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Modern Thanksgiving, Part One: A Culture War · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
0:27
Speaker 1: welcome back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as
0:30
Speaker 1: always so much for tuning in. It is still the
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Speaker 1: spooky season here over Ridiculous History, and uh, we're all
0:39
Speaker 1: big fans of it, but there are other holidays looming
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Speaker 1: on the horizon as well, and we're gonna do what
0:46
Speaker 1: Corporate America calls getting in front of it. In today's episode,
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Speaker 1: I'm Ben. That's our super producer, the one and only
0:53
Speaker 1: Max Williams, And uh know, all your backgrounds changed today.
0:57
Speaker 1: It looks like someone's in the office. Yeah, can you
1:00
Speaker 1: hear that cool drilling? It does like I'm at the dentist.
1:04
Speaker 1: I was leaving it in. This is just the real
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Speaker 1: life of a podcaster. And it's funny because things like
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Speaker 1: that don't happen when you're at home. When you go
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Speaker 1: into the office, all of a sudden, there's like they're
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Speaker 1: tearing down walls in the office next door, and and
1:15
Speaker 1: you know, do they care about are putting out quality content?
1:18
Speaker 1: I think not, but hopefully it'll just be intermittent. But yeah,
1:22
Speaker 1: I do have a different background. It's sort of a foamy, soft,
1:25
Speaker 1: corrugated kind of background, because I am, in fact, in
1:28
Speaker 1: one of our studios at at our office here in Atlanta. Ben,
1:32
Speaker 1: you mentioned the spooky season, and you're and I see
1:34
Speaker 1: what you're doing here. You're segueing into looming holidays. I
1:37
Speaker 1: would argue that Thanksgiving and even spookier than Halloween, because
1:43
Speaker 1: the turkey is an abomination, my friend. That is a
1:47
Speaker 1: terrifying creature, and I would not want one to come
1:50
Speaker 1: at me. You know how I feel about birds, but
1:51
Speaker 1: turkeys in particular, their talents, and they're weird, fanned out,
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Speaker 1: feathered things, and that that that horrifying wattle, gobbler, whatever
2:00
Speaker 1: you call it. It just looks like it's the stuff
2:01
Speaker 1: of nightmares, my friend, the stuff of nightmares. Turkeys are
2:04
Speaker 1: tough to cook, too. You can always reach out to
2:06
Speaker 1: me with advice, because I've made those mistakes before. When
2:09
Speaker 1: I initially pitched this episode to you guys off air
2:12
Speaker 1: as something we could do this week, I think my
2:15
Speaker 1: my logic, which was a bit of a reach, was
2:17
Speaker 1: that yes, Halloween is spooky, but for many people in
2:21
Speaker 1: the US and you know, in other countries with their
2:24
Speaker 1: versions of Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving dinner with your extended family is
2:28
Speaker 1: just as much of a horror show or has the
2:30
Speaker 1: potential to be so. Luckily, we thought this was solid enough,
2:34
Speaker 1: and we we learned something with the help of our
2:37
Speaker 1: pal Gabe, very interesting about Thanksgiving. Uh it's something that
2:42
Speaker 1: I don't know about, you know, I was not aware
2:45
Speaker 1: of until we started researching this. For years, for decades, dude,
2:52
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving was considered a very controversial holiday, not for not
2:57
Speaker 1: for the reasons that people talk about it now, but
2:59
Speaker 1: because people in the South thought it was a Yankee
3:03
Speaker 1: abolitionist celebration, which what, Yeah, it's just literally was a
3:08
Speaker 1: cultural thing because I mean a lot of the foods
3:11
Speaker 1: that were a big part of it that we still
3:12
Speaker 1: think of today, like pumpkin pie and uh, what was
3:15
Speaker 1: really big in the early days of Thanksgiving, chicken pot pie.
3:19
Speaker 1: I think it was a Southern thing, but I think
3:21
Speaker 1: it also has roots in, like, you know, the North
3:24
Speaker 1: as well. They really call it something different, but I
3:26
Speaker 1: think there was a sense that this was a way
3:29
Speaker 1: of trying to force Northern ideals and cultural kind of
3:35
Speaker 1: touchstones onto the South, and they didn't want to have
3:38
Speaker 1: anything to do with that. They were still feeling pretty
3:40
Speaker 1: raw about that old Civil War thing. Yeah, yeah, this
3:42
Speaker 1: was back when the moneyed Southerners probably still referred to
3:46
Speaker 1: it as the recent unpleasantness. Right. There was this campaign
3:51
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds to make Thanksgiving a permanent holiday,
3:55
Speaker 1: and oddly enough it was seen as a move in
4:00
Speaker 1: a culture war by people in the South, kind of
4:04
Speaker 1: the way that you'll hear some folks every year talk
4:07
Speaker 1: about a war on Christmas. Southerners for a time thought
4:11
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving was a war on them. And of course the
4:16
Speaker 1: first account of Thanksgiving is way older than the Civil War.
