October 28, 2021 • 33 mins
Today Thanksgiving is considered a largely innocuous holiday, centered on food and family. In the US, people across the country get together on the same Thursday in November every year, breaking bread, practicing thankfulness -- and, sometimes, suffering through awkward conversations with family. But this wasn't always the case. In part one of this two-part series, Ben and Noel explore how the modern Thanksgiving came to be, and why some in the south genuinely believed it was a foray in a larger culture war.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
(00:27):
welcome back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as
always so much for tuning in. It is still the
spooky season here over Ridiculous History, and uh, we're all
big fans of it, but there are other holidays looming
on the horizon as well, and we're gonna do what
Corporate America calls getting in front of it. In today's episode,
(00:50):
I'm Ben. That's our super producer, the one and only
Max Williams, And uh know, all your backgrounds changed today.
It looks like someone's in the office. Yeah, can you
hear that cool drilling? It does like I'm at the dentist.
I was leaving it in. This is just the real
life of a podcaster. And it's funny because things like
that don't happen when you're at home. When you go
into the office, all of a sudden, there's like they're
(01:13):
tearing down walls in the office next door, and and
you know, do they care about are putting out quality content?
I think not, but hopefully it'll just be intermittent. But yeah,
I do have a different background. It's sort of a foamy, soft,
corrugated kind of background, because I am, in fact, in
one of our studios at at our office here in Atlanta. Ben,
you mentioned the spooky season, and you're and I see
(01:34):
what you're doing here. You're segueing into looming holidays. I
would argue that Thanksgiving and even spookier than Halloween, because
the turkey is an abomination, my friend. That is a
terrifying creature, and I would not want one to come
at me. You know how I feel about birds, but
turkeys in particular, their talents, and they're weird, fanned out,
(01:56):
feathered things, and that that that horrifying wattle, gobbler, whatever
you call it. It just looks like it's the stuff
of nightmares, my friend, the stuff of nightmares. Turkeys are
tough to cook, too. You can always reach out to
me with advice, because I've made those mistakes before. When
I initially pitched this episode to you guys off air
as something we could do this week, I think my
my logic, which was a bit of a reach, was
(02:17):
that yes, Halloween is spooky, but for many people in
the US and you know, in other countries with their
versions of Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving dinner with your extended family is
just as much of a horror show or has the
potential to be so. Luckily, we thought this was solid enough,
and we we learned something with the help of our
pal Gabe, very interesting about Thanksgiving. Uh it's something that
(02:42):
I don't know about, you know, I was not aware
of until we started researching this. For years, for decades, dude,
Thanksgiving was considered a very controversial holiday, not for not
for the reasons that people talk about it now, but
because people in the South thought it was a Yankee
(03:03):
abolitionist celebration, which what, Yeah, it's just literally was a
cultural thing because I mean a lot of the foods
that were a big part of it that we still
think of today, like pumpkin pie and uh, what was
really big in the early days of Thanksgiving, chicken pot pie.
I think it was a Southern thing, but I think
it also has roots in, like, you know, the North
(03:24):
as well. They really call it something different, but I
think there was a sense that this was a way
of trying to force Northern ideals and cultural kind of
touchstones onto the South, and they didn't want to have
anything to do with that. They were still feeling pretty
raw about that old Civil War thing. Yeah, yeah, this
was back when the moneyed Southerners probably still referred to
(03:46):
it as the recent unpleasantness. Right. There was this campaign
in the eighteen hundreds to make Thanksgiving a permanent holiday,
and oddly enough it was seen as a move in
a culture war by people in the South, kind of
the way that you'll hear some folks every year talk
(04:07):
about a war on Christmas. Southerners for a time thought
Thanksgiving was a war on them. And of course the
first account of Thanksgiving is way older than the Civil War.
There's a letter written about a pilgrim's meal in sixteen
twenty one. This was we talked about the evolution of
(04:27):
Halloween a bit in um our episode on Haunted Houses.
This holiday also evolved from like a supper that you
would have traditionally during the harvest season to this Puritan
day of thanks to God in colonial New England. And
then I think as you go through the seventeen hundreds,
we see that it evolves increasingly into a holiday that
(04:50):
is like the Thanksgiving table is to Thanksgiving as the
Christmas tree is to Christmas. Yeah, and it's certainly been
gussied up over the years and and into you know,
more of a symbol um of togetherness and family, and
less even like a cultural remembrance or a nod, or
even like a tacent thank you to the Native Americans who,
(05:12):
you know, whose land we you know, kind of stole
or whatever. I think the original Thanksgiving dinner, actually the
main course was just exclusively plague blankets, if I'm not mistaken.
It's interesting to mention that because the idea of the
smallpox blanket is it's it's often bandied about here, but
I read somewhere that there were serious questions about whether
(05:34):
it actually worked. I'm thinking specifically of an early American
historian named Elizabeth fenn Over at University of Colorado, Boulder.
But your point stands, regardless of the smallpox blankets or
their efficacy. Uh, the colonists were not very appreciative of
all that the Native people's had done in a very
(05:56):
real way to keep them alive in those early days. Uh.
And yes, Europeans did take the land, It's true. Um,
But you know, Thanksgiving has endured. Uh. And I think,
you know, sort of morphed into to something a little
bit different. But it is kind of one excuse for families,
hopefully typically ones that like each other to get together,
(06:16):
gather at the table and and um, you know, have
a day of rest and and a day to give
thanks for you know, all that life has to offer. Um.
But before we talk about, you know, what Thanksgiving has
become today, how maybe the sort of you know, North
South divide was maybe cooled off a little bit. Let's
just talk about the first American Thanksgiving, what it actually
(06:37):
might have been like, and then how it became, you know,
sort of a national tradition, even if it wasn't like mandatory. Yeah, yeah,
Like we said, there was this letter about the Pilgrim's
Meal in sixteen twenty one, and over the seventeen hundreds
it became again a holiday, increasingly centered on the idea
of breaking bread with people. As New England became more
(07:01):
and more populated by colonists, people who lived there started
lighting out west right, as Mark Twain would say, and
they took all their cultural traditions with them, including this
Thanksgiving thing that they did every year of first in
New York State and then in the Michigan territories, and
(07:23):
then in what would become Ohio. People who were expanding
into this uh, into this land, into these regions decided
they would take that harvest feast with them. I do
want to point out, just to be very clear, Professor Fenn,
who I quoted earlier about the smallpox blankets, she's not
saying that people didn't try to do it. It's documented
(07:44):
Europeans did try to do it. Her question is whether
it actually worked, which is transmissible in that way, like
given the age of the infection and so on. But
of course there were other ways, other much more direct
ways that call eists. We're spreading disease two native populations.
