some onion, and romaine lettuce and slid it under the turkey skin. It's my "green turkey" special. Literally green. Sooo savory and a great way to rehabilitate a cheap frozen supermarket turkey.

 

[Derroreaper]

I'm a very picky eater, so my plate will have meat, our family recipe potatoes (mashed red potatoes, mixed with cream cheese, sour cream, Lowery's season salt, and shredded cheddar cheese) corn and a bowl of tomatoes with ranch dressing.

The rest of the plates will still have stuffing, plus yams with marshmallows, green bean casserole, my wife will eat asparagus I'm sure, and dessert will be pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin pie, and apple pie.

Plus a case of Newcastle to wash it all down

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Happy Thanksgiving, American friends. But there are a few issues: the Pilgrims saw the Indians and "demons sent by god to test the moral fibre of the emigrant roundheads," as creatures to exterminate rather than share dinner with. Check out Cotton Mather's writings and King William's War.
And the Pilgrim settlements midden dumps contain no turkey bones. The only wild fowl they hunted was flocking waterfowl - ducks and geese - because muskets and blunderbusses couldn't be aimed.
Still, it is nice to have a day off for une grande bouffe...

 

[Derroreaper]

Happy Thanksgiving, American friends. But there are a few issues:

Well the truth is, settlers in America were celebrating the harvest season for many reasons, long before the pilgrims did it. It didnt become a national holiday until long after the annual festival had become some what of a tradition all over the country.

The blunderbuss was never a hunting device, it was designed more for crowd control like a scatter gun. Turkeys were everywhere back then and many people hunted them.

In America we can't hardly have a dinner, without the world criticizing us for being demons, but I'll still say what I'm thankful for this year, like I have since I was four

 

[sr71plt]

I guess it would be more noble for Americans to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night(?)

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Well the truth is, settlers in America were celebrating the harvest season for many reasons, long before the pilgrims did it. It didnt become a national holiday until long after the annual festival had become some what of a tradition all over the country.

The blunderbuss was never a hunting device, it was designed more for crowd control like a scatter gun. Turkeys were everywhere back then and many people hunted them.

In America we can't hardly have a dinner, without the world criticizing us for being demons, but I'll still say what I'm thankful for this year, like I have since I was four

Sorry. They were plentiful, but not huntable without rifles. Smoothbores could not be aimed. Blunderbusses were used for hunting in a manner similar to crowd control. In this case you aimed it at a flockof ducks or geese and fired, likely to hit something. Given that duck, goose, and pig bones are found in pilgrim garbage, but not turkey bones, would you have us believe they ate the bones? Check out Jum Deetz' acrhaeological studies of pilgrim settlements.

Long before the pilgrims? Which Europeans were they? Native Americans did have harvest rituals, but they were there far too long to be called settlers. The holiday, including the Indian-sharing myth, first appeared at the end of the 19th Century.

And I wasn't criticizing Americans; I was criticizing revisionist history. Have a festival; they're always a good idea. Just do it without pretending history was different than it really was.

 

[YoursSINSerely]

Utoh! Someone's picking a bone with the boneman.

I'll just get another drink, sit back and watch for awhile.

 

[TE999]

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Thanksgiving in the US began as a celebration of the year's harvest.

The Founding Fathers formalized the celebration of Thanksgiving by state legislation.

Thanksgiving was declared a National tradition by presidential proclamation in 1863.

The day of celebration for Thanksgiving was set as the fourth Thursday in November by federal legislation in 1941.

Let the overeating and American style football games begin!

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Thanksgiving in the US began as a celebration of the year's harvest.

The Founding Fathers formalized the celebration of Thanksgiving by state legislation.

Thanksgiving was declared a National tradition by presidential proclamation in 1863.

The day of celebration for Thanksgiving was set as the fourth Thursday in November by federal legislation in 1941.

Let the overeating and American style football games begin!

Right, TE! That's what it's all about! Eat, Drink, and Be Merry, for Tomorrow You May Shop!

