To American Readers: something to do inbetween all that overeating.
To everyone else: something to help you understand what they’re getting so excited about every November. Isn’t one turkeyfest a year more than enough for anybody?
No guarantees about fact, myth and fiction in any of the following. (Come on, guys, it’s really a classic Invented Tradition, isn’t it?)*
Thanksgiving at Plimoth Plantation
The History of Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving History
The First Thanksgiving
Bountiful Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving in Canada
Thanksgiving Day Holiday and the Pilgrims
Thanksgiving Its True History
From American Memory (there’s much more: search for ‘thanksgiving’): New Hampshire proclamation, 1782
Blogging Thanksgiving (including recipes!)
A Thanksgiving Lesson
Mince Pies at Thanksgiving
And when the Pilgrims came to Singapore
Wherein I Give Thanks… (contains a) strong language and b) a picture of the President of the USA being, er, gobbled by a turkey)
The Wrong Pie (contains a terrible heresy? Belle disagrees, anyway)
Pilgrim Shoes (Yes! I got Manolo into the Thanksgiving post!)
Just to be different, Siris is celebrating St Catherine’s Day instead.
Oh, and Caleb is rolling around with mirth at the abolitionists’ Thanksgiving victory over Turkey.
Background and stuff
Emigrants and Settlers
13 Originals: Founding the American Colonies
Religion in Colonial America
Colonial North America, including:
First Thanksgiving Proclamation
The American Colonist’s Library (primary sources)
Religion and the Founding of the American Republic (a lovely online exhibit)
Miscellaneous bits and pieces
If the holidays make you feel depressed, you might want to read Holiday Blues
…And if you haven’t quite eaten everything in the house already: Holiday Foods
…
* Ralph over at Cliopatria has gently and quite rightly ticked me off for my lazy use of “invented tradition” here. Sepoy at Chapati Mystery has a better term: “construction of social memory”.
5 comments on “For Thanksgiving Day”
I would like to point out quietly that ADM must be a particularly good spouse, because she is allowing ADH to cook Thanksgiving dinner. It is not that ADH is a bad cook. ADH’s child actually likes his cooking better (although many people think that the occasionally iffy experiment does not detract from ADM’s being the overall better cook. But, ADH can’t do big dinners. He can, actually, but he’s got shite timing. And he makes a mess. Still, the meal will be a nice, roast dinner, and will not be Turkey with stuffing and mashed potatoes and peas/green beans and cranberry sauce and all those things that make it Thanksgiving, dammit! Because ADH is English. Sorry — just wanted to rant to people who might understand!
Oh dear.
At the risk of stereotyping, I know some men who are good cooks and they ALL MAKE A TERRIBLE MESS. It’s like they’re not real men unless they use every single pan in the kitchen.
(And I won’t be having turkey for Christmas and am very very happy about it. I’ve managed to wean my parents off expecting me for Christmas dinner (but before you think I’m evil, I always go for several days just after), and spend the day with my best friends and we make a huge meal in which turkey does *not* figure, and neither does sitting down at the table at a set time. I’ve forgotten what the plan is this year, but it involves at least one animal from my friend’s brother’s farm.)
Oddly enough, any meal is fine with me for Christmas — but don’t mess with my Thanksgiving! I recited the proper menu to some friends and, except for a few regional differences, we all pretty much agreed on what it was supposed to be. It’s kind of iconic, I guess.
I’m all the more impressed by your good wifeliness!
Turkey ‘n’ all the trimmings (a bit different from Thanksgiving trimmings though) does have a similar sort of iconic status for Christmas here, I think. (Though less entrenched than say 20 years ago? What do other Brits think?) But my friends and I agreed long ago that we don’t like a lot of things about ‘traditional’ Christmas much, so we do it our way.
[...] a nice undergrad paper on memory in America. ps: as usual, Sharon has a treasure trove of links. How does she do that? Feast.
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