Thanksgiving as a concept as like a national Hey, you're
(08:08):
in the US, do this. It's been around since the
days of the Continental Congress when they started issuing these directions,
uh to celebrate multiple days of thanks in honor of
various military victories. And I think it was seventy nine
George Washington called for a all around the nation day
(08:31):
of thanks The war's over, we've got a constitution, now
go team yeah and all the other A lot of
the other Founding fathers got in on that too, making
their own proclamations, which I'm a little confused by this
sort of like, oh, you can think you can make
a proclamation. Mr George Washington. Well, John Adams is going
to make my own proclamation, and I James Madison will
do the same. Just seems a little redundant. Thomas Jefferson,
(08:54):
on the other hand, felt that there were religious connotations
that surrounded the event, and he was a big proponent
of separation of church and state. So um, he did
not make any formal declarations about this day of thanks
until eighteen fifteen. He's almost like he was boycotting a
little bit because of the idea of thanks I only
(09:14):
can assume revolves around faith in some way in his mind.
I don't know, I've always thought of Thanksgiving as a
pretty secular holiday, uh, more of like a history kind
of honoring, a you know, this kind of bruise colored
history thing that maybe never happened the way we think.
But now I'm interested to I would be interested in
his thought process as to what made it feel like
(09:36):
it had religious connotations. Maybe the way of prayer or
I don't know. Yeah, I mean, we keep in mind,
this is the guy who literally rewrote the Bible and
took out all this stuff that might be seen as
supernatural in his opinion. We know that in the eighteen
(09:57):
forties Thanksgiving is uh big to do across the Northeast
and through the Midwest, But it wasn't like it wasn't
quite as uniform or homogeneous as it is today. By
this point, the like the returning champs of your stereotypical
Thanksgiving Day menu had already been established. Uh roasted turkey,
(10:23):
cranberry sauce, potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pies, et cetera. But as
you pointed out earlier, No, for some reason, chicken pot
pie disappeared, which is a shame because chicken pot pie
is delicious, especially if you make it from scratch. Oh guy,
it's incredible. And I'll tell you a bit of a
sleeper hit. Um, if you're looking for some decent quality
(10:44):
fast food, I highly recommend the KFC chicken pot Pie.
Very flaky crusts, nice creamy filling, good real chicken. Um.
I'm not getting paid for this. I just I'm a
big fan of the KFC chicken pot pie. But yeah,
it's weird, Like they just called the chicken pie, so
I'm assuming it would follow the tradition of like a
mince pie or like, you know, just more British pies
(11:07):
where it's just a flaky crust with filling. And I'm
sure maybe isn't exactly what we know today is chicken
pot pie, but probably the closest. That's probably the closest
analog that we can think of really quickly. You you
made me think of something. You mentioned how Thomas Jefferson
rewrote the Bible to get rid of some, you know,
any offending passages. I guess that that, uh, that to
upset his delicate sensibilities. And it reminded me I just
(11:30):
found out we're not super closer anything. We're on internet pals.
And she's a very talented musician, uh and songwriter in Athens,
Georgia of Aaron Lovett. She just came out with her
first book, I believe, and it's called The Secret of
Chimneys but not racist. Agatha Christie but not racist. So
she's basically rewritten all these Agatha Christie books and taking
(11:51):
out all the uncomfortable racist bits. So even some little
Indians has problems know the original title. It sounds like
she's doing the whole series, or at least a bunch
of them. Says it's a highly modernized collection of all
your beloved favorites from legendary Mr Author Agatha Christie. But
with all the racism and much and as much sexism
(12:12):
as we could manage without entirely rewriting every female character
painstakingly redacted by our editors. So good job, Aaron, thanks
to you. And when we're talking about Thanksgiving, we have
to be clear that back in those days, there wasn't
an official national fixed day for Thanksgiving where everybody tried
(12:35):
to take some time off and make nice with their
relatives and loved ones. Instead, the governor of each state
every single year would issue this proclamation and really was
up to them to determine what day it would be.
Most folks did choose a Thursday in late November, sometimes
early December. But some people would say, now, let's do
(12:55):
it on Saturday. And some people would say, ah, let's
let's wait till January, or let's just get it out
of the way here in September. And this, uh, this
got to some folks. I mean, can we say yankee
on air? Enough time has passed, right, I think? I think,
I think the statute of limitations for that particular slur
has expired. Yankee Yankee yankee, uh Yankee doodle dandy? Wasn't
there a sports team called the Yankees. They still is
(13:18):
is that is that? Is? That? Is that soccer? And
I'm kidding, I don't know sports and Macaroni when he
sticks a feather in his cap and calls it macaroney
and the song that means cool. He's trying to be
like a cool Italian guys, like a hipster thing. But
all this pushback was seen as pretty absurd by you know,
some of these uh, these these Yankee types. They just
(13:40):
didn't understand what the beef was or the you know,
the stuffing was. So a group of Northerners um, who
were professionals and academics, uh, members of the clergy for example,
I'm editors, newspapers, teachers, educators, they banded together and they
started with this article in the series, eats dot Com
(14:01):
refers to as I love the idea of being an agitator,
for this makes me think of like poking something with
a stick. Um. But they decided they were going to
single handedly, you know, or at least as like a
you know, kind of hive mind, make Thanksgiving a uniform
(14:23):
national holiday. And of that group, the clear ringleader was
a spitfire of a woman named Sarah Josifa Hale. She
was a widow. She had been widowed in her mid thirties.
She had five children that she raised on her own.
Um born in New Hampshire, needed, you know, to make money,
(14:45):
and she decided that she was going to become a writer,
and she did just that. She wrote the children's poem
Mary Had a Little Lamb Heard of that originally known
as Mary's Lap Mary's m Yeah, in eighteen thirty, hugely,
hugely iconic poem, and she um got so famous so
(15:07):
quickly that she decided to use her newfound celebrity as
a children's author to uh promote causes that she believed
right yeah, women's issues, other other social movements that were
close to her heart. She went on to write a
novel or series novels. Her first one was Northwood or
Life North and South, which was kind of a compare
(15:28):
contrast of what she saw his everyday life in the
southern US and in New England. And there's an entire
chapter that talks about Thanksgiving celebration on a farm in
New Hampshire. And in this she said that this celebration
should be pretty much on the same level as the
Fourth of July should be a national holiday. Mary had
(15:49):
a little lamb, as we call it today, a sidebar.
This happens a lot with songs, like people just take
the most memorable lyric of a song or poem and
that becomes the name. Sort of like that poor kid
who has described as honey boo boo, she has an
actual name. Honey boo boo is just a phrase she
used anyway. That's that's a little quick problem with media.