 

[sr71plt]

She has just arrived. Time to get the show on stage--or at least to go and look at what was being done as I was hiding (cleanup is my part).

 

[Stella_Omega]

Those black powder friends of mine can bring down a deer in a second, with one shot. I hardly ever hear of anyone getting a turkey. They are famous for being wily, timid, faster than the naked eye...

Damn-- Wild turkey is good eating though. yes-- I said eating! Not drinking...

 

[Tio_Narratore]

I guess it would be more noble for Americans to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night(?)

I'm not sure either of us was talking about nobility, Pilot. And would we have turkey for Guy Fawkes' Day? Though, I must admit, the idea of a Macy's Guy Fawkes Day Parade has some interesting possibilities...

 

[sr71plt]

I'm not sure either of us was talking about nobility, Pilot. And would we have turkey for Guy Fawkes' Day? Though, I must admit, the idea of a Macy's Guy Fawkes Day Parade has some interesting possibilities...

So who--other than the anal retentive--cares who eats what on a holiday (or why)?

 

[YoursSINSerely]

So who--other than the anal retentive--cares who eats what on a holiday?

I just ate kielbasa and later it's going to be chicken francaise.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

So who--other than the anal retentive--cares who eats what on a holiday?

Certainly not, Pilot, but we are given to joking here on the AH. And that was a joke on the central role of the turkey in the traditional NA Thanksgiving Day celebration.

 

[sr71plt]

I just ate kielbasa and later it's going to be chicken francaise.

Oh no (*moan*). Do you have any idea how many basas had to be kieled and chickens franciased to fulfill your bloodlust--and your false sense of history?

 

[TE999]

Right, TE! That's what it's all about! Eat, Drink, and Be Merry, for Tomorrow You May Shop!

Roger that! Did you know there are people camped outside stores all over the US at this very minute munching on turkey legs and waiting for the store to open on Black Friday so they can get a king sized Sony flat screen TV for $!00.00?

Then when the doors open, it looks like a combination of letting the herd into a stockyard feedlot and the Oklahoma Land Rush (Run) of 1889.

I wouldn't put up with that crap to see Christ come again.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Oh no (*moan*). Do you have any idea how many basas had to be kieled and chickens franciased to fulfill your bloodlust--and your false sense of history?

What do you mean "false?" Aren't you familiar with the Polegram settlers and their extermination of the herds of Basas on the great plains as well as the flocks of Passenger Chickens?

 

[3113]

And I wasn't criticizing Americans

All good, dude! We didn't think you were criticizing Americans we know you're just stating the facts. As for the festival:

Even with the natives' help, almost half of the 102 Pilgrims died that first year. However, by the fall of the following year, the immigrants condition had greatly improved. In England, they had observed thanksgiving feasts in November for years as a part of their religious rites. However, since the Wampanoag tribe would have been considered Strangers [i.e. not believers in the Pilgrim's religion], the feast they held the first time in America in 1621 would not have been considered a thanksgiving gathering but instead was a Harvest Festival.

When Chief Massasoit arrived with...about 90 tribe members, it quickly became obvious the Pilgrims did not have enough food for everyone. The Wampanoags helped to solve this problem by hunting five deer and other game. Along with the Pilgrims' food, this was enough for a three-day festival.

From here. Addition in brackets mine.

As for food:

journals and letters from the time say deer, fish, duck and geese made up the vast majority of the servings. Potatoes would not have been served because Europeans still believed tubers to be poisonous. The Pilgrims' wheat was the wrong variety and had not grown in the rocky soil but the Wampanoags had introduced them to corn and they would have had a type of hominy and ground meal to eat. Popcorn did not exist and the Pilgrims did not have any sugar so while they may have had fresh and dried fruits, they certainly did not have pies. The closest thing the feast would have to pumpkins would have been a local squash the Wampanoags liked to eat. To prepare them they would have removed the seeds and then stuffed the squash with fruits before cooking.