4:20
Speaker 1: There's a letter written about a pilgrim's meal in sixteen
4:24
Speaker 1: twenty one. This was we talked about the evolution of
4:27
Speaker 1: Halloween a bit in um our episode on Haunted Houses.
4:31
Speaker 1: This holiday also evolved from like a supper that you
4:34
Speaker 1: would have traditionally during the harvest season to this Puritan
4:38
Speaker 1: day of thanks to God in colonial New England. And
4:43
Speaker 1: then I think as you go through the seventeen hundreds,
4:46
Speaker 1: we see that it evolves increasingly into a holiday that
4:50
Speaker 1: is like the Thanksgiving table is to Thanksgiving as the
4:55
Speaker 1: Christmas tree is to Christmas. Yeah, and it's certainly been
4:57
Speaker 1: gussied up over the years and and into you know,
5:01
Speaker 1: more of a symbol um of togetherness and family, and
5:05
Speaker 1: less even like a cultural remembrance or a nod, or
5:09
Speaker 1: even like a tacent thank you to the Native Americans who,
5:12
Speaker 1: you know, whose land we you know, kind of stole
5:14
Speaker 1: or whatever. I think the original Thanksgiving dinner, actually the
5:17
Speaker 1: main course was just exclusively plague blankets, if I'm not mistaken.
5:21
Speaker 1: It's interesting to mention that because the idea of the
5:24
Speaker 1: smallpox blanket is it's it's often bandied about here, but
5:29
Speaker 1: I read somewhere that there were serious questions about whether
5:34
Speaker 1: it actually worked. I'm thinking specifically of an early American
5:38
Speaker 1: historian named Elizabeth fenn Over at University of Colorado, Boulder.
5:43
Speaker 1: But your point stands, regardless of the smallpox blankets or
5:46
Speaker 1: their efficacy. Uh, the colonists were not very appreciative of
5:53
Speaker 1: all that the Native people's had done in a very
5:56
Speaker 1: real way to keep them alive in those early days. Uh.
5:59
Speaker 1: And yes, Europeans did take the land, It's true. Um,
6:03
Speaker 1: But you know, Thanksgiving has endured. Uh. And I think,
6:07
Speaker 1: you know, sort of morphed into to something a little
6:09
Speaker 1: bit different. But it is kind of one excuse for families,
6:12
Speaker 1: hopefully typically ones that like each other to get together,
6:16
Speaker 1: gather at the table and and um, you know, have
6:18
Speaker 1: a day of rest and and a day to give
6:20
Speaker 1: thanks for you know, all that life has to offer. Um.
6:24
Speaker 1: But before we talk about, you know, what Thanksgiving has
6:27
Speaker 1: become today, how maybe the sort of you know, North
6:30
Speaker 1: South divide was maybe cooled off a little bit. Let's
6:33
Speaker 1: just talk about the first American Thanksgiving, what it actually
6:37
Speaker 1: might have been like, and then how it became, you know,
6:41
Speaker 1: sort of a national tradition, even if it wasn't like mandatory. Yeah, yeah,
6:46
Speaker 1: Like we said, there was this letter about the Pilgrim's
6:50
Speaker 1: Meal in sixteen twenty one, and over the seventeen hundreds
6:53
Speaker 1: it became again a holiday, increasingly centered on the idea
6:57
Speaker 1: of breaking bread with people. As New England became more
7:01
Speaker 1: and more populated by colonists, people who lived there started
7:06
Speaker 1: lighting out west right, as Mark Twain would say, and
7:10
Speaker 1: they took all their cultural traditions with them, including this
7:15
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving thing that they did every year of first in
7:19
Speaker 1: New York State and then in the Michigan territories, and
7:23
Speaker 1: then in what would become Ohio. People who were expanding
7:27
Speaker 1: into this uh, into this land, into these regions decided
7:31
Speaker 1: they would take that harvest feast with them. I do
7:34
Speaker 1: want to point out, just to be very clear, Professor Fenn,
7:37
Speaker 1: who I quoted earlier about the smallpox blankets, she's not
7:41
Speaker 1: saying that people didn't try to do it. It's documented
7:44
Speaker 1: Europeans did try to do it. Her question is whether
7:48
Speaker 1: it actually worked, which is transmissible in that way, like
7:52
Speaker 1: given the age of the infection and so on. But
7:56
Speaker 1: of course there were other ways, other much more direct
7:59
Speaker 1: ways that call eists. We're spreading disease two native populations.