(16:14):
Here's what happened. This Northwood novel makes Hale a literary superstar.
Seven she becomes the editor of Goadie's Ladies Book, which
is the most widely distributed magazine in the country at
the time. More than a hundred and fifty thousand people
are reading every issue. So this is her new platform
(16:34):
to galvanize the public towards celebrating a single, national, unified
Thanksgiving Day. And she takes every November issue of the
magazine and just stuffs the turkey of the thing with
all kinds of Thanksgiving stories, poems, recipes, and uh. She
also writes a lot of editorials like her pins on
(16:55):
fire when she keeps telling America, look, everybody on the
same page, get on the same plate. We're making Thanksgiving happen.
It's interesting, right, Like, I don't quite understand where all
this zeal comes from. You know. I think maybe because
it was a tradition that was brought over to the colonies,
you know, and became this kind of tradition. And also
(17:18):
I think there was that there was some resentment that
the Southerners were looking at it as this kind of
like you know, almost propaganda thing that was trying to
be forced onto them. And I think it was almost like, hey,
hold the phone, this is actually really cool and something
that I think is very innocuous ultimately and just about family,
and like why not have a national day where everyone
(17:39):
gets to take off and kind of enjoy these particular
foods because it seems nice and pleasant to me and charming.
And that's certainly how she wrote about it. She created
this whole almost lore surrounding it. It's almost like, um,
you know those early catalogs Rember catalog culture ben where
you had this image of like what you know American
life should be. It was like it have sold to
(18:00):
you by these advertisers, the idea of like you know,
two point five kids and you know, the Cadillac and
the driveway and all that she was almost doing that
for the holiday of Thanksgiving, um and making it like
weaving it into the fabric of that like what you know, what,
what should life as an American be? Right? Codifying practice
(18:22):
and through codifying practice, attempting to codify culture, which she
had arguably succeeded at So back to Hale's story here
in eighteen forty six, she's been doing this Thanksgiving propaganda
for some time. She inspires and and launches an annual
letter writing campaign to all the governors in the nation.
(18:44):
And in this campaign she urges them to get on
the same page as I said, get on the same
plate about Thanksgiving Day, and she says, look, it needs
to be the last Thursday in November. You can actually
read her original pitch online Kurt see of our good
friends over at Atlas Obscures. So shout out to Sarah
Laskow for that one. Her lobbying is very successful, not
(19:08):
just in the North but in the South. People from
the governors rather of various places declared their Thanksgiving Days
officially in eighteen forty seven, and then in eighteen fifty
Texas followed. In just a few years, most governors of
southern states have also fallen in line with this, and concurrently,
(19:31):
Hale was also lobbying federal officials to create a national
level day of thanks also on you guessed it, folks,
the last Thursday of November. Her goal this was so
interesting to me, and it and it seems like a
good idea. Her goal was to bring the country together
with something that could be seen as sort of free
(19:54):
of politics, free of social strife. You're right, the same
way people often celebrate Thanksgiving today, you'll you'll see some
families that say, all right, we're not discussing politics at
the table, especially not when you know, Uncle Jimmy has
had a couple of a couple of beers, so we're
just going to get through this day together. She thought
(20:15):
this could ease the growing tensions and divisions between the
north and south of the US, and by eighteen fifty four, Uh,
it looked like she was on the path to success.
More than thirty states and US territories all had Thanksgiving
on the schedule, but she has hadn't quite made it
(20:36):
a national holiday. Just to backtrack real quick, and Uh,
for a point of clarification, I've been sort of referring
to the Civil War as if it were already you know,
kicked off in earnest. It was really more just the
tensions that led to the Civil War and that divide.
(20:56):
I mean, they were absolutely palpable, and this was you
could consider all of this like the run up to
the Civil War. The South strongly rejected anything that even
had a whiff of Yankee sentiments because they saw it
as a condemnation of the Southern way of life, which
was like, you know, owning slaves are cool, um, And
(21:17):
it's like a big government thing, right, because so they're saying, oh,
this national group, that's a good point. They're saying, it's
just another way for the federal government, for big Brother
to tread on us, you know, to oppress us. Which
is weird because eating turkey is a lot of things.
But is it an act of oppression? It just feels
like a stretch. It feels like it does. It does.
(21:39):
But but they were using this as a tool, you
know what I mean. I mean, we we see this
all the time, like very innocuous things are glommed onto
by an opposition and uh, you know, elevated to some
kind of to represent something else. Right. In fact, the
professor emeritus of history at the University of Georgia right
near where we are, James C. K Um He had
(22:00):
this to say about it. With the whole prospect of
a showdown over the expansion of slavery, there was more
and more rhetoric coming out of the South charging that
Thanksgiving was pretty much a Yankee abolitionist holiday, even though
you know some maybe slightly more moderate governors I guess
or who weren't jumping on this, uh this bandwagon from
Arkansas and Mississippi. No less, they did start to kind
(22:22):
of embrace the idea of Thanksgiving in eighteen forty, in
the early eighteen forties, issuing these Thanksgiving proclamations that we've
seen in other states, for um, Arkansas, Missippi, respectively. The
idea of celebrating like a Puritan Northern holiday became more
and more of a sticking point in the eighteen fifties
(22:42):
as things really started to heat up with that debate
on slavery. Yeah. Yeah. Diana Carter apple Bomb sums it
up perfectly in her work Thanksgiving an American Holiday in
American History. She says Thanksgiving was above all a new
inkle and holiday in New England was abolitionist territory. So
(23:04):
you know a human psychology works, fellow ridiculous historians. If
you already don't care for someone, then everything you see
them do is going to be another reason for you
not to like them, even if it's something as innocuous says, hey,
let's all eat dinner together. People who are front and
center on the idea of a national Thanksgiving holiday also
(23:29):
tended to be Protestants, Northern Evangelical Protestants, and those folks
were themselves very closely linked to the abolitionist movement. And
you know, at this time, nothing occurs in a vacuum.
At this time, UH, people are increasingly in favor of
abolition in the eighteen forties, and a lot of Northern
(23:50):
ministers are going to the pulpit during Thanksgiving season to
talk about how horrific and terrible slavery is. So south Owners,
the rulers of the southern region at this time, start
to the buck. They pushed back against the idea of Thanksgiving,
and especially in Virginia, I believe, where the local leaders said,
(24:12):
our state is the real cradle of this nation, not those,
not those UH jerks up in New England. And so
this this occurs. This resistance to Thanksgiving also occurs in
other ideas, like because to them, it very much is
a culture war. Southerners, even the very well to do Southerners,
(24:34):
are saying, hey, let's not send our kids to those
Ivy League schools up north. Let's not have Yankees teach
our kids. And you know what if a magazine, if
a magazine is published in these northern states, then I
will be damned good sir, if I will ever soiled
my eyes by looking upon its page. YEA, Indeed, it
(24:58):
was pretty pretty crazy. It was like, you know, again,
this whole the antide Thanksgiving sentiment was really just wrapped
up in this anti northern the sentiment in the South,
just looking for any excuse to escalate. So Thanksgiving this
kind of became part of one of those things that
you just mentioned that nah, we we don't, we don't
celebrate that Yankee travesty of a holiday, no thank you.
