American As Pumpkin Pie: A History Of Thanksgiving [rebroadcast]

BackStory

Education, History

4.5 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 November 2016

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

If a Pilgrim were to attend a contemporary Thanksgiving celebration, he or she would probably be stunned by our “traditional” foods. In this episode of BackStory, The Guys discuss Puritan foods with historian James McWilliams, and religion scholar Anne Blue Wills reveals the surprising, 19th century origins of our national holiday. We’ll also hear from legendary NFL quarterback Roger Staubach about what it was like to spend every turkey day on the football field.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is backstory.
0:05.0	As we all learned in grade school, life was not easy for the pilgrims.
0:09.0	At least there was one thing that they didn't have to worry about
0:12.0	that choice between white meat and dark meat.
0:15.0	Very often the way Puritans, being Puritans, said thank you to God, was suffer.
0:20.0	Therefore, thanksgiving throughout much of the 17th century was a day that these Puritans would fast instead of feast.
0:28.0	Today on backstory, the history of America's favorite feast day.
0:32.0	Turns out the holiday really got its start 200 years after that famous dinner was squandered.
0:38.0	Sarah Hale was a magazine editor and she saw it as a way of not only integrating women into the national calendar but integrating southerners.
0:52.0	Thanksgiving from Pilgrims to Pixkin coming up on Backstory.
1:01.0	Major funding for Backstory is provided by the ShiaCon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities,
1:07.0	the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.
1:13.0	From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this is Backstory with the American History Guys.
1:22.0	Welcome to the show. I'm Brian Ballot here with Peter Onath.
1:27.0	Hey Brian.
1:28.0	And Ed Hears is with us.
1:30.0	Hey. It's that time of year in America when the holidays start to come fast and furious.
1:35.0	35 years ago Charlie Brown just about summed it up to his sister Sally and his good buddy Linus.
1:42.0	We've got another holiday to worry about.
1:45.0	It seems thanksgiving day is upon us.
1:49.0	I haven't even finished eating one my Halloween candy.
1:53.0	Sally, Thanksgiving is a very important holiday.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BackStory, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BackStory and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.