Commercialization of Thanksgiving

As the holiday fast approaches, I started thinking of how much further from the original meaning this holiday has traveled. Not unlike Christmas, the commercialization of this holiday has traveled a long road. Second only to Christmas in food sales, last year’s sales the week prior to Thanksgiving amounted to 2.8 billion in sales, up from 2 billion the year before and 1.3 billion the year before that. Over the years, this particular holiday doesn’t just mean a booming business for grocery stores, but people go all out on table decorations, food drives result in the increase of those ridiculous turkey costumes, and restaurants often have a special holiday meal for people like my wife and I who are too lazy to cook for just two people. Even Hallmark profits with Thanksgiving cards. That got me thinking about how far we’ve actually come from that first holiday, which resulted in…you guessed it, a little bit of Google research on some interesting facts that you may or may not know about the origins of the holiday.

Here they are in no particular order:

It was unlikely that a turkey was actually served at the very first Thanksgiving in 1621. While there aren’t any records on the menu, Historians surmise it was most likely deer, fish, and shellfish as the main protein.
There were also likely many local vegetables such as onions, beans, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, and possibly peas and corn. No mashed potatoes or potatoes of any kind, including sweet potatoes.
Fruits were also likely to be at the first Thanksgiving, and those local to the area included blueberries, plums, grapes, gooseberries, raspberries, and, of course, cranberries. However, it was unlikely that cranberries were into any form of jell or sauce.
Pumpkins, yes, including other squash. Pies, nope. Since the pilgrims lacked butter or wheat flower, they were unable to make pie crusts. They might have created a sweet treat by hollowing out pumpkins, filling the shells with milk, honey, and spices to make a custard, and then roasting the gourds whole in hot ashes.
The first Thanksgiving was in 1621, and it was likely that the indigenous peoples far surpassed the pilgrims in numbers. In fact, the colonists were likely outnumbered by more than two to one. The winter prior to the first Thanksgiving was particularly harsh, and about 78% of the women who came over from the Mayflower perished. According to historical records, there were 22 men, 4 women, and 25 children or teens.
The tradition of football on the holiday started in 1876 with a game between Yale and Princeton, viewed by a sparse crowd. Yale won. By the middle of the 1880s, the legendary rivalry became a major social event attended by thousands.
Prior to Thanksgiving, the Wampanoag peoples negotiated a treaty with the colonists in March of 1621. This peace accord would be honored for the next fifty years. It was the indigenous people who helped the colonists survive by teaching them to plant crops and where to fish and hunt. As a result, Governor William Bradford and the other settlers invited the Wampanoags for a feast that is now known as Thanksgiving. Historians believe that the peace treaty was negotiated as a means of survival because earlier experience with European traders included being kidnapped and sold into slavery and bringing a plague that devastated the Wampanoag peoples, leaving them vulnerable to the Narragansett peoples who had not been as affected by the disease.

Since Thanksgiving remains one of my favorite holidays because it always represented food and family, I wrote a Thanksgiving short that just so happens to include the badass women from The Organization, which is featured in my recent trilogy. Want to check out that short or the trilogy, you know the drill, just click the links below!