Thanksgiving: The Biography of an American Holiday » (New Edition)

JAMES W. BAKER was the director of research at Plimoth Plantation for many years and has acted as an authority for numerous Thanksgiving Day exhibits, articles, newscasts, and children's books.

The origins and ever-changing story of America's favorite holiday

The Washington Post - Alexander Nazaryan

James Baker…does not wag a scholar's dour finger at what has become a turkey-and-football jamboree. But in his comprehensive and readable history of the holiday, he does remind us that Thanksgiving is more than those "ubiquitous, mass-produced images of buckle-hatted Pilgrims, generic Indians, turkeys, pumpkins, and cornstalks"…Baker acknowledges Native American grievances and sorts assiduously through the erroneous depictions of this "enthusiastically muddled" holiday: Pilgrims did not adorn themselves with buckle hats and ruffled collars, the Wampanoag bore little resemblance to the Plains Indians they are usually depicted as, and log cabins did not exist in Colonial New England.

Foreword: Thanksgiving in America Peter J. Gomes Gomes, Peter J.

Introduction A Thanksgiving Detective Story 1

Ch. 1 New England's Puritan Holy Days 14

Ch. 2 The Traditional New England Thanksgiving 31

Ch. 3 The Classic New England Thanksgiving Dinner 46

Ch. 4 The Nation Embraces Thanksgiving, 1780-1880 62

Ch. 5 Nineteenth-Century Holiday Imagery in Literature and Art 78

Ch. 6 Enter the Pilgrims 98

Ch. 7 Pilgrims Are for Kids: Thanksgiving in the Progressive Classroom 115

Ch. 8 Imaging the Holiday 129

Ch. 9 Parades, Patriotism, and Consumption 145

Ch. 10 Consensus and Competition: The Postwar Thanksgiving 165

Ch. 11 New Myths for Old - Thanksgiving under Siege 183

Ch. 12 Thanksgiving Now, Then, and Forever 201

Appendix 1 A Thanksgiving Poem by Henry Bliss 219

Appendix 2 Some Early Thanksgiving Recipes 230

Appendix 3 United American Indians of New England Press Release 233

Notes 235

Bibliography 259

Index 267