There’s growing sentiment in our country that Thanksgiving has been overrun by Christmas. Indeed…when you think about the news coverage this week, are you hearing more about Turkey Thursday or Black Friday?
It wasn’t always that way.
I remember as a kid that we had some hard and fast rules around our house and one of them was that Christmas decorations didn’t go up until around the 2nd Saturday of December. It was never considered to decorate the weekend after Thanksgiving, as so many of us now do, or, worse yet, before. That wasn’t just the Gary rule, either. It seemed to be a sort of community standard.
Thanksgiving, as it was, was celebrated for Thanksgiving…not a prelude to holiday shopping.
In schools, I remember that we did the turkey drawings with the hand. You remember the ones? You traced over the outline of your hand. The thumb became the head and your fingers the feathers. Even a non-artistic kid like myself could make a credible drawing like that and feel good about it.
We also learned about ‘the pilgrims’ in school. Do they even still teach about them? I really don’t know. I never noticed my kids coming home talking about the Mayflower, the first Thanksgiving or anything relating to Plymouth Rock. We did visit Plymouth once – kind of discovered it by accident - on our drive from Boston to Cape Cod. Lisa and I did a quick lesson about the significance and we got some vague nods from the kids, like, “Oh…yeah…I think I’ve heard of that…”
I’m not even sure they heard much about President Lincoln’s proclamation in 1863 which gave birth to this tradition on the fourth Thursday in November.
As a kid with families in two towns, Thanksgivings usually meant spending the holiday with one or the other. Early on, I have a vague memory of travelling to the Gary farm north of Memphis to celebrate with family.
I think it was on that trip that I was photographed with one of the Gary cows. That photo later inspired a painting that my dad did some years ago. In the picture, “ol’ Bossie” doesn’t look all that happy about me staring her down.
I can think of at least a couple other infamous November holiday trips where we kept the roads hot. For a while, it was a frequent occurrence. Then, I think, we stopped the travel after the year we encountered a freak November snow storm along the Cumberland Plateau.
Less travel meant more time for sleep and creativity. We’d watch the parades early in the morning and then cook up some big plans.
In the neighborhood where I spent most of my time as an older child, we got the idea one year that we were going to stage an annual football game on Thanksgiving. It would be held in the morning right before everyone had to scatter to tend to their family obligations. I think that ‘tradition’ lasted entirely ONE year. After that, we concerned ourselves with NFL football as our only option – Detroit in the early game; Dallas in the late one. Meals were often scheduled around that 4 o’clock kickoff.
Those meals also led to one last great Thanksgiving tradition from my childhood that carries over to this day – leftovers. My preferred combination of Friday leftovers is a turkey sandwich served with Ruffles chips and Dr. Pepper. Don’t ask me where that combination comes from. It’s probably buried deep in the recesses of a childhood memory. Still, my ‘day-after’ lunch always brings a smile to my face and satisfaction to my tastebuds.
Tell ya what…you go shopping on Friday; I’ll just enjoy the leftovers. Leaves more for me!
JG
(Source: history1800s.about.com)
Originally posted 11/21/2011
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