Annual Party

THANKSGIVING IN THE U.S.

 

In the U.S., Thanksgiving is a national holiday commemorating the Pilgrims Thanksgiving to the Almighty for the first harvest and a newly found brotherhood, embracing Indians and Europeans, who broke bread together. It brings the whole family together for a big meal. Community kitchens provide turkey dinners for the needy. On television NBC will bring “Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade” in New York and the CBS “All American Thanksgiving Parade” may combine coverage of four different parades, including Macy’s.

However, most of all the American Thanksgiving ushers in the “Holiday Season” with Christmas trees and Santas. In the evening one may watch “Scrooge,” and PBS may show “La Pastorala,” a Christmas pageant performed by the Teatro Campesino. Other channels will broadcast NFL and college football. The newspapers will be heavy with advertising, announcing after-Thanksgiving or Christmas sales for Friday and Saturday. Some over-anxious businesses will even be open on Thanksgiving Day.

According to an article in Yankee Magazine in 1995, in 1939 the celebration of Thanksgiving was deliberately moved, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, from the last Thursday of November to the one preceding it. This would extend the Holiday Season and enable retailers to sell more goods before Christmas and provide a longer period of temporary work to the unemployed of a country that was just struggling out of the Great Depression. However, the plan was unpopular from them beginning. College and high school football coaches were incensed to learn that their Thanksgiving Day games would now fall on an ordinary working day if they continued to play on November 30.

The board of selectmen in Plymouth, Mass. sent an angry letter to the president protesting this change and announcing that Plymouth would not recognize the change, as they felt it was “a religious holiday and the president has no right to change it for commercial reasons.” In May of 1941 the President declared that in 1942 the holiday would revert to the original date and Congress passed a resolution permanently fixing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.

For the German immigrant the American Thanksgiving is a perplexing coming together of two very different celebrations. ” Erntedanktag ” (literally “Harvest-Thanksgiving-Day”) falls in early October, is an official holiday in most German-speaking areas of Europe, and is celebrated in churches and market places, in homes and dance halls decorated with fruits and the harvest of the fields. Then there is the beginning of the holiday season, of Advent, which falls on the first Sunday after November 26, when the Christmas markets will open. The Advent Wreath will be decorated and the first candle will be lit. Children will receive an Advent Calendar.

The traditional American thanksgiving meal consists of Turkey, served with cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, corn, and the customary pumpkin pie. While immigrants were thankful, for the newcomer the turkey dinner continues to be a challenge, for sweet potatoes, corn and pumpkin may not have been known to them. It is not that the German immigrant housewife did not want to prepare the meal, it was just that she, as other newcomers to the U.S., did not know how. So the Germans would have a stuffed bird, mashed potatoes, green beans and carrots, the customary apple or plum cake and maybe a Dutch apple pie.