8:04
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving as a concept as like a national Hey, you're
8:08
Speaker 1: in the US, do this. It's been around since the
8:12
Speaker 1: days of the Continental Congress when they started issuing these directions,
8:18
Speaker 1: uh to celebrate multiple days of thanks in honor of
8:23
Speaker 1: various military victories. And I think it was seventy nine
8:27
Speaker 1: George Washington called for a all around the nation day
8:31
Speaker 1: of thanks The war's over, we've got a constitution, now
8:35
Speaker 1: go team yeah and all the other A lot of
8:37
Speaker 1: the other Founding fathers got in on that too, making
8:40
Speaker 1: their own proclamations, which I'm a little confused by this
8:42
Speaker 1: sort of like, oh, you can think you can make
8:44
Speaker 1: a proclamation. Mr George Washington. Well, John Adams is going
8:48
Speaker 1: to make my own proclamation, and I James Madison will
8:51
Speaker 1: do the same. Just seems a little redundant. Thomas Jefferson,
8:54
Speaker 1: on the other hand, felt that there were religious connotations
8:58
Speaker 1: that surrounded the event, and he was a big proponent
9:01
Speaker 1: of separation of church and state. So um, he did
9:05
Speaker 1: not make any formal declarations about this day of thanks
9:08
Speaker 1: until eighteen fifteen. He's almost like he was boycotting a
9:12
Speaker 1: little bit because of the idea of thanks I only
9:14
Speaker 1: can assume revolves around faith in some way in his mind.
9:20
Speaker 1: I don't know, I've always thought of Thanksgiving as a
9:21
Speaker 1: pretty secular holiday, uh, more of like a history kind
9:25
Speaker 1: of honoring, a you know, this kind of bruise colored
9:29
Speaker 1: history thing that maybe never happened the way we think.
9:31
Speaker 1: But now I'm interested to I would be interested in
9:34
Speaker 1: his thought process as to what made it feel like
9:36
Speaker 1: it had religious connotations. Maybe the way of prayer or
9:39
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, I mean, we keep in mind,
9:42
Speaker 1: this is the guy who literally rewrote the Bible and
9:45
Speaker 1: took out all this stuff that might be seen as
9:47
Speaker 1: supernatural in his opinion. We know that in the eighteen
9:57
Speaker 1: forties Thanksgiving is uh big to do across the Northeast
10:04
Speaker 1: and through the Midwest, But it wasn't like it wasn't
10:09
Speaker 1: quite as uniform or homogeneous as it is today. By
10:13
Speaker 1: this point, the like the returning champs of your stereotypical
10:17
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving Day menu had already been established. Uh roasted turkey,
10:23
Speaker 1: cranberry sauce, potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pies, et cetera. But as
10:28
Speaker 1: you pointed out earlier, No, for some reason, chicken pot
10:32
Speaker 1: pie disappeared, which is a shame because chicken pot pie
10:36
Speaker 1: is delicious, especially if you make it from scratch. Oh guy,
10:39
Speaker 1: it's incredible. And I'll tell you a bit of a
10:41
Speaker 1: sleeper hit. Um, if you're looking for some decent quality
10:44
Speaker 1: fast food, I highly recommend the KFC chicken pot Pie.
10:50
Speaker 1: Very flaky crusts, nice creamy filling, good real chicken. Um.
10:54
Speaker 1: I'm not getting paid for this. I just I'm a
10:56
Speaker 1: big fan of the KFC chicken pot pie. But yeah,
10:59
Speaker 1: it's weird, Like they just called the chicken pie, so
11:02
Speaker 1: I'm assuming it would follow the tradition of like a
11:04
Speaker 1: mince pie or like, you know, just more British pies
11:07
Speaker 1: where it's just a flaky crust with filling. And I'm
11:10
Speaker 1: sure maybe isn't exactly what we know today is chicken
11:12
Speaker 1: pot pie, but probably the closest. That's probably the closest
11:16
Speaker 1: analog that we can think of really quickly. You you
11:19
Speaker 1: made me think of something. You mentioned how Thomas Jefferson
11:22
Speaker 1: rewrote the Bible to get rid of some, you know,
11:24
Speaker 1: any offending passages. I guess that that, uh, that to
11:26
Speaker 1: upset his delicate sensibilities. And it reminded me I just
11:30
Speaker 1: found out we're not super closer anything. We're on internet pals.
11:33
Speaker 1: And she's a very talented musician, uh and songwriter in Athens,
11:37
Speaker 1: Georgia of Aaron Lovett. She just came out with her
11:40
Speaker 1: first book, I believe, and it's called The Secret of
11:43
Speaker 1: Chimneys but not racist. Agatha Christie but not racist. So
11:47
Speaker 1: she's basically rewritten all these Agatha Christie books and taking
11:51
Speaker 1: out all the uncomfortable racist bits. So even some little
11:56
Speaker 1: Indians has problems know the original title. It sounds like
12:02
Speaker 1: she's doing the whole series, or at least a bunch
12:03
Speaker 1: of them. Says it's a highly modernized collection of all
12:06
Speaker 1: your beloved favorites from legendary Mr Author Agatha Christie. But
12:09
Speaker 1: with all the racism and much and as much sexism
12:12
Speaker 1: as we could manage without entirely rewriting every female character
12:15
Speaker 1: painstakingly redacted by our editors. So good job, Aaron, thanks
12:20
Speaker 1: to you. And when we're talking about Thanksgiving, we have
12:26
Speaker 1: to be clear that back in those days, there wasn't
12:29
Speaker 1: an official national fixed day for Thanksgiving where everybody tried
12:35
Speaker 1: to take some time off and make nice with their
12:37
Speaker 1: relatives and loved ones. Instead, the governor of each state
12:42
Speaker 1: every single year would issue this proclamation and really was
12:46
Speaker 1: up to them to determine what day it would be.