(25:22):
In eighteen fifty three, Governor Joseph Johnson UM he declined
to declare a day for Thanksgiving for his state, saying
that he sided with Thomas Jefferson. That interesting point we
talked about earlier, the idea of separating church from state. Um.
Johnson's successor was this slave owning real pill named Henry A. Wise,
(25:46):
who was even more in the separation of church and state.
Camp In six um he got that same letter that
Sarah Josepha Hill had been sending all of the governors
encouraging them to declare a general day for Thanksgiving. And
I only did Wise say absolutely not, but he who
wrote her back a strongly worded letter where he um,
(26:09):
you know, laid out his his position on the issue. Uh.
Thus Lee, this theatrical national clap trap of Thanksgiving has
aided other causes and setting thousands of bull bits to
preach in Christian politics instead of humbling, letting the cornal
kingdom alone and preaching singly Christ crucified. Yeah, and just
(26:32):
a point in clarity there. Governor Joseph Johnson and Henry A. Wise,
they're governors of Virginia. They were successors, they won, one
came after the other, and they both were similarly focused
on this separation of church and state. But again, I'm
still not in any of our research not seeing any
(26:54):
religious ties at all to Thanksgiving. It strikes me as
even in its onset, to be a very secular holiday um,
I mean obviously the church service, you know, promoting giving
thanks and all that. I mean that that's the separate thing.
You know, it's up to you as to whether you
make it religious or not in your house. But all
of the you know, even like the church, the reliy
of the songs around Thanksgiving, like we gathered together well
(27:15):
does said to ask the Lord's blessing? I guess there's
you know, the Puritan angle Maybes. And again the Protestants
who are pushing this are like champions of abolition, so
it's seen as supporting that holiday from the southern perspective
if their pro slavery is seen as supporting abolition, which
they were very much not. I mean, let's call it
(27:38):
what it is. Governor Johnson and Governor Wise, we're both
super into enslaving people. They saw nothing wrong with it,
and they didn't want to erode what they saw as
the status quo. The Richmond Wig later articulates the case
against Thanksgiving. Uh more so when they say it's not
(28:00):
it is enough, so maybe they are agreeing a little
more with you. They say it's it's too worldly. And
the Richmond Wig, by the way, is a publication. They say,
what people should be doing on Thanksgiving is praying. And
in the District of Columbia they said all the federal
offices are closed, but quote an astonishing quantity of execrable
(28:24):
liquor will be guzzled and the holiday would be little
more than an occasion for indulgence in dissipation at the
cost of character. What was that word been execrable X
What does that mean like like like like intoxicating. No,
it means like disgusting, like excellent. It's it's He's basically
(28:44):
saying that it's that it's the devil's the devil's juice. Yes, understood.
And again I just want to point out that we
are still kind of these simmering tensions and all of
this really charged rhetoric is all just kind of the
run up to the Civil War, which is coming closer
day by day. On the actual eve of the start
(29:08):
of the Civil War, the acceptance of Thanksgiving in the
South was still very very spotty. There was really no
rhyme or reason to it. It was up to individuals
and individual governors, you know, as to declaring a special
day that would be you know, a government holiday. Those
that did decide to observe the holiday treated it like
(29:32):
a religious day, like something likely going to a mass,
you know, or a day of relaxation where you would
have you know, big, a big spread with the family,
like a homecoming kind of situation. But it was there,
there was wild inconsistencies with the way it was was
practiced right, and it's very much this is not for nothing, folks.
(29:53):
Was I saying this has comparisons to the so called
War on Christmas in the modern day because commentators in
the South said, look, we already have a holiday of
feasting and celebration towards the end of the year. It's
called Christmas. In New England, there was still this legacy,
this puritan belief that Christmas was a secular abomination. And hey,
(30:16):
look around at the various traditions of Christmas and where
they come from. They're not entirely off base in in
that it's not you know, it's not entirely Christian in
its roots. But Christmas up there wasn't considered a real
celebratory occasion until about the eighteen seventies. From the Southern perspective,
(30:37):
many people said this idea of having Thanksgiving and then
right after having Christmas is redundant. We're losing a day's
income for workers, for businesses, and some Southern newspapers like
the Richmond Daily Dispatch even accused Northerners of trying to
unseat the traditional religious holiday of Christmas with this Thanksgiving
(31:00):
dinner bs this malarkey. So so the war Christmas is
an old, old idea in this country. But this is
not the end of the story, because the nation is
hurtling headlong into one of the bloodiest conflicts it will
ever face up to the present. That I believe is
(31:24):
where we want to pause for part one of our
exploration of Thanksgiving, that old Yankee abolitionist holiday. What do
you say, noll I, I think we've got a little
cliffhanger right as we're as we're right before the Civil War,
you know, I'm here for a cliffhanger. Vand and yeah,
definitely a shorter two partner. But it did feel nice
and modular. You know. We put two of these out
(31:46):
a week because guys, give us a break, give us
a two partner. Y'all are the best. We love all
of you so much, all of the ridiculous historians out there.
Thank you to you, first and foremost, Um Thank you
to Max Williams, our super producer extraordinaire, and his bro
Alex Williams, who composed our theme and did a lovely
guest appearance on Ridiculous History while I was away on
(32:08):
Adventures the other week where you guys did a two
partner on the New England Vampire Pack right yep, and
Max was away as well. Thank you guys both for
Thank you guys both for returning and regaling me with
stories of your adventures. Uh. We also want to thank,
of course, Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister. If
you're listening to this episode the day it comes out,
(32:31):
we have a treat for you. Our our pal slash
Nemesis is starring in his own episode of Thirteen Days
of Halloween, which should be available now, so do check
it out. Let us know what you think. We also,
of course, I want to thank Gabe Blusier, our research associate.
We want to thank you know what, just in advance.
(32:54):
I want to thank everybody who is kind enough to
host their friends and loved ones at their houses for Thanksgiving.
