The final Thursday in November is celebrated in the United States and its possessions as Thanksgiving Day. This is a rather conflicted holiday, being at the same time a day of remembrance and thanks, a day of gluttony, and a day of commercial anticipation of the forthcoming Christmas Season. Most US families will eat a large meal, generally centered around a roast turkey, with stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and the like; in the course of the meal, many of these families pause to go around the table with each person reciting the things for which they are most thankful. Yet, at the same time, large US daily newspapers publish their largest issue on Thanksgiving Day, due to the number of advertisements included, and one of the landmark events is the Macy's Parade in New York City. The Friday after Thanksgiving is a day of massive sales with many retail stores opening at 5 AM or even earlier, a day known to store personnel as "Black Friday" due to the long hours and intense pressures. (The large US retail stores do about 25% of their ANNUAL sales during Thanksgiving week. This is a time to stay home and avoid shopping malls!) And the afternoon and evening are devoted to college and professional football games (US football, mind you) which will see roughly 70% of the American populace watching to some degree. (Not me, however: baseball players are all at home today and shan't resurface on a national scale until Spring Training starts in February.)
The history of Thanksgiving is interesting. The pre-Christian folks in Europe lived a pastoral lifestyle: that is, their lives were centered on the raising and consumption of sheep and cattle. Thus, they developed a cycle of annual events centered on the "Cross-Quarter Days", the days halfway between Solstice and Equinox and Equinox and Solistice, as these dates worked well to mark the birthing and harvesting cycle of sheep. Candlemass or Walpurgisnacht on 2nd February, May Day or Beltane on 1st May, Lammastide on 2nd August, and All Saints' Day on 1st November -- until the Revolution, the Russians continued to regard these dates as the starting dates for the seasons, with winter, for instance, running from 1st November to 2nd February, an interesting survival of practices long predating the advent of SS Cyril and Basil into the Slavic realms. The later advent of Christianity caused these Cross-Quarter Days to become viewed as imbued with occult and pagan overtones as we still can see in the US celebration of the Eve of All Saints' Day, otherwise known as All Hallows' Eve or, of course, Halloween.
Agriculture -- the raising of crops -- spread north into Europe from the Mediterranean Basin shortly before the rise of the Roman Empire. This brought with it a calendar based upon the Equinox and Solstice cycles, yielding Easter (Spring Equinox), Midsummer's Day (Summer Solstice), Harvest Home (Fall Equinox), and Christmas (Winter Solstice). This cycle was adopted by the Christian Church (and also by its main rival, the cult of Mithra) early-on, and even patently pagan festivals such as the Feast of the Returning Sun, or the Yule, was turned into the very Christian Christmas.
Harvest Home was the least of these festivals. It was a feast of thanksgiving for the bringing in of the harvest; along with Midsummer's Day, it was a major feast during the High Middle Ages and into the Renaissance but faded substantially in the 1700's. But it was still on the Church Calendar and was actively celebrated when the early colonies in what would become the United States were founded.
The first formal mention of a day of thanksgiving was in the charge given to the settlers of what is today the Berkeley Plantation along the James River in Virginia: the commercial entity which sent them out, the Bermuda Hundred Company, instructed the settlers to hold an annual celebration of thanksgiving on the anniversary of their taking possession of the settlement. The landing was made in early December, 1619, but, despite claims to the contrary, there is no evidence that any celebration of thanksgiving was held in December, 1620, or at any time thereafter until the existence of the instructions was discovered in the late 1800's. The local tourism wonks then began holding annual thanksgiving celebrations at Berkeley which continue to this day. So, we have an early charge ignored for more than two and a half centuries.
The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony in what is now Massachusetts (then still part of Virginia) did hold a feast of thanksgiving a year after their landing in 1621, but the feast was not held until 1623 and was irregularly repeated for the next century. It was then neglected until a revival of interest in early New England lore in the 1800's caused it to be resurrected as a local event. During the US Civil War, President Lincoln proclaimed an annual day of thanks, and this soon became identified with the renovated Pilgrim celebration. By the late 1800's, most of the US celebrated Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November; by the end of that century, this feast had come to be associated with turkey and the trimmings.
Bear in mind that the US enjoys a later growing season than does most of Europe, so the translation of the Feast of Harvest Home in late September in Europe to the Feast of Thanksgiving in late November does make some sense. Many US churches with European roots have revived a sort of Harvest Home celebration in late September but this generally involves the blessing of animals or fields or the like.
By the 1920's, it had become the norm that the Christmas sales season would not begin until after Thanksgiving -- even today, the Salvation Army gets in trouble with the public when they send out their fund-raising, bell-ringing Santas before Thanksgiving. President Franklin D Roosevelt, to encourage an uplift in the retail trade, proclaimed the third Thursday in November as Thanksgiving -- despite FDR's strong efforts to get the US out of the Depression through government intervention at all levels, the Depression had returned with a vengeance in 1938, and it was hoped that a week's increase in the Christmas sales period would help. This effort was greeted with general hoots of derision by the American people, and the entertainment industry pilloried it mercilessly with frequent cracks on the Jack Benny Show and the famous "dancing turkey" in the movie HOLIDAY INN, whence comes that ultimate song of the Yuletide, "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas".
The US military makes a huge production of Thanksgiving and always tries to ensure that everyone gets a full turkey meal. In 1975, I was an unmarried Second Lieutenant in the Army. The guy scheduled for Staff Duty Officer on Thanksgiving was an acquaintance whose wife had just had a baby. On a whim, I volunteered to take the duty for him, and it ended up being a great experience, not least as the Duty Officer has to sample the food in the Mess Halls, so I ended up with about three full meals. On another occasion, I happened to be in Washington, DC, on Thanksgiving Day and on a whim went to the Air and Space Museum, where I enjoyed a decent meal in their restaurant.
So, in the end, we celebrate Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November and most of us celebrate in mixtures of thankfulness, gluttony, and gloating anticipation of Christmas. My wife readied the turkey a while back with some minor assistance from me (lift up this beast and get it into the oven, cwaeth she!) and it will be ready in an hour or so. She is baking bread at the moment. The wine is chilling. And, for us, it will be a day of thanks and gluttony, as neither of us are ardent in-person shoppers. (We probably will do a grocery run to the Commissary at Fort Lee on Saturday, but we will avoid the malls at all costs!)
Enjoy, guys. And for our non-USian members, think of us in several hours, sitting around and groaning from the pains of excess!
We all have so very, very much for which to be thankful, and this List is not the least of the joys I experience every year.
Marc msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir! --- Rollei List - Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx - Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Online, searchable archives are available at //www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list