12:49
Speaker 1: Most folks did choose a Thursday in late November, sometimes
12:52
Speaker 1: early December. But some people would say, now, let's do
12:55
Speaker 1: it on Saturday. And some people would say, ah, let's
12:58
Speaker 1: let's wait till January, or let's just get it out
13:00
Speaker 1: of the way here in September. And this, uh, this
13:03
Speaker 1: got to some folks. I mean, can we say yankee
13:05
Speaker 1: on air? Enough time has passed, right, I think? I think,
13:08
Speaker 1: I think the statute of limitations for that particular slur
13:10
Speaker 1: has expired. Yankee Yankee yankee, uh Yankee doodle dandy? Wasn't
13:14
Speaker 1: there a sports team called the Yankees. They still is
13:18
Speaker 1: is that is that? Is? That? Is that soccer? And
13:21
Speaker 1: I'm kidding, I don't know sports and Macaroni when he
13:23
Speaker 1: sticks a feather in his cap and calls it macaroney
13:25
Speaker 1: and the song that means cool. He's trying to be
13:29
Speaker 1: like a cool Italian guys, like a hipster thing. But
13:32
Speaker 1: all this pushback was seen as pretty absurd by you know,
13:37
Speaker 1: some of these uh, these these Yankee types. They just
13:40
Speaker 1: didn't understand what the beef was or the you know,
13:43
Speaker 1: the stuffing was. So a group of Northerners um, who
13:48
Speaker 1: were professionals and academics, uh, members of the clergy for example,
13:52
Speaker 1: I'm editors, newspapers, teachers, educators, they banded together and they
13:57
Speaker 1: started with this article in the series, eats dot Com
14:01
Speaker 1: refers to as I love the idea of being an agitator,
14:10
Speaker 1: for this makes me think of like poking something with
14:13
Speaker 1: a stick. Um. But they decided they were going to
14:17
Speaker 1: single handedly, you know, or at least as like a
14:19
Speaker 1: you know, kind of hive mind, make Thanksgiving a uniform
14:23
Speaker 1: national holiday. And of that group, the clear ringleader was
14:29
Speaker 1: a spitfire of a woman named Sarah Josifa Hale. She
14:35
Speaker 1: was a widow. She had been widowed in her mid thirties.
14:38
Speaker 1: She had five children that she raised on her own.
14:41
Speaker 1: Um born in New Hampshire, needed, you know, to make money,
14:45
Speaker 1: and she decided that she was going to become a writer,
14:49
Speaker 1: and she did just that. She wrote the children's poem
14:52
Speaker 1: Mary Had a Little Lamb Heard of that originally known
14:57
Speaker 1: as Mary's Lap Mary's m Yeah, in eighteen thirty, hugely,
15:03
Speaker 1: hugely iconic poem, and she um got so famous so
15:07
Speaker 1: quickly that she decided to use her newfound celebrity as
15:11
Speaker 1: a children's author to uh promote causes that she believed
15:16
Speaker 1: right yeah, women's issues, other other social movements that were
15:20
Speaker 1: close to her heart. She went on to write a
15:22
Speaker 1: novel or series novels. Her first one was Northwood or
15:25
Speaker 1: Life North and South, which was kind of a compare
15:28
Speaker 1: contrast of what she saw his everyday life in the
15:32
Speaker 1: southern US and in New England. And there's an entire
15:35
Speaker 1: chapter that talks about Thanksgiving celebration on a farm in
15:39
Speaker 1: New Hampshire. And in this she said that this celebration
15:44
Speaker 1: should be pretty much on the same level as the
15:46
Speaker 1: Fourth of July should be a national holiday. Mary had
15:49
Speaker 1: a little lamb, as we call it today, a sidebar.
15:54
Speaker 1: This happens a lot with songs, like people just take
15:57
Speaker 1: the most memorable lyric of a song or poem and
16:00
Speaker 1: that becomes the name. Sort of like that poor kid
16:04
Speaker 1: who has described as honey boo boo, she has an
16:07
Speaker 1: actual name. Honey boo boo is just a phrase she
16:09
Speaker 1: used anyway. That's that's a little quick problem with media.
16:14
Speaker 1: Here's what happened. This Northwood novel makes Hale a literary superstar.
