HIXSON’S HOARDINGS
My most favorite memory of Thanksgiving was being awakened by my father to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. We would curl up, still wearing our pajamas, to watch the world’s largest Thanksgiving parade with its giant balloons, marching bands and floats.
Macy’s parade started in 1924 to showcase the opening of the “World’s Largest Store” (expanded to cover an entire city block). They decided to throw a New York parade. The parade was not actually about Thanksgiving at all, but about Christmas and the start of the busy holiday shopping season. I didn’t think about Christmas at all while watching. I was too enthralled with the huge balloons and all the people below that struggled to handle them. Felix the Cat was the first giant balloon. As always with research, I get mixed stories. One story says that Felix was filled with helium in 1928 and the organizers let him fly off into the sky. Another says during World War II Felix was donated to the war effort for his rubber. (Maybe Felix, like any other cat, has nine lives!) This year, Red Titan from Ryan’s World is making his first appearance. He will be 42 feet tall, 51 feet long and 28 feet wide! Macy’s parade will still go on this year, despite the epidemic, because it’s going virtual for the first time ever! It will be a television-only special presentation without the crowds or traditional parade route. Coverage begins at 9 Thanksgiving morning on NBC. The taping of the performance will be spread out over 2 days and recorded in and around the Herald Square Area of Midtown Manhattan.
Like Felix, Thanksgiving has many stories. Traditionally, we begin the story with a small ship called the Mayflower which carried 102 passengers from Plymouth, England in 1620. It was an “assortment of religious separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith and other individuals lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the New World.” These “pilgrims” suffered from exposure, scurvy, and outbreaks of contagious disease the first year. “Only half of the Mayflower’s original crew lived to see their first New England spring.” Thanks to Squanto (Pawtuxet tribe) who taught them how to cultivate corn, extract sap from Maple trees, catch fish in the rivers, avoid poisonous plants and helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag tribe (one of the sole examples of harmony between European colonists and Native Americans), the 1621 corn harvest was so successful that Governor William Bradley organized a celebration. King Massasoit and some ninety men, according to “Pilgrim Chronicler” Edward Winslow attended bringing 5 deer for the feast which lasted 3 days. Pilgrims had no ovens so historians have suggested that many of the dishes were likely prepared using traditional Native American spices and cooking methods. Since the Mayflower’s sugar supply had dwindled by the fall of 1621, the meal did not include pies, cakes or other deserts. They also speculated that lobster, seal and swans might also have been on the menu. Although my mother did prepare oyster casserole every Thanksgiving, I am glad turkey was the only other pilgrim preparation we consumed! In fact, according to the National Turkey Federation, 90 percent of Americans eat Turkey — roasted, baked or deep fried. An estimated 46 million turkeys are killed annually for the holiday; however, one turkey is pardoned each year by the president.
Apart from the food, arguably the main component of the day is its being a beloved time of year when Americans come together to celebrate what they are thankful for. I had always thought the two main holidays that were strictly American were Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. Canada also has its own Thanksgiving Day in October and Liberia celebrates Thanksgiving on the first Thursday of November. Even the dates and the celebrations in America are questionable. Historians have recorded earlier ceremonies. In 1565 Spanish Explorer Pedro Menendez de Avile invited members of the local Timucua tribe in St. Augustine, Florida for a thanksgiving celebration after holding a mass to thank God for his crew’s safe arrival. In 1619, 38 British settlers reached Berkeley Hundred on the banks of Virginia’s James River and read a proclamation designating the date as “a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.” And, historians have noted that Native Americans had a “rich tradition of commemorating the fall harvest with feasting and merrymaking long before Europeans set foot on their shores.”
During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress designated “one or more days of Thanksgiving a year” and George Washington “called upon Americans to express their gratitude for the happy conclusion to the country’s War of Independence and the successful ratification of the U.S. Constitution. John Adams and James Madison designated days of thanks during their presidencies as well. In 1817, New York was the first of several states to officially adopt an annual Thanksgiving holiday and in 1827, magazine editor and author of Mary Had a Little Lamb, Sarah Josepha Hale launched a campaign to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. For 36 years she sent letters to governors, senators and presidents when finally President Abraham Lincoln heeded her request in a proclamation asking “that God commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife and to heal the wounds of the nation” scheduled for the final Thursday in November and to be celebrated all over the country. Franklin D. Roosevelt moved it up a week in an attempt to spur retail sales during the Great Depression.
Whoever was the first and whenever they celebrated, it still remains a day to express thanks with food, family- and maybe a little football. And even though we are likely to see smaller gatherings and celebrations, remember it is not just the big things, but also the little things to be thankful for- like watching the parade with your dad in pajamas.
Questions may be sent to [email protected] @ Kentucky Gateway Museum Center, Maysville, KY