But, actually, the REAL story of Thanksgiving is all about institutionalizing a general thanksgiving day that had been practiced in Eastern states throughout the 18th century for various reasons. The Pilgrims and the Indians myth became the bedrock reason, but it wasn't the real reason for it. More in next post

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Roger that! Did you know there are people camped outside stores all over the US at this very minute munching on turkey legs and waiting for the store to open on Black Friday so they can get a king sized Sony flat screen TV for $!00.00?

Then when the doors open, it looks like a combination of letting the herd into a stockyard feedlot and the Oklahoma Land Rush (Run) of 1889.

I wouldn't put up with that crap to see Christ come again.

Nor would they, unless, of course, the Second Coming were being offered at 75% off! (Limit 3 Raptures per family while quantities last).

 

[flint9]

Those black powder friends of mine can bring down a deer in a second, with one shot. I hardly ever hear of anyone getting a turkey. They are famous for being wily, timid, faster than the naked eye...

Damn-- Wild turkey is good eating though. yes-- I said eating! Not drinking...

can tend to be very dry.best if deep fried.

 

[3113]

To continue....

We owe Thanksgiving not to Pilgrims & Native Americans, but to 18th century folk who had already tried to institutionalize days of thanksgiving for various reasons and, most of all to the woman who wrote "Mary had a little lamb": Sarah Josepha Hale:

Thanksgiving as we know it today — at least on the scale we know it — is largely the creation of Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book, one of the first women's magazines. Mrs. Hale spent 36 years browbeating public officials high and low before finally getting Thanksgiving declared a national holiday in 1863.

But first a little history. What we now think of as the original Thanksgiving took place in the fall of 1621 at the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts, with the Pilgrims and some 90 Wampanoag Indians on hand to chow down, play volleyball, and exchange native diseases. (No joke — an earlier tribe of Indians had been wiped out by European-imported smallpox.) The occasion came to be a semiofficial holiday among New Englanders, one of many such celebrations held throughout the colonies at various times of the year. The idea of holding a national Thanksgiving, however, was slow to catch on. The Continental Congress scheduled the first one for Thursday, December 18, 1777, to celebrate the defeat of General Burgoyne at Saratoga. In 1789 George Washington proclaimed a one-time-only day of thanksgiving for Thursday, November 26, to celebrate the new Constitution. But his successors let the idea drop. Thomas Jefferson, for one, considered proclaiming holidays "a monarchical practice" and paid no attention to Thanksgiving during his term of office.

Enter Mrs. Hale. A native of New Hampshire, she became obsessed with the idea that "Thanksgiving like the Fourth of July should be considered a national festival by all our people." Her opening salvo was her first novel, Northwood, published in 1827. An entire chapter was devoted to a detailed description of a Thanksgiving dinner complete with stuffed turkey and pumpkin pie. In 1846, nine years after she became the editor of Godey's Lady's Book, she launched a crusade to make Thanksgiving an official holiday. Every fall the magazine would editorialize on the subject, meanwhile running high-cholesterol but probably pretty darn tasty recipes for such things as "Indian Pudding with Frumenty sauce" and "ham soaked in cider three weeks, stuffed with sweet potatoes, and baked in maple syrup." Hale also wrote hundreds of letters to influential people urging them to support her cause.

Her efforts continued up through the Civil War. In 1861 she asked both sides to "lay aside our enmities on this one day and join in a Thanksgiving Day of Peace." The appeal failed, but eventually, some believe, she was able to pitch President Lincoln in person. Whatever the case, Abe finally issued a National Thanksgiving Proclamation on October 3, 1863, setting aside the last Thursday of November as the official day.

So, we owe Thanksgiving more to old Thanksgiving Days of the 18th century, to this one relentless 19th century woman with her romantic obsession for Thanksgiving type days, and to the Civil War which undoubtedly gave Abe Lincoln the feeling that there should be a national day of Thanksgiving--for the change in fortunes in 1863 when the North started winning.

In fact, we here should really see Thanksgiving as *our* holiday as it exists because of a writer.