16:19
Speaker 1: Seven she becomes the editor of Goadie's Ladies Book, which
16:23
Speaker 1: is the most widely distributed magazine in the country at
16:27
Speaker 1: the time. More than a hundred and fifty thousand people
16:31
Speaker 1: are reading every issue. So this is her new platform
16:34
Speaker 1: to galvanize the public towards celebrating a single, national, unified
16:39
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving Day. And she takes every November issue of the
16:43
Speaker 1: magazine and just stuffs the turkey of the thing with
16:47
Speaker 1: all kinds of Thanksgiving stories, poems, recipes, and uh. She
16:52
Speaker 1: also writes a lot of editorials like her pins on
16:55
Speaker 1: fire when she keeps telling America, look, everybody on the
17:00
Speaker 1: same page, get on the same plate. We're making Thanksgiving happen.
17:04
Speaker 1: It's interesting, right, Like, I don't quite understand where all
17:07
Speaker 1: this zeal comes from. You know. I think maybe because
17:10
Speaker 1: it was a tradition that was brought over to the colonies,
17:15
Speaker 1: you know, and became this kind of tradition. And also
17:18
Speaker 1: I think there was that there was some resentment that
17:21
Speaker 1: the Southerners were looking at it as this kind of
17:23
Speaker 1: like you know, almost propaganda thing that was trying to
17:26
Speaker 1: be forced onto them. And I think it was almost like, hey,
17:29
Speaker 1: hold the phone, this is actually really cool and something
17:31
Speaker 1: that I think is very innocuous ultimately and just about family,
17:36
Speaker 1: and like why not have a national day where everyone
17:39
Speaker 1: gets to take off and kind of enjoy these particular
17:42
Speaker 1: foods because it seems nice and pleasant to me and charming.
17:45
Speaker 1: And that's certainly how she wrote about it. She created
17:48
Speaker 1: this whole almost lore surrounding it. It's almost like, um,
17:51
Speaker 1: you know those early catalogs Rember catalog culture ben where
17:55
Speaker 1: you had this image of like what you know American
17:58
Speaker 1: life should be. It was like it have sold to
18:00
Speaker 1: you by these advertisers, the idea of like you know,
18:03
Speaker 1: two point five kids and you know, the Cadillac and
18:07
Speaker 1: the driveway and all that she was almost doing that
18:10
Speaker 1: for the holiday of Thanksgiving, um and making it like
18:13
Speaker 1: weaving it into the fabric of that like what you know, what,
18:17
Speaker 1: what should life as an American be? Right? Codifying practice
18:22
Speaker 1: and through codifying practice, attempting to codify culture, which she
18:26
Speaker 1: had arguably succeeded at So back to Hale's story here
18:30
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty six, she's been doing this Thanksgiving propaganda
18:35
Speaker 1: for some time. She inspires and and launches an annual
18:41
Speaker 1: letter writing campaign to all the governors in the nation.
18:44
Speaker 1: And in this campaign she urges them to get on
18:48
Speaker 1: the same page as I said, get on the same
18:50
Speaker 1: plate about Thanksgiving Day, and she says, look, it needs
18:53
Speaker 1: to be the last Thursday in November. You can actually
18:56
Speaker 1: read her original pitch online Kurt see of our good
19:01
Speaker 1: friends over at Atlas Obscures. So shout out to Sarah
19:04
Speaker 1: Laskow for that one. Her lobbying is very successful, not
19:08
Speaker 1: just in the North but in the South. People from
19:11
Speaker 1: the governors rather of various places declared their Thanksgiving Days
19:16
Speaker 1: officially in eighteen forty seven, and then in eighteen fifty
19:21
Speaker 1: Texas followed. In just a few years, most governors of
19:25
Speaker 1: southern states have also fallen in line with this, and concurrently,
19:31
Speaker 1: Hale was also lobbying federal officials to create a national
19:36
Speaker 1: level day of thanks also on you guessed it, folks,
19:40
Speaker 1: the last Thursday of November. Her goal this was so
19:44
Speaker 1: interesting to me, and it and it seems like a
19:47
Speaker 1: good idea. Her goal was to bring the country together
19:51
Speaker 1: with something that could be seen as sort of free
19:54
Speaker 1: of politics, free of social strife. You're right, the same
19:59
Speaker 1: way people often celebrate Thanksgiving today, you'll you'll see some
20:03
Speaker 1: families that say, all right, we're not discussing politics at
20:07
Speaker 1: the table, especially not when you know, Uncle Jimmy has
20:10
Speaker 1: had a couple of a couple of beers, so we're
20:13
Speaker 1: just going to get through this day together. She thought
20:15
Speaker 1: this could ease the growing tensions and divisions between the
20:20
Speaker 1: north and south of the US, and by eighteen fifty four, Uh,
20:26
Speaker 1: it looked like she was on the path to success.
20:28
Speaker 1: More than thirty states and US territories all had Thanksgiving
20:33
Speaker 1: on the schedule, but she has hadn't quite made it
20:36
Speaker 1: a national holiday. Just to backtrack real quick, and Uh,
20:46
Speaker 1: for a point of clarification, I've been sort of referring
20:48
Speaker 1: to the Civil War as if it were already you know,
20:51
Speaker 1: kicked off in earnest. It was really more just the
20:53
Speaker 1: tensions that led to the Civil War and that divide.
