Tag Archives: Thanksgiving

Forgotten (or Repurposed) Holidays

Leave a reply

A week or so back I had to call a town office in my home state of Rhode Island, but wound up leaving a recorded message, because I’d forgotten it was V-J Day.

That may perplex some people, and stir vague memories for others. It’s the anniversary of Victory over Japan, and Rhode Island is now the only state where it’s still an official observance (second Monday in August, rather than the historical August 14). It’s a curious little holiday, late in a seaside summer. It used to be widely celebrated, but faded with memory of the war, pushed along no doubt by proximity to Labor Day.

Another holiday from my youth is Lincoln’s Birthday (February 12), which itself was overshadowed by Washington’s Birthday, ten days later. This meant two days off school in two weeks, possibly plus snow days as a bonus. George has long had an official national holiday but Abe hasn’t, and some places cram them together as “Presidents’ Day,” but eight states still celebrate Lincoln. This incudes New York, which I have somehow managed to miss in 25 years of living here. I speculate that it’s limited to closing government offices.

Thanksgiving goes back to a proclamation by Lincoln more clearly than it goes back to the Pilgrims, but Franklin D. Roosevelt shaped our modern celebration. It was traditionally the last Thursday in November, and also traditionally kicked off the Christmas shopping season. Some years November has five Thursdays, and the last one comes pretty late, so during the Depression FDR proclaimed it the FOURTH Thursday, to stimulate an extra week of retail business.

New Englanders and Republicans furiously celebrated on the fifth Thursday, and a mini-cartoon in the Bing Crosby movie “Holiday Inn” showed a confused turkey running back and forth between the two dates on a calendar. We’re all used to it now.

November has a second holiday, formerly called Armistice Day, celebrating the 11th day of the 11th month, when World War I ended. As memory faded, and as 17 million Americans went into uniform for the SECOND World War, this became Veterans’ Day, to honor all those who served.

Much to the exasperation of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (combat veteran and P.O.W.), who said “Armistice Day was a hallowed anniversary because it was supposed to protect future life from future wars. Veterans Day, instead, celebrates ‘heroes’ and encourages others to dream of playing the hero themselves, covering themselves in valor.”

Memorial Day started out as Decoration Day, to place flowers on the graves of the Union dead from the Civil War. (Waterloo claims the honor of initiating the holiday.) Former Confederate states fiercely ignored it, but… once again… as memory faded, and as two world wars brought hundreds of thousands of deaths, the day became Memorial Day for ALL the dead, and moved to the last Monday in May.

Believe it or not, the “Pennsylvania Dutch” used to be the about only Americans who paid any particular attention to Christmas, and even into the 20th century it was a normal work day for many people. Even as a gift-giving holiday, it had to compete with New Year’s.

Columbus Day has rightly come into scorn for celebrating a guy who, whatever his virtues, initiated an age of horror, with bigotry, imperialism, mass murder, and enslavement, all on scales such as the world had never seen. But holidays and statues, however much they purport to be about the past, are mostly about the times in which they are created. Columbus Day proclaimed the acceptance (at last!) of Italian-Americans (and by extension, other “new immigrant” groups) as full-fledged members of the American community. Maybe we should change it to Marconi Day.

Thanksgiving Ups and Downs

The Pilgrims didn’t celebrate the first Thanksgiving – Euro-Americans had been doing that for a century before they came along, and even in English America, Virginians beat them by almost 20 years.

From time to time George Washington issued a Thanksgiving proclamation, and governors of some states, including New York, got in the habit of doing so annually. Here in the northeast custom coalesced around celebrating on a Thursday in November, though WHICH Thursday varied. Some presidents, such as Jefferson, flat-out refused to proclaim Thanksgiving.

In 1816, “the year without a summer,” there would have been little rejoicing, and nothing to eat in celebration. Southern Tier folks would have had NO reason for thanks when the Erie Canal opened in 1825, destroying our local economy. But 1826 (when slavery ended in New York) and 1851 (when the Erie Railroad revived our financial fortunes) would have been good occasions for joy.

Abraham Lincoln called for a day of Thanksgiving to take place on the last Thursday of November, in 1863. The midst of the Civil War might not seem like an opportune moment. But Meade smashed Lee at Gettysburg in 1863, sending him fleeing back to Virginia, never to regain the offensive. Grant slashed the Confederacy in two and reopened the Mississippi. Union victories were enforcing the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in tens of thousands, and America was finally enlisting African American soldiers in THEIR tens of thousands. Americans had cause to be thankful.

Since 1863, the November-Thursday Thanksgiving has been an annual event, and in the late 1800s, turkeys became irrevocably (and involuntarily) committed to the celebration.

The 1865 celebration would have seen fervent thanks for victory in the Civil War, along with sorrow for the dead and disabled.

In 1918, Americans would have been giving thanks that the Great War had ended, just two weeks earlier. But the war’s deaths were still immediate. They were also still reeling from the devastating death toll of the Spanish Influenza, which had not yet fully died out. War jobs were ending, and the Curtiss Hammondsport plant laid off about 600 workers. Prohibition was coming in, ruining vintners, grape growers, and all their support industry. Farmers had bought equipment to replace the young men going into uniform, and now owed years of time payments even as farm prices crashed. So 1918’s would have been a very uneasy Thanksgiving.

Depression-era Thanksgivings would have had an undertone, or even an overtone, of desperation and fear, even as President Roosevelt experimented with date changes in hopes of stimulating Christmas shopping.