I know it's not easy. I know it's a heck
of a lot of cooking. I know sometimes people aren't
as thankful as they need to be. But we promise you, folks,
if you just like that speech at the very end
(33:14):
of Scrooged, if you, if you let a little you know,
let a little love in your life. Uh, and you
make it a point to let the people in your
life know that you appreciate them, you will be surprised
by how much better you feel. As well. Agreed, We'll
see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for my
(33:40):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
(00:27):
welcome back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as
always so much for tuning in. It is still the
spooky season here over Ridiculous History, and uh, we're all
big fans of it, but there are other holidays looming
on the horizon as well, and we're gonna do what
Corporate America calls getting in front of it. In today's episode,
(00:50):
I'm Ben. That's our super producer, the one and only
Max Williams, And uh know, all your backgrounds changed today.
It looks like someone's in the office. Yeah, can you
hear that cool drilling? It does like I'm at the dentist.
I was leaving it in. This is just the real
life of a podcaster. And it's funny because things like
that don't happen when you're at home. When you go
into the office, all of a sudden, there's like they're
(01:13):
tearing down walls in the office next door, and and
you know, do they care about are putting out quality content?
I think not, but hopefully it'll just be intermittent. But yeah,
I do have a different background. It's sort of a foamy, soft,
corrugated kind of background, because I am, in fact, in
one of our studios at at our office here in Atlanta. Ben,
you mentioned the spooky season, and you're and I see
(01:34):
what you're doing here. You're segueing into looming holidays. I
would argue that Thanksgiving and even spookier than Halloween, because
the turkey is an abomination, my friend. That is a
terrifying creature, and I would not want one to come
at me. You know how I feel about birds, but
turkeys in particular, their talents, and they're weird, fanned out,
(01:56):
feathered things, and that that that horrifying wattle, gobbler, whatever
you call it. It just looks like it's the stuff
of nightmares, my friend, the stuff of nightmares. Turkeys are
tough to cook, too. You can always reach out to
me with advice, because I've made those mistakes before. When
I initially pitched this episode to you guys off air
as something we could do this week, I think my
my logic, which was a bit of a reach, was
(02:17):
that yes, Halloween is spooky, but for many people in
the US and you know, in other countries with their
versions of Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving dinner with your extended family is
just as much of a horror show or has the
potential to be so. Luckily, we thought this was solid enough,
and we we learned something with the help of our
pal Gabe, very interesting about Thanksgiving. Uh it's something that
(02:42):
I don't know about, you know, I was not aware
of until we started researching this. For years, for decades, dude,
Thanksgiving was considered a very controversial holiday, not for not
for the reasons that people talk about it now, but
because people in the South thought it was a Yankee
(03:03):
abolitionist celebration, which what, Yeah, it's just literally was a
cultural thing because I mean a lot of the foods
that were a big part of it that we still
think of today, like pumpkin pie and uh, what was
really big in the early days of Thanksgiving, chicken pot pie.
I think it was a Southern thing, but I think
it also has roots in, like, you know, the North
(03:24):
as well. They really call it something different, but I
think there was a sense that this was a way
of trying to force Northern ideals and cultural kind of
touchstones onto the South, and they didn't want to have
anything to do with that. They were still feeling pretty
raw about that old Civil War thing. Yeah, yeah, this
was back when the moneyed Southerners probably still referred to
(03:46):
it as the recent unpleasantness. Right. There was this campaign
in the eighteen hundreds to make Thanksgiving a permanent holiday,
and oddly enough it was seen as a move in
a culture war by people in the South, kind of
the way that you'll hear some folks every year talk
(04:07):
about a war on Christmas. Southerners for a time thought
Thanksgiving was a war on them. And of course the
first account of Thanksgiving is way older than the Civil War.
There's a letter written about a pilgrim's meal in sixteen
twenty one. This was we talked about the evolution of
(04:27):
Halloween a bit in um our episode on Haunted Houses.
This holiday also evolved from like a supper that you
would have traditionally during the harvest season to this Puritan
day of thanks to God in colonial New England. And
then I think as you go through the seventeen hundreds,
we see that it evolves increasingly into a holiday that
(04:50):
is like the Thanksgiving table is to Thanksgiving as the
Christmas tree is to Christmas. Yeah, and it's certainly been
gussied up over the years and and into you know,
more of a symbol um of togetherness and family, and
less even like a cultural remembrance or a nod, or
even like a tacent thank you to the Native Americans who,
(05:12):
you know, whose land we you know, kind of stole
or whatever. I think the original Thanksgiving dinner, actually the
main course was just exclusively plague blankets, if I'm not mistaken.
It's interesting to mention that because the idea of the
smallpox blanket is it's it's often bandied about here, but
I read somewhere that there were serious questions about whether
(05:34):
it actually worked. I'm thinking specifically of an early American
historian named Elizabeth fenn Over at University of Colorado, Boulder.
But your point stands, regardless of the smallpox blankets or
their efficacy. Uh, the colonists were not very appreciative of
all that the Native people's had done in a very
(05:56):
real way to keep them alive in those early days. Uh.
And yes, Europeans did take the land, It's true. Um,
But you know, Thanksgiving has endured. Uh. And I think,
you know, sort of morphed into to something a little
bit different. But it is kind of one excuse for families,
hopefully typically ones that like each other to get together,
(06:16):
gather at the table and and um, you know, have
a day of rest and and a day to give
thanks for you know, all that life has to offer. Um.
But before we talk about, you know, what Thanksgiving has
become today, how maybe the sort of you know, North
South divide was maybe cooled off a little bit. Let's
just talk about the first American Thanksgiving, what it actually
(06:37):
might have been like, and then how it became, you know,
sort of a national tradition, even if it wasn't like mandatory. Yeah, yeah,
Like we said, there was this letter about the Pilgrim's
Meal in sixteen twenty one, and over the seventeen hundreds
it became again a holiday, increasingly centered on the idea
of breaking bread with people. As New England became more
(07:01):
and more populated by colonists, people who lived there started
lighting out west right, as Mark Twain would say, and
they took all their cultural traditions with them, including this
Thanksgiving thing that they did every year of first in
New York State and then in the Michigan territories, and
(07:23):
then in what would become Ohio. People who were expanding
into this uh, into this land, into these regions decided
they would take that harvest feast with them. I do
want to point out, just to be very clear, Professor Fenn,
who I quoted earlier about the smallpox blankets, she's not
saying that people didn't try to do it. It's documented
(07:44):
Europeans did try to do it. Her question is whether
it actually worked, which is transmissible in that way, like
given the age of the infection and so on. But
of course there were other ways, other much more direct
ways that call eists. We're spreading disease two native populations.
