#96 Sidebar: Notes on Thanksgiving (Encore Presentation)
The History of the Americans
Jack Henneman
4.9 • 632 Ratings
🗓️ 20 November 2022
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is an encore presentation of one of most popular episodes, “Notes on Thanksgiving,” which dropped on Thanksgiving Day, 2021. This is a great pre-listen for your Thanksgiving celebration, insofar as you will be able to roll out all sorts of impressive Thanksgiving history factoids and impress those all-important in-laws! The original show notes are reproduced below.
If you prefer to listen on a podcast app, here is the link for Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sidebar-notes-on-thanksgiving-encore-presentation/id1547078697?i=1000586884396
And for Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5D8jobBZe1LRKHyQp8zaiw?si=C8T_phZoR3uB6TVuQILpsw
For “More Notes on Thanksgiving,” a darker version, listen here or find it on a podcast app.
This November, it has been 400 years since the traditional First Thanksgiving at Plymouth Colony – Patuxet in 1621. But the history of that collaborative feast of the English and the Wampanoag Indians was lost for more than 200 years. For most of that time, Americans celebrated “thanksgiving” all over the country at different days in the autumn, decreed by local and state governments, without knowing its origin story. This episode explores the conversion of thanksgiving from a local custom to a revered national holiday. Along the way, we learn about Sarah Josepha Hale, the remarkable woman to whom Americans owe the greatest debt for the holiday they will celebrate today.
There were political objections to Thanksgiving, too, rooted in exactly the debates we have today after the proper role of the federal government, and how precisely to separate church and state.
Finally, we learn about the central role of football on Thanksgiving, dating from Thanksgiving of 1873, only four years after the first college football game. By 1893, Americans were playing thousands of games of football across the country on Thanksgiving Day. Oh, and we should all be grateful that President Franklin Roosevelt didn’t screw it all up, which he very nearly did.
Melanie Kirkpatrick, Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience
Melanie Kirkpatrick, “Don’t Let Ideologues Steal Thanksgiving”
“How the Great Colchester Molasses Shortage Nearly Ruined Thanksgiving”
All the Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamations 1789-2018 (pdf)
The West Wing, “I get to proclaim a national day of Thanksgiving”
The American Story Podcast: Sarah Josepha Hale
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, episode 96. I'm your host, Jack Heneman, |
| 0:12.9 | and I'm recording this short introduction in November 20, 2022, in Austin, Texas. We are telling the history of the lands now encompassed by the United |
| 0:23.3 | States from the beginning without presentism. This is the short introduction to an encore |
| 0:29.9 | presentation of one of our more popular episodes, Notes on Thanksgiving, first recorded and |
| 0:36.7 | published on Thanksgiving Day 2021. It published on Thanksgiving Day, 2021. |
| 0:40.6 | It is, of course, a sidebar, which is our term for an episode off the timeline. |
| 0:45.8 | I'm in the middle of a ton of travel, which does cut into the time available for reading and writing, |
| 0:50.8 | never mind the hassle of schlepping around a big pile of books. |
| 0:56.8 | Including the aforementioned trip to Cuba, I've had meaningful travel, a mix of business |
| 1:01.8 | and family obligations and fun for eight weeks in a row, and we'll unfortunately continue |
| 1:08.1 | to do for three of the next four weeks. Then things should slow down considerably for a while, which will make me very happy. |
| 1:16.0 | I think most longstanding listeners know that I believe that Americans are in the main extraordinarily blessed. |
| 1:24.3 | Yes, there are many public policies that we wish we handle differently, and we cannot even agree on which policies those are. |
| 1:33.3 | The political division in our country, which has been much worse and manifestly more violent at various points in our past, has had the effect of degrading the capacity of the federal government. |
| 1:45.7 | We have a media and political class that's decided that stoking rage and anxiety is very |
| 1:50.7 | profitable, whether in click-driven ad revenue or endless and deeply cynical appeals for campaign |
| 1:57.9 | contributions. Add to this that activists of all political stripes have decided |
| 2:03.4 | in the main to describe everything in the most exaggerated possible way at the loudest available volume, |
| 2:11.0 | to the point that there are young people today who think the state of the world is itself |
| 2:16.2 | a good reason not to have children. |
| 2:19.7 | I hope those young people reconsider before it's too late because we are going to need the |
| 2:24.5 | children of smart and thoughtful parents to build our future world. |
... |
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