20:56
Speaker 1: I mean, they were absolutely palpable, and this was you
20:59
Speaker 1: could consider all of this like the run up to
21:01
Speaker 1: the Civil War. The South strongly rejected anything that even
21:06
Speaker 1: had a whiff of Yankee sentiments because they saw it
21:10
Speaker 1: as a condemnation of the Southern way of life, which
21:14
Speaker 1: was like, you know, owning slaves are cool, um, And
21:17
Speaker 1: it's like a big government thing, right, because so they're saying, oh,
21:20
Speaker 1: this national group, that's a good point. They're saying, it's
21:24
Speaker 1: just another way for the federal government, for big Brother
21:27
Speaker 1: to tread on us, you know, to oppress us. Which
21:30
Speaker 1: is weird because eating turkey is a lot of things.
21:34
Speaker 1: But is it an act of oppression? It just feels
21:36
Speaker 1: like a stretch. It feels like it does. It does.
21:39
Speaker 1: But but they were using this as a tool, you
21:41
Speaker 1: know what I mean. I mean, we we see this
21:42
Speaker 1: all the time, like very innocuous things are glommed onto
21:46
Speaker 1: by an opposition and uh, you know, elevated to some
21:50
Speaker 1: kind of to represent something else. Right. In fact, the
21:53
Speaker 1: professor emeritus of history at the University of Georgia right
21:57
Speaker 1: near where we are, James C. K Um He had
22:00
Speaker 1: this to say about it. With the whole prospect of
22:03
Speaker 1: a showdown over the expansion of slavery, there was more
22:06
Speaker 1: and more rhetoric coming out of the South charging that
22:08
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving was pretty much a Yankee abolitionist holiday, even though
22:13
Speaker 1: you know some maybe slightly more moderate governors I guess
22:16
Speaker 1: or who weren't jumping on this, uh this bandwagon from
22:19
Speaker 1: Arkansas and Mississippi. No less, they did start to kind
22:22
Speaker 1: of embrace the idea of Thanksgiving in eighteen forty, in
22:26
Speaker 1: the early eighteen forties, issuing these Thanksgiving proclamations that we've
22:30
Speaker 1: seen in other states, for um, Arkansas, Missippi, respectively. The
22:35
Speaker 1: idea of celebrating like a Puritan Northern holiday became more
22:39
Speaker 1: and more of a sticking point in the eighteen fifties
22:42
Speaker 1: as things really started to heat up with that debate
22:46
Speaker 1: on slavery. Yeah. Yeah. Diana Carter apple Bomb sums it
22:51
Speaker 1: up perfectly in her work Thanksgiving an American Holiday in
22:55
Speaker 1: American History. She says Thanksgiving was above all a new
22:59
Speaker 1: inkle and holiday in New England was abolitionist territory. So
23:04
Speaker 1: you know a human psychology works, fellow ridiculous historians. If
23:09
Speaker 1: you already don't care for someone, then everything you see
23:13
Speaker 1: them do is going to be another reason for you
23:16
Speaker 1: not to like them, even if it's something as innocuous says, hey,
23:19
Speaker 1: let's all eat dinner together. People who are front and
23:23
Speaker 1: center on the idea of a national Thanksgiving holiday also
23:29
Speaker 1: tended to be Protestants, Northern Evangelical Protestants, and those folks
23:34
Speaker 1: were themselves very closely linked to the abolitionist movement. And
23:40
Speaker 1: you know, at this time, nothing occurs in a vacuum.
23:42
Speaker 1: At this time, UH, people are increasingly in favor of
23:46
Speaker 1: abolition in the eighteen forties, and a lot of Northern
23:50
Speaker 1: ministers are going to the pulpit during Thanksgiving season to
23:55
Speaker 1: talk about how horrific and terrible slavery is. So south Owners,
24:00
Speaker 1: the rulers of the southern region at this time, start
24:04
Speaker 1: to the buck. They pushed back against the idea of Thanksgiving,
24:08
Speaker 1: and especially in Virginia, I believe, where the local leaders said,
24:12
Speaker 1: our state is the real cradle of this nation, not those,
24:17
Speaker 1: not those UH jerks up in New England. And so
24:22
Speaker 1: this this occurs. This resistance to Thanksgiving also occurs in
24:27
Speaker 1: other ideas, like because to them, it very much is
24:30
Speaker 1: a culture war. Southerners, even the very well to do Southerners,
24:34
Speaker 1: are saying, hey, let's not send our kids to those
24:38
Speaker 1: Ivy League schools up north. Let's not have Yankees teach
24:43
Speaker 1: our kids. And you know what if a magazine, if
24:46
Speaker 1: a magazine is published in these northern states, then I
24:50
Speaker 1: will be damned good sir, if I will ever soiled
24:54
Speaker 1: my eyes by looking upon its page. YEA, Indeed, it
24:58
Speaker 1: was pretty pretty crazy. It was like, you know, again,
25:01
Speaker 1: this whole the antide Thanksgiving sentiment was really just wrapped
25:06
Speaker 1: up in this anti northern the sentiment in the South,
25:09
Speaker 1: just looking for any excuse to escalate. So Thanksgiving this
25:12
Speaker 1: kind of became part of one of those things that
25:15
Speaker 1: you just mentioned that nah, we we don't, we don't
25:17
Speaker 1: celebrate that Yankee travesty of a holiday, no thank you.
