unusualmusic_lj_archive

The making of the domestic occasion: the history of Thanksgiving in the United States

The history of Thanksgiving is hallowed ground for antiquarians, popular writers, and even an occasional anthropologist.(9) The story begins with the Pilgrims who held a feast for themselves and their Wampanoag neighbors in October of 1621. [Remember kids, we have just spent most of the preceding links debunking this. Moving on...] Prior to Lincoln, three presidents, George Washington, John Adams, and James Madison, issued ad hoc proclamations of a national day of thanksgiving. Nonetheless, Thanksgiving in the early nineteenth century was mainly popular in New England and to a lesser extent the mid-Atlantic states. As of the 1850s, Thanksgiving was a legal holiday only in these states and in Texas.

Prior to Abraham Lincoln's proclamation in 1863 of an annual national holiday in November, Thanksgiving was a regional day, both secular and religious. In early nineteenth century New England Thanksgiving day might begin with a morning church service, followed by the large meal in the afternoon. Before or after attending church, men, musket in hand, might take aim at a wild turkey in the fields, or at paper targets. The winner usually won a turkey as his prize for good marksmanship. The food at the feast was bountiful but the setting was relatively modest. Most families did not own a long wooden dining table. They might have had a smaller one, which was set up in a sitting room, parlor, or the bedroom - any room that could be kept warm in winter. There were probably only two courses to the meal, the food for the main meal spread on the table, and the desserts served later.(10) Because the roads were poor, muddy or snow-covered, many relatives, eager to return home for the holidays, were unable to do so.

Hale, Lincoln, and the Tolerance of Misrule

Through the efforts of Sarah Josepha Hale, and later Abraham Lincoln, Thanksgiving became a holiday of the Union, with limited acceptance in the Southern states.(11) The editor of Godey's magazine, Sarah Josepha Hale, issued yearly editorials beginning in 1846 encouraging the "Great American Festival" of Thanksgiving. Hale wrote letters to governors of states and territories, overseas missionaries, and navy commanders urging them to celebrate Thanksgiving and in the case of the governors, to make Thanksgiving a legal holiday. Hale hoped that a unifying holiday would help avert the prospect of a civil war. Instead, the victory at Gettysburg as well as Hale's entreaties encouraged Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to declare a national day of thanksgiving in November.

...

Groups of men, crossdressing, who called themselves the Fantastics or Fantasticals, masqueraded on Thanksgiving beginning in the 1780s. The name Fantastic was English and the practice seems to have been derived from English door to door masquerading for treats. Subsequently the Fantastics copied these and other elements of English mumming, such as drunkenness and ridiculing authority. At the end of the Revolutionary war veterans were dressing up in the rags of the Continental soldiers. The Fantastics paraded in rural and urban areas of eastern and central Pennsylvania, and New York City on Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve and Day, Battalion Day, Washington's Birthday, and the Fourth of July.(18)

The upper and middle-class public, which so disliked noisy and threatening bands of youths on Christmas and New Year's Eve, was more accepting of Fantastical parades. An editorial in a Pennsylvania newspaper in 1870 defended the Fantastics, on the grounds that "it is better to be merry than sad, and if, as some genial writer asserts, a good hearty laugh takes a nail out of your coffin, a parade of the fantasticals can not fail to lessen the bills of mortality."(19) The New York Times in 1885 regarded the Fantastics as "hilarious" and "quaint."(20) In New York City the police and an occasional politician joined the parade. Most New York City Fantastics were Irish and working class; many were fish sellers at the Fulton Fish market, along with some politicians and prison guards. As a boy, growing up in the 1880s, the Democratic governor of New York state and later presidential candidate, Al Smith, worked at the market himself, and enjoyed watching the Fantastical parade.(21)MORE

I need an icon with Spock saying "fascinating!" for this post.