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Journal of Historical Sociology Vol. 15 No. 3 September 2002 ISSN 0952-1909
On Thanksgiving and Collective Memory: Constructing the American Tradition AMY ADAMCZYK Abstract Relying on the approach by Maurice Halbwachs who argued that collective memory is based on contemporary interests and concerns, this article shows how Thanksgiving has changed over time in accordance with the ideas of the day. Aspects of the analysis support Barry Schwartz’s theory that commemoration reflects the historical past. Similar to the pilgrims’ celebration, many people commemorate Thanksgiving by, for example, feasting and praying. But in contrast to Schwartz’s thought, this paper also shows that there are other elements of traditions that have minimal connection with the original event. Forms of commemoration like the Macy’s Day Parade challenge the idea that commemoration and celebration contain some connection to the initial occasion. In general, the findings lend support to historical research and theories that implement social constructionist approaches.
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A representative story of America’s first Thanksgiving celebration begins with the Pilgrims leaving England because of religious persecution and moving to Holland. From there they sailed on the Mayflower to America, and before landing at Plymouth Harbor wrote the Mayflower Compact, often believed to be the forerunner of the American Constitution. Unfortunately, they were not prepared for the New England winter, but friendly Indians aided them by giving them food. When warm weather came they planted their first crop with the Indians’ help and after harvesting it, celebrated the first Thanksgiving in 1621 with their Indian friends. Although the pilgrims formed neither the first American settlement nor were the first to have a thanksgiving celebration, they are often remembered in those terms. Every year on the fourth Thursday in November millions of Americans celebrate the pilgrims’ landing along with the Christian and patriotic virtues with which they are associated by having family reunions, feasting, and watching football games or the Macy’s Day parade on television. Since the pilgrims were not the first to celebrate ‘thanksgiving,’ why has this memory been perpetuated? What are the disparate ways of commemorating Thanksgiving? To address these questions, I draw on theories of collective memory. Maurice Halbwachs offered one of the first theories outlining the way present needs and concerns shape how people remember the past. In his two major works La Memoire Collective and La Topographie Legendaire des Evangiles, Halbwachs explains that ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
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human memory can only function within a collective context. These memories change as societal needs and interests change. Halbwachs laid the groundwork for further analysis by Maines, Sugre, Katovich1 and Lowenthal.2 Although social constructionist approaches such as Halbwachs’s have gained popularity in recent years, there are two other well-regarded theories, which argue that commemoration and collective memory are not completely based on present concerns. For example, Barry Schwartz posits that our current image of historical figures like Washington and Lincoln, is, in part, based on the attributes and characteristics that these people actually possessed. Similarily, Edward Shils, Mircea Eliade, as well as the classical sociology of Emile Durkheim argue that the origins of traditions influence how they are later remembered. Looking at the historical development of Thanksgiving Day, argue that a social constructionist perspective can offer significant insight into how the holiday evolved. I begin with an examination of other theories on collective memory and then explain how the meaning and collective memory of Thanksgiving Day emerged. Issues in Collective Memory Collective Memory has been central to many academic debates in multiple disciplines especially with regard to national discourses. In this section, I look at several theoretical approaches that consider the role of the past for explaining the present – as well as the importance of the present for explaining the past. Where these theories vary is in their emphasis on the role of the present and the past for explaining what and how something gets remembered. The works of Edward Shils and Mircea Eliade emphasize the importance of social origins for shaping our understanding of traditions and the continuity between past and present. Shils argues that people celebrate traditions because they desire a connection to those who came before them. As a result, there is ‘‘an authority inhering in symbols which derive their weight and force through their connection with persons formerly existent, who once filled certain roles or were members of the collectivity at an earlier state in one’s history.’’3 Similar to Shils, in his analysis of primitive myth, Eliade asserts that the most significant events of a society’s past occur at the beginning. The initial events constitute a ‘‘golden age’’ and give rise to the notion that the first manifestation of a thing is significant and valid.4 For Shils and Eliade, the origins of a tradition are imbued with sacredness. This is similar to Emile Durkheim’s understanding of commemoration and its importance for helping people maintain a sense of connectedness to the past. Durkheim was one of the first ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.