25:22
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty three, Governor Joseph Johnson UM he declined
25:27
Speaker 1: to declare a day for Thanksgiving for his state, saying
25:32
Speaker 1: that he sided with Thomas Jefferson. That interesting point we
25:36
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, the idea of separating church from state. Um.
25:40
Speaker 1: Johnson's successor was this slave owning real pill named Henry A. Wise,
25:46
Speaker 1: who was even more in the separation of church and state.
25:50
Speaker 1: Camp In six um he got that same letter that
25:54
Speaker 1: Sarah Josepha Hill had been sending all of the governors
25:57
Speaker 1: encouraging them to declare a general day for Thanksgiving. And
26:02
Speaker 1: I only did Wise say absolutely not, but he who
26:05
Speaker 1: wrote her back a strongly worded letter where he um,
26:09
Speaker 1: you know, laid out his his position on the issue. Uh.
26:13
Speaker 1: Thus Lee, this theatrical national clap trap of Thanksgiving has
26:18
Speaker 1: aided other causes and setting thousands of bull bits to
26:21
Speaker 1: preach in Christian politics instead of humbling, letting the cornal
26:25
Speaker 1: kingdom alone and preaching singly Christ crucified. Yeah, and just
26:32
Speaker 1: a point in clarity there. Governor Joseph Johnson and Henry A. Wise,
26:37
Speaker 1: they're governors of Virginia. They were successors, they won, one
26:42
Speaker 1: came after the other, and they both were similarly focused
26:46
Speaker 1: on this separation of church and state. But again, I'm
26:49
Speaker 1: still not in any of our research not seeing any
26:54
Speaker 1: religious ties at all to Thanksgiving. It strikes me as
26:56
Speaker 1: even in its onset, to be a very secular holiday um,
27:00
Speaker 1: I mean obviously the church service, you know, promoting giving
27:03
Speaker 1: thanks and all that. I mean that that's the separate thing.
27:06
Speaker 1: You know, it's up to you as to whether you
27:08
Speaker 1: make it religious or not in your house. But all
27:10
Speaker 1: of the you know, even like the church, the reliy
27:12
Speaker 1: of the songs around Thanksgiving, like we gathered together well
27:15
Speaker 1: does said to ask the Lord's blessing? I guess there's
27:19
Speaker 1: you know, the Puritan angle Maybes. And again the Protestants
27:23
Speaker 1: who are pushing this are like champions of abolition, so
27:27
Speaker 1: it's seen as supporting that holiday from the southern perspective
27:31
Speaker 1: if their pro slavery is seen as supporting abolition, which
27:35
Speaker 1: they were very much not. I mean, let's call it
27:38
Speaker 1: what it is. Governor Johnson and Governor Wise, we're both
27:42
Speaker 1: super into enslaving people. They saw nothing wrong with it,
27:46
Speaker 1: and they didn't want to erode what they saw as
27:48
Speaker 1: the status quo. The Richmond Wig later articulates the case
27:54
Speaker 1: against Thanksgiving. Uh more so when they say it's not
28:00
Speaker 1: it is enough, so maybe they are agreeing a little
28:02
Speaker 1: more with you. They say it's it's too worldly. And
28:06
Speaker 1: the Richmond Wig, by the way, is a publication. They say,
28:09
Speaker 1: what people should be doing on Thanksgiving is praying. And
28:14
Speaker 1: in the District of Columbia they said all the federal
28:17
Speaker 1: offices are closed, but quote an astonishing quantity of execrable
28:24
Speaker 1: liquor will be guzzled and the holiday would be little
28:27
Speaker 1: more than an occasion for indulgence in dissipation at the
28:32
Speaker 1: cost of character. What was that word been execrable X
28:37
Speaker 1: What does that mean like like like like intoxicating. No,
28:40
Speaker 1: it means like disgusting, like excellent. It's it's He's basically
28:44
Speaker 1: saying that it's that it's the devil's the devil's juice. Yes, understood.
28:49
Speaker 1: And again I just want to point out that we
28:51
Speaker 1: are still kind of these simmering tensions and all of
28:56
Speaker 1: this really charged rhetoric is all just kind of the
28:59
Speaker 1: run up to the Civil War, which is coming closer
29:04
Speaker 1: day by day. On the actual eve of the start
29:08
Speaker 1: of the Civil War, the acceptance of Thanksgiving in the
29:12
Speaker 1: South was still very very spotty. There was really no
29:17
Speaker 1: rhyme or reason to it. It was up to individuals
29:20
Speaker 1: and individual governors, you know, as to declaring a special
29:24
Speaker 1: day that would be you know, a government holiday. Those
29:28
Speaker 1: that did decide to observe the holiday treated it like
29:32
Speaker 1: a religious day, like something likely going to a mass,
29:36
Speaker 1: you know, or a day of relaxation where you would
29:39
Speaker 1: have you know, big, a big spread with the family,
29:42
Speaker 1: like a homecoming kind of situation. But it was there,
29:45
Speaker 1: there was wild inconsistencies with the way it was was
29:48
Speaker 1: practiced right, and it's very much this is not for nothing, folks.