In 1935, thanks would have been tempered because of the catastrophic July flood that stole 44 lives.

In 1941 we’d have been thankful we were not in the Second World War, worried about Axis victories, and feeling guilty that other people’s suffering was lifting us out of the Depression. We still had a week or two of peace to enjoy, but silver linings would have been hard to find for the ’42 and ’43 celebrations.

In 1945 we’d still be missing our recent dead, and transition from the wartime economy was still shaky, but overall we’d have found it a very good year since the war’s end in August.

The Baby Boom Thanksgivings were mostly upbeat, and kids spent those mornings watching Captain Kangaroo host the Macy’s Parade on TV. In 1963 the holiday had a somber edge, with President Kennedy’s murder just six days earlier.

Thousands of local folks celebrated Thanksgiving of 1972 in trailers trucked in by the federal government, their homes uninhabitable, or gone forever, in the Hurricane Agnes flood.

Since 1942, by Congressional action, we’ve celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. I hope that for you, this year’s holiday is one of those good ones.

November, 1901: A Busy Month for Socialites

Glenn and Lena Curtiss, along with their infant son Carlton, spent Thanksgiving Day in 1901 visiting friends in Rochester. It they had stayed at home in Hammondsport, they could have attended Union Services at 10:30 that day in the Methodist Episcopal Church on Lake Street, where Glenn’s grandfather had once been pastor. At the Presbyterian Church they could have attended a Thanksgiving Fair, with “Chinese curios, Angora cats, cut flowers, potted palms, …other things too numerous to mention, and a fine supper to finish off with.”
If Lena had chosen to make her own Thanksgiving feast, she could have gone to C. G. Kay for “Thanksgiving Eatables.” Cape Cod cranberries were 10 cents a quart. A package of sage leaf cost a nickel. She could have gotten three pounds of raisins for a quarter, or half a pound of chocolate candy.
The Curtisses could have enjoyed many other social events that long-ago November day, if they were in fact so inclined, although Carlton’s poor health doubtless slowed them down; this was the only Thanksgiving he would ever see.
They could have joined one of Mrs. Benedict’s dancing classes in the newly opened Opera House Block. (Do you think Glenn would have liked that?) They could have watched Bath-Haverling clobber the Hammondsport home team 16-0 in football. On November 7, from 3:00 to 6:00 and again from 7:30 to 10:00, they could have attended a chrysanthemum show and sale at the home of Mrs. W. Brown. Fifteen cents would have gotten them admission, coffee, and wafers.
Glenn didn’t become a Mason until 1914, but the Lodge was moving into its new rooms in the Opera House. Citizens’ Hose Company had ladies’ night on the 25th. The Epworth League literary society met at the home of Miss Florence Voorhees to discuss the life and work of Edward Eggleston. A “jolly party” went on at Germania Wine Cellars, but those were all people from Rochester. The Curtisses could also have slipped over to the Casino Opera House in Bath for a delightful love romance, “When We Were Twenty-One,” presented by “a strong and popular company.”
Lena would not have been eligible for a mysterious group formed one Friday evening in November of 1901 at the home of Miss Adda Shull. All members of the “M.M.M.” were “bachelor girls,” but they refused to reveal what the initials meant. Hammondsport Herald editor Lew Brown archly conjectured that they might stand for “Merry Marriageable Maidens,” “Merciless Man-Hating Maidens,” or any number of other possibilities. He also twitted them in verse. Members would say only that their goal was to discourage matrimony, improve their proficiency at Pedro (a form of the card game pitch, which seems to have been wildly popular around Hammondsport in 1901), and encourage the production of “palatable culinary products.”
While Lew Brown would have his fun with the M.M.M.’s over the next several months, he was conscientious in reporting women’s issues. In fact, if the paper’s columns reflected his views, he supported woman suffrage and the increase of women’s rights. On November 13 he published lengthy extracts from an essay by Ava Stoddard of M.I.T. analyzing why women’s pay was less than that of men. Miss Stoddard stated the reason was political – established workers feared competition from women, and women were not in a position to force improvements. “Give women the ballot,” she urged, “and… ‘Equal pay for equal work’ will be realized.” She would probably be horrified to see how little that is true more than a century later.
Of course, Hammondsport also had some more prosaic interests back then. Sheep worrying was still a problem. J. S. Hubbs added an iron fence to his home on Sheathar Street. Miss Grace Ellis was working at Smellie’s Pharmacy, as the telephone and telegraph operator. Trappers and hunters were busy taking muskrat. Concrete or limestone sidewalks were being installed, along with a crosswalk at Lake and Wheeler. Lown’s in Penn Yan held its winter millinery opening on the 14th and 15th.
Out in the big wide world, variolid (a mild form of smallpox) had broken out in Corning. The Soldiers’ Home in Bath had 1706 inmates. The New York Central Railroad settled a strike by agreeing to a 10-hour day (down from 12), plus overtime. The Boers beat the British badly in a South African battle. A coastal storm devastated sections of Long Island and New Jersey.
The Treasury Secretary ordered a buy-back of US bonds; our government had so much money, the surplus was starting to drain the economy. The Board of Naval Construction was doing all it could to solve the problem, proposing 40 new ships in addition to the two battle ships and two armored cruisers already on the ways. And the Navy’s first submarine boat, Fulton, submerged for over 15 hours in New York on the 25th.
Just in case you were wondering, the weekly Hammondsport Herald ran its first Christmas ads on November 27, the day before Thanksgiving.