Thanksgiving as a concept as like a national Hey, you're
(08:08):
in the US, do this. It's been around since the
days of the Continental Congress when they started issuing these directions,
uh to celebrate multiple days of thanks in honor of
various military victories. And I think it was seventy nine
George Washington called for a all around the nation day
(08:31):
of thanks The war's over, we've got a constitution, now
go team yeah and all the other A lot of
the other Founding fathers got in on that too, making
their own proclamations, which I'm a little confused by this
sort of like, oh, you can think you can make
a proclamation. Mr George Washington. Well, John Adams is going
to make my own proclamation, and I James Madison will
do the same. Just seems a little redundant. Thomas Jefferson,
(08:54):
on the other hand, felt that there were religious connotations
that surrounded the event, and he was a big proponent
of separation of church and state. So um, he did
not make any formal declarations about this day of thanks
until eighteen fifteen. He's almost like he was boycotting a
little bit because of the idea of thanks I only
(09:14):
can assume revolves around faith in some way in his mind.
I don't know, I've always thought of Thanksgiving as a
pretty secular holiday, uh, more of like a history kind
of honoring, a you know, this kind of bruise colored
history thing that maybe never happened the way we think.
But now I'm interested to I would be interested in
his thought process as to what made it feel like
(09:36):
it had religious connotations. Maybe the way of prayer or
I don't know. Yeah, I mean, we keep in mind,
this is the guy who literally rewrote the Bible and
took out all this stuff that might be seen as
supernatural in his opinion. We know that in the eighteen
(09:57):
forties Thanksgiving is uh big to do across the Northeast
and through the Midwest, But it wasn't like it wasn't
quite as uniform or homogeneous as it is today. By
this point, the like the returning champs of your stereotypical
Thanksgiving Day menu had already been established. Uh roasted turkey,
(10:23):
cranberry sauce, potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pies, et cetera. But as
you pointed out earlier, No, for some reason, chicken pot
pie disappeared, which is a shame because chicken pot pie
is delicious, especially if you make it from scratch. Oh guy,
it's incredible. And I'll tell you a bit of a
sleeper hit. Um, if you're looking for some decent quality
(10:44):
fast food, I highly recommend the KFC chicken pot Pie.
Very flaky crusts, nice creamy filling, good real chicken. Um.
I'm not getting paid for this. I just I'm a
big fan of the KFC chicken pot pie. But yeah,
it's weird, Like they just called the chicken pie, so
I'm assuming it would follow the tradition of like a
mince pie or like, you know, just more British pies
(11:07):
where it's just a flaky crust with filling. And I'm
sure maybe isn't exactly what we know today is chicken
pot pie, but probably the closest. That's probably the closest
analog that we can think of really quickly. You you
made me think of something. You mentioned how Thomas Jefferson
rewrote the Bible to get rid of some, you know,
any offending passages. I guess that that, uh, that to
upset his delicate sensibilities. And it reminded me I just
(11:30):
found out we're not super closer anything. We're on internet pals.
And she's a very talented musician, uh and songwriter in Athens,
Georgia of Aaron Lovett. She just came out with her
first book, I believe, and it's called The Secret of
Chimneys but not racist. Agatha Christie but not racist. So
she's basically rewritten all these Agatha Christie books and taking
(11:51):
out all the uncomfortable racist bits. So even some little
Indians has problems know the original title. It sounds like
she's doing the whole series, or at least a bunch
of them. Says it's a highly modernized collection of all
your beloved favorites from legendary Mr Author Agatha Christie. But
with all the racism and much and as much sexism
(12:12):
as we could manage without entirely rewriting every female character
painstakingly redacted by our editors. So good job, Aaron, thanks
to you. And when we're talking about Thanksgiving, we have
to be clear that back in those days, there wasn't
an official national fixed day for Thanksgiving where everybody tried
(12:35):
to take some time off and make nice with their
relatives and loved ones. Instead, the governor of each state
every single year would issue this proclamation and really was
up to them to determine what day it would be.
Most folks did choose a Thursday in late November, sometimes
early December. But some people would say, now, let's do
(12:55):
it on Saturday. And some people would say, ah, let's
let's wait till January, or let's just get it out
of the way here in September. And this, uh, this
got to some folks. I mean, can we say yankee
on air? Enough time has passed, right, I think? I think,
I think the statute of limitations for that particular slur
has expired. Yankee Yankee yankee, uh Yankee doodle dandy? Wasn't
there a sports team called the Yankees. They still is
(13:18):
is that is that? Is? That? Is that soccer? And
I'm kidding, I don't know sports and Macaroni when he
sticks a feather in his cap and calls it macaroney
and the song that means cool. He's trying to be
like a cool Italian guys, like a hipster thing. But
all this pushback was seen as pretty absurd by you know,
some of these uh, these these Yankee types. They just
(13:40):
didn't understand what the beef was or the you know,
the stuffing was. So a group of Northerners um, who
were professionals and academics, uh, members of the clergy for example,
I'm editors, newspapers, teachers, educators, they banded together and they
started with this article in the series, eats dot Com
(14:01):
refers to as I love the idea of being an agitator,
for this makes me think of like poking something with
a stick. Um. But they decided they were going to
single handedly, you know, or at least as like a
you know, kind of hive mind, make Thanksgiving a uniform
(14:23):
national holiday. And of that group, the clear ringleader was
a spitfire of a woman named Sarah Josifa Hale. She
was a widow. She had been widowed in her mid thirties.
She had five children that she raised on her own.
Um born in New Hampshire, needed, you know, to make money,
(14:45):
and she decided that she was going to become a writer,
and she did just that. She wrote the children's poem
Mary Had a Little Lamb Heard of that originally known
as Mary's Lap Mary's m Yeah, in eighteen thirty, hugely,
hugely iconic poem, and she um got so famous so
(15:07):
quickly that she decided to use her newfound celebrity as
a children's author to uh promote causes that she believed
right yeah, women's issues, other other social movements that were
close to her heart. She went on to write a
novel or series novels. Her first one was Northwood or
Life North and South, which was kind of a compare
(15:28):
contrast of what she saw his everyday life in the
southern US and in New England. And there's an entire
chapter that talks about Thanksgiving celebration on a farm in
New Hampshire. And in this she said that this celebration
should be pretty much on the same level as the
Fourth of July should be a national holiday. Mary had
(15:49):
a little lamb, as we call it today, a sidebar.
This happens a lot with songs, like people just take
the most memorable lyric of a song or poem and
that becomes the name. Sort of like that poor kid
who has described as honey boo boo, she has an
actual name. Honey boo boo is just a phrase she
used anyway. That's that's a little quick problem with media.
(16:14):
Here's what happened. This Northwood novel makes Hale a literary superstar.
