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Welcome to Morning Open Thread, a daily post with a MOTley crew of hosts who choose the topic for the day's posting. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum.
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Something of which we can never have enough!
www.theworldkindnessmovement.org
So grab your cuppa, and join in!
I like that Thanksgiving song “Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go,” but it isn’t anything like my Thanksgivings. Whether they’ve been in Phoenix, here in Southern California, or in Texas visiting my mother’s “people” (so Southern), there was never any snow or sleighs, or any trips over a river or through the woods.
So I wonder – is there really a Thanksgiving “tradition” that applies to everybody? Even turkey, which would seem like a common denominator, isn’t present in the celebrations of several of my friends and one of my cousins – some are vegetarians, but a couple of them just really don’t like turkey. Many historians think the main meat at the first Thanksgiving was venison, with no turkey in sight. And you can’t make a Thanksgiving wish if you don’t have a wishbone.
Cranberry Sauce? Not mentioned before 1663, decades after the first Thanksgiving. It was a rare treat in the days when sugar was so costly. These days, I’m guessing if you don’t eat turkey, you probably don’t use cranberries either.
There are a couple of foods that were “traditional” for some of my family that are no longer served by the next generation – a gelatin ring embedded with canned fruit and topped with grated cheese and mayo, and candied yams with marshmallows on top. These are small but devoutly-wished-for-changes which I happily give thanks for at Thanksgiving.
Watching football on TV is a pretty new idea – a number of households didn’t have televisions until the late 1950s, and some people nowadays have chosen to ban them from their homes. Even playing football on Thanksgiving wasn’t traditional before the Lions played the Chicago Bears before 26,000 people at the University of Detroit Stadium in 1934. And shocking as it may be to football fanatics, many people have no interest in football. One of our friends is “Anti-Ballism” – against any sport involving playing with a ball (keep it clean Queries and exlrrp!)
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade? After a modest start in 1924, they added floats in 1927 and its regional popularity grew. Macy’s suspended parades from 1942 to 1944 because of a wartime helium shortage. The parade’s balloons were donated to the U.S. government for the scrap rubber drive.
Then the parade was immortalized in the classic movie Miracle on 34th Street in 1947, and shown for the first time on television in 1948. Now, every year more than 3.5 million New Yorkers line the route of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade while an estimated 50 million television viewers watch it at home. Impressive numbers, but still far short of the more than 322,163,000 Americans tallied by the US Census Bureau Population Clock.
So is there anything that is traditional for Americans on Thanksgiving? Perhaps what’s really traditional is that we all celebrate in our own way, some even by NOT celebrating – a reminder of the American ideals of acceptance and diversity, which we too often forget to honor.
The fragile friendship between the Native Americans and their struggling Pilgrim neighbors didn’t survive for long, but we should make that first feast a symbol of hope that we can heal the many wounds and divisions between Americans of every ancestry and belief, and finally become “one nation, with liberty and justice for all.”
What’s traditional for Thanksgiving in your home?
Sources and Further Reading:
Thanksgiving Traditions — www.theblaze.com/...
US Population — www.census.gov/...
Painting: "Over The River And Through The Woods" by Joseph Holodook
Painting: “The First Fun Thanksgiving, after J.L.G. Ferris” by Mike Licht