29:53
Speaker 1: Was I saying this has comparisons to the so called
29:57
Speaker 1: War on Christmas in the modern day because commentators in
30:01
Speaker 1: the South said, look, we already have a holiday of
30:04
Speaker 1: feasting and celebration towards the end of the year. It's
30:07
Speaker 1: called Christmas. In New England, there was still this legacy,
30:11
Speaker 1: this puritan belief that Christmas was a secular abomination. And hey,
30:16
Speaker 1: look around at the various traditions of Christmas and where
30:19
Speaker 1: they come from. They're not entirely off base in in
30:24
Speaker 1: that it's not you know, it's not entirely Christian in
30:27
Speaker 1: its roots. But Christmas up there wasn't considered a real
30:31
Speaker 1: celebratory occasion until about the eighteen seventies. From the Southern perspective,
30:37
Speaker 1: many people said this idea of having Thanksgiving and then
30:41
Speaker 1: right after having Christmas is redundant. We're losing a day's
30:45
Speaker 1: income for workers, for businesses, and some Southern newspapers like
30:50
Speaker 1: the Richmond Daily Dispatch even accused Northerners of trying to
30:55
Speaker 1: unseat the traditional religious holiday of Christmas with this Thanksgiving
31:00
Speaker 1: dinner bs this malarkey. So so the war Christmas is
31:05
Speaker 1: an old, old idea in this country. But this is
31:10
Speaker 1: not the end of the story, because the nation is
31:14
Speaker 1: hurtling headlong into one of the bloodiest conflicts it will
31:20
Speaker 1: ever face up to the present. That I believe is
31:24
Speaker 1: where we want to pause for part one of our
31:29
Speaker 1: exploration of Thanksgiving, that old Yankee abolitionist holiday. What do
31:34
Speaker 1: you say, noll I, I think we've got a little
31:35
Speaker 1: cliffhanger right as we're as we're right before the Civil War,
31:39
Speaker 1: you know, I'm here for a cliffhanger. Vand and yeah,
31:42
Speaker 1: definitely a shorter two partner. But it did feel nice
31:44
Speaker 1: and modular. You know. We put two of these out
31:46
Speaker 1: a week because guys, give us a break, give us
31:48
Speaker 1: a two partner. Y'all are the best. We love all
31:51
Speaker 1: of you so much, all of the ridiculous historians out there.
31:54
Speaker 1: Thank you to you, first and foremost, Um Thank you
31:57
Speaker 1: to Max Williams, our super producer extraordinaire, and his bro
32:01
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, who composed our theme and did a lovely
32:05
Speaker 1: guest appearance on Ridiculous History while I was away on
32:08
Speaker 1: Adventures the other week where you guys did a two
32:11
Speaker 1: partner on the New England Vampire Pack right yep, and
32:14
Speaker 1: Max was away as well. Thank you guys both for
32:18
Speaker 1: Thank you guys both for returning and regaling me with
32:20
Speaker 1: stories of your adventures. Uh. We also want to thank,
32:24
Speaker 1: of course, Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister. If
32:28
Speaker 1: you're listening to this episode the day it comes out,
32:31
Speaker 1: we have a treat for you. Our our pal slash
32:34
Speaker 1: Nemesis is starring in his own episode of Thirteen Days
32:38
Speaker 1: of Halloween, which should be available now, so do check
32:41
Speaker 1: it out. Let us know what you think. We also,
32:45
Speaker 1: of course, I want to thank Gabe Blusier, our research associate.
32:50
Speaker 1: We want to thank you know what, just in advance.
32:54
Speaker 1: I want to thank everybody who is kind enough to
32:57
Speaker 1: host their friends and loved ones at their houses for Thanksgiving.
33:01
Speaker 1: I know it's not easy. I know it's a heck
33:03
Speaker 1: of a lot of cooking. I know sometimes people aren't
33:07
Speaker 1: as thankful as they need to be. But we promise you, folks,
33:11
Speaker 1: if you just like that speech at the very end
33:14
Speaker 1: of Scrooged, if you, if you let a little you know,
33:18
Speaker 1: let a little love in your life. Uh, and you
33:21
Speaker 1: make it a point to let the people in your
33:23
Speaker 1: life know that you appreciate them, you will be surprised
33:26
Speaker 1: by how much better you feel. As well. Agreed, We'll
33:31
Speaker 1: see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for my
33:40
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
33:43
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.