Seven she becomes the editor of Goadie's Ladies Book, which
is the most widely distributed magazine in the country at
the time. More than a hundred and fifty thousand people
are reading every issue. So this is her new platform
(16:34):
to galvanize the public towards celebrating a single, national, unified
Thanksgiving Day. And she takes every November issue of the
magazine and just stuffs the turkey of the thing with
all kinds of Thanksgiving stories, poems, recipes, and uh. She
also writes a lot of editorials like her pins on
(16:55):
fire when she keeps telling America, look, everybody on the
same page, get on the same plate. We're making Thanksgiving happen.
It's interesting, right, Like, I don't quite understand where all
this zeal comes from. You know. I think maybe because
it was a tradition that was brought over to the colonies,
you know, and became this kind of tradition. And also
(17:18):
I think there was that there was some resentment that
the Southerners were looking at it as this kind of
like you know, almost propaganda thing that was trying to
be forced onto them. And I think it was almost like, hey,
hold the phone, this is actually really cool and something
that I think is very innocuous ultimately and just about family,
and like why not have a national day where everyone
(17:39):
gets to take off and kind of enjoy these particular
foods because it seems nice and pleasant to me and charming.
And that's certainly how she wrote about it. She created
this whole almost lore surrounding it. It's almost like, um,
you know those early catalogs Rember catalog culture ben where
you had this image of like what you know American
life should be. It was like it have sold to
(18:00):
you by these advertisers, the idea of like you know,
two point five kids and you know, the Cadillac and
the driveway and all that she was almost doing that
for the holiday of Thanksgiving, um and making it like
weaving it into the fabric of that like what you know, what,
what should life as an American be? Right? Codifying practice
(18:22):
and through codifying practice, attempting to codify culture, which she
had arguably succeeded at So back to Hale's story here
in eighteen forty six, she's been doing this Thanksgiving propaganda
for some time. She inspires and and launches an annual
letter writing campaign to all the governors in the nation.
(18:44):
And in this campaign she urges them to get on
the same page as I said, get on the same
plate about Thanksgiving Day, and she says, look, it needs
to be the last Thursday in November. You can actually
read her original pitch online Kurt see of our good
friends over at Atlas Obscures. So shout out to Sarah
Laskow for that one. Her lobbying is very successful, not
(19:08):
just in the North but in the South. People from
the governors rather of various places declared their Thanksgiving Days
officially in eighteen forty seven, and then in eighteen fifty
Texas followed. In just a few years, most governors of
southern states have also fallen in line with this, and concurrently,
(19:31):
Hale was also lobbying federal officials to create a national
level day of thanks also on you guessed it, folks,
the last Thursday of November. Her goal this was so
interesting to me, and it and it seems like a
good idea. Her goal was to bring the country together
with something that could be seen as sort of free
(19:54):
of politics, free of social strife. You're right, the same
way people often celebrate Thanksgiving today, you'll you'll see some
families that say, all right, we're not discussing politics at
the table, especially not when you know, Uncle Jimmy has
had a couple of a couple of beers, so we're
just going to get through this day together. She thought
(20:15):
this could ease the growing tensions and divisions between the
north and south of the US, and by eighteen fifty four, Uh,
it looked like she was on the path to success.
More than thirty states and US territories all had Thanksgiving
on the schedule, but she has hadn't quite made it
(20:36):
a national holiday. Just to backtrack real quick, and Uh,
for a point of clarification, I've been sort of referring
to the Civil War as if it were already you know,
kicked off in earnest. It was really more just the
tensions that led to the Civil War and that divide.
(20:56):
I mean, they were absolutely palpable, and this was you
could consider all of this like the run up to
the Civil War. The South strongly rejected anything that even
had a whiff of Yankee sentiments because they saw it
as a condemnation of the Southern way of life, which
was like, you know, owning slaves are cool, um, And
(21:17):
it's like a big government thing, right, because so they're saying, oh,
this national group, that's a good point. They're saying, it's
just another way for the federal government, for big Brother
to tread on us, you know, to oppress us. Which
is weird because eating turkey is a lot of things.
But is it an act of oppression? It just feels
like a stretch. It feels like it does. It does.
(21:39):
But but they were using this as a tool, you
know what I mean. I mean, we we see this
all the time, like very innocuous things are glommed onto
by an opposition and uh, you know, elevated to some
kind of to represent something else. Right. In fact, the
professor emeritus of history at the University of Georgia right
near where we are, James C. K Um He had
(22:00):
this to say about it. With the whole prospect of
a showdown over the expansion of slavery, there was more
and more rhetoric coming out of the South charging that
Thanksgiving was pretty much a Yankee abolitionist holiday, even though
you know some maybe slightly more moderate governors I guess
or who weren't jumping on this, uh this bandwagon from
Arkansas and Mississippi. No less, they did start to kind
(22:22):
of embrace the idea of Thanksgiving in eighteen forty, in
the early eighteen forties, issuing these Thanksgiving proclamations that we've
seen in other states, for um, Arkansas, Missippi, respectively. The
idea of celebrating like a Puritan Northern holiday became more
and more of a sticking point in the eighteen fifties
(22:42):
as things really started to heat up with that debate
on slavery. Yeah. Yeah. Diana Carter apple Bomb sums it
up perfectly in her work Thanksgiving an American Holiday in
American History. She says Thanksgiving was above all a new
inkle and holiday in New England was abolitionist territory. So
(23:04):
you know a human psychology works, fellow ridiculous historians. If
you already don't care for someone, then everything you see
them do is going to be another reason for you
not to like them, even if it's something as innocuous says, hey,
let's all eat dinner together. People who are front and
center on the idea of a national Thanksgiving holiday also
(23:29):
tended to be Protestants, Northern Evangelical Protestants, and those folks
were themselves very closely linked to the abolitionist movement. And
you know, at this time, nothing occurs in a vacuum.
At this time, UH, people are increasingly in favor of
abolition in the eighteen forties, and a lot of Northern
(23:50):
ministers are going to the pulpit during Thanksgiving season to
talk about how horrific and terrible slavery is. So south Owners,
the rulers of the southern region at this time, start
to the buck. They pushed back against the idea of Thanksgiving,
and especially in Virginia, I believe, where the local leaders said,
(24:12):
our state is the real cradle of this nation, not those,
not those UH jerks up in New England. And so
this this occurs. This resistance to Thanksgiving also occurs in
other ideas, like because to them, it very much is
a culture war. Southerners, even the very well to do Southerners,
(24:34):
are saying, hey, let's not send our kids to those
Ivy League schools up north. Let's not have Yankees teach
our kids. And you know what if a magazine, if
a magazine is published in these northern states, then I
will be damned good sir, if I will ever soiled
my eyes by looking upon its page. YEA, Indeed, it
(24:58):
was pretty pretty crazy. It was like, you know, again,
this whole the antide Thanksgiving sentiment was really just wrapped
up in this anti northern the sentiment in the South,
just looking for any excuse to escalate. So Thanksgiving this
kind of became part of one of those things that
you just mentioned that nah, we we don't, we don't
celebrate that Yankee travesty of a holiday, no thank you.
(25:22):
In eighteen fifty three, Governor Joseph Johnson UM he declined
to declare a day for Thanksgiving for his state, saying
that he sided with Thomas Jefferson. That interesting point we
talked about earlier, the idea of separating church from state. Um.
Johnson's successor was this slave owning real pill named Henry A. Wise,
(25:46):
who was even more in the separation of church and state.
Camp In six um he got that same letter that
Sarah Josepha Hill had been sending all of the governors
encouraging them to declare a general day for Thanksgiving. And
I only did Wise say absolutely not, but he who
wrote her back a strongly worded letter where he um,
(26:09):
you know, laid out his his position on the issue. Uh.
Thus Lee, this theatrical national clap trap of Thanksgiving has
aided other causes and setting thousands of bull bits to
preach in Christian politics instead of humbling, letting the cornal
kingdom alone and preaching singly Christ crucified. Yeah, and just
(26:32):
a point in clarity there. Governor Joseph Johnson and Henry A. Wise,
they're governors of Virginia. They were successors, they won, one
came after the other, and they both were similarly focused
on this separation of church and state. But again, I'm
still not in any of our research not seeing any
(26:54):
religious ties at all to Thanksgiving. It strikes me as
even in its onset, to be a very secular holiday um,
I mean obviously the church service, you know, promoting giving
thanks and all that. I mean that that's the separate thing.
You know, it's up to you as to whether you
make it religious or not in your house. But all
of the you know, even like the church, the reliy
of the songs around Thanksgiving, like we gathered together well
(27:15):
does said to ask the Lord's blessing? I guess there's
you know, the Puritan angle Maybes. And again the Protestants
who are pushing this are like champions of abolition, so
it's seen as supporting that holiday from the southern perspective
if their pro slavery is seen as supporting abolition, which
they were very much not. I mean, let's call it
(27:38):
what it is. Governor Johnson and Governor Wise, we're both
super into enslaving people. They saw nothing wrong with it,
and they didn't want to erode what they saw as
the status quo. The Richmond Wig later articulates the case
against Thanksgiving. Uh more so when they say it's not
(28:00):
it is enough, so maybe they are agreeing a little
more with you. They say it's it's too worldly. And
the Richmond Wig, by the way, is a publication. They say,
what people should be doing on Thanksgiving is praying. And
in the District of Columbia they said all the federal
offices are closed, but quote an astonishing quantity of execrable
(28:24):
liquor will be guzzled and the holiday would be little
more than an occasion for indulgence in dissipation at the
cost of character. What was that word been execrable X
What does that mean like like like like intoxicating. No,
it means like disgusting, like excellent. It's it's He's basically
(28:44):
saying that it's that it's the devil's the devil's juice. Yes, understood.
And again I just want to point out that we
are still kind of these simmering tensions and all of
this really charged rhetoric is all just kind of the
run up to the Civil War, which is coming closer
day by day. On the actual eve of the start
(29:08):
of the Civil War, the acceptance of Thanksgiving in the
South was still very very spotty. There was really no
rhyme or reason to it. It was up to individuals
and individual governors, you know, as to declaring a special
day that would be you know, a government holiday. Those
that did decide to observe the holiday treated it like
(29:32):
a religious day, like something likely going to a mass,
you know, or a day of relaxation where you would
have you know, big, a big spread with the family,
like a homecoming kind of situation. But it was there,
there was wild inconsistencies with the way it was was
practiced right, and it's very much this is not for nothing, folks.
(29:53):
Was I saying this has comparisons to the so called
War on Christmas in the modern day because commentators in
the South said, look, we already have a holiday of
feasting and celebration towards the end of the year. It's
called Christmas. In New England, there was still this legacy,
this puritan belief that Christmas was a secular abomination. And hey,
(30:16):
look around at the various traditions of Christmas and where
they come from. They're not entirely off base in in
that it's not you know, it's not entirely Christian in
its roots. But Christmas up there wasn't considered a real
celebratory occasion until about the eighteen seventies. From the Southern perspective,
(30:37):
many people said this idea of having Thanksgiving and then
right after having Christmas is redundant. We're losing a day's
income for workers, for businesses, and some Southern newspapers like
the Richmond Daily Dispatch even accused Northerners of trying to
unseat the traditional religious holiday of Christmas with this Thanksgiving
(31:00):
dinner bs this malarkey. So so the war Christmas is
an old, old idea in this country. But this is
not the end of the story, because the nation is
hurtling headlong into one of the bloodiest conflicts it will
ever face up to the present. That I believe is
(31:24):
where we want to pause for part one of our
exploration of Thanksgiving, that old Yankee abolitionist holiday. What do
you say, noll I, I think we've got a little
cliffhanger right as we're as we're right before the Civil War,
you know, I'm here for a cliffhanger. Vand and yeah,
definitely a shorter two partner. But it did feel nice
and modular. You know. We put two of these out
(31:46):
a week because guys, give us a break, give us
a two partner. Y'all are the best. We love all
of you so much, all of the ridiculous historians out there.
Thank you to you, first and foremost, Um Thank you
to Max Williams, our super producer extraordinaire, and his bro
Alex Williams, who composed our theme and did a lovely
guest appearance on Ridiculous History while I was away on
(32:08):
Adventures the other week where you guys did a two
partner on the New England Vampire Pack right yep, and
Max was away as well. Thank you guys both for
Thank you guys both for returning and regaling me with
stories of your adventures. Uh. We also want to thank,
of course, Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister. If
you're listening to this episode the day it comes out,
(32:31):
we have a treat for you. Our our pal slash
Nemesis is starring in his own episode of Thirteen Days
of Halloween, which should be available now, so do check
it out. Let us know what you think. We also,
of course, I want to thank Gabe Blusier, our research associate.
We want to thank you know what, just in advance.
(32:54):
I want to thank everybody who is kind enough to
host their friends and loved ones at their houses for Thanksgiving.
I know it's not easy. I know it's a heck
of a lot of cooking. I know sometimes people aren't
as thankful as they need to be. But we promise you, folks,
if you just like that speech at the very end
(33:14):
of Scrooged, if you, if you let a little you know,
let a little love in your life. Uh, and you
make it a point to let the people in your
life know that you appreciate them, you will be surprised
by how much better you feel. As well. Agreed, We'll
see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for my
(33:40):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Noel Brown
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