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sociologists to point out that every society requires a sense of continuity and unity with the past, which can be maintained through enduring memories. As he explains in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, conceptions of the past are cultivated and renewed through periodic commemoration rites. The point of these rites is not to alter the past to serve the present, but to reproduce it, making it live as it once did.5 Durkheim, Shils, and Eliade emphasize the importance of the past for shaping our understanding of the present. In contrast to this perspective, one of the most widely accepted ways of understanding the link between past and present is the social constructionist view.6 One of the leaders of this perspective is Maurice Halbwachs7 whose understanding of collective memory follows George Herbert Mead. Mead argued that ‘‘any reinterpretation of the picture we form of the past will be found in the present, and will be judged by the logical and evidential characters which such data possess in a present.’’8 Similarly, Halbwachs contrasts collective memory with historical study. While historical study aims to tell the facts as ‘‘lived by a group of men and the significan[ce] of these facts in regard to them,’’ collective memory is ‘‘essentially a reconstruction of the past [that] adapts the image of ancient facts to the beliefs and spiritual needs of the present.’’9 By drawing on the distinction between rationality and memory, Halbwachs explains how the past comes to be shaped by the present. While memory involves a framework of landmarks referring exclusively to the past, rational action takes its point of departure from conditions in which society finds itself at particular moments, e.g. the present. Memory functions only within the context of present-day rationality; hence, the present comes to shape the past based on current concerns and needs. Halbwachs remarks: ‘‘When instead of letting the past recur, we reconstruct it through an effort of reasoning, what happens is that we distort that past, because we wish to introduce greater coherence.’’10 To address the issue of how the individual’s memory becomes linked with that of the collectivity, Halbwachs explains that ‘‘While the collective memory endures and draws strength from its base in a coherent body of people, it is individuals as group members who remember.’’11 People are located within different groups such as families, nations, associations and social classes. Individuals are able to remember and recreate the past by drawing on these specific group contexts, which is also what makes memories concrete and meaningful. Thus, as Halbwachs explains, ‘‘Every collective memory requires the support of a group delimited in space and time.’’12 Halbwachs follows Durkheim’s thought explaining that commemoration can reinvigorate the past. As Halbwachs explains in ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.
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Legendary Topography of the Gospels in the Holy Land, early Christians had no conception of ‘‘historical preoccupations such as we think of them [instead] their memories were tied to rites of commemoration and adoration, to ceremonies, feast, and processions.’’13 In contrast to early Christians, Halbwachs argues that today we have historical documentation to which we can refer for understanding the past. But memories do not necessarily become salient for people through historical facts, but rather through collective memory. Because collective memory is a social construction based on presentist needs and concerns, embedded in the context of group affiliation, elements minimally related to initial practices of certain traditions can become part of the commemoration of these traditions. Pierre Nora adds to Halbwachs’s understanding of the distinction between collective memory and history with his volumes on the construction of French history. Although we might think the memory of an event would closely follow historical accounts, Nora explains how memories become detached from their historical antecedents. Whereas history is a representation of the past and a reconstruction of what is no longer, memory ‘‘ceaselessly reinvents tradition, linking the history of its ancestors to the undifferentiated time of heroes, origins, and myths . . . it is a perpetually actual phenomenon, a bond tying us to the eternal present.’’14 Nora links memory to commemoration explaining that the dynamics of commemoration have ushered in an unpredictable and capricious use of the past. ‘‘[I]t is the present that creates the instruments of commemoration, that seeks out dates and figures to commemorate, that ignores some and invents others, sometimes artificially manipulating dates and sometimes accepting dates as given but altering their significance.’’15 In contrast to the social constructionist approach, Barry Schwartz argues that collective memories are grounded in historical evidence.16 For him, commemoration is a system of interlocking symbols that enable people to comprehend the world. In his analysis of Lincoln he points out that commemoration filled up what was lacking in Lincoln’s memory by generalizing the qualities of others deemed similar to him. Although Schwartz’s thought is very similar to Halbwachs, the important distinction comes in his understanding of the relation between history and commemoration, of which collective memory is the major crux. As he explains, commemoration and history are not separate lines of work.17 For example, Schwartz acknowledges that perceptions of Abraham Lincoln have omitted and exaggerated different qualities about the former president at different points in time. But according to Schwartz, all of these reconstructed images reflect at least some aspects of the ‘‘real’’ ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.
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Lincoln. At least with regard to Lincoln, commemoration is based upon the historical record. For Schwartz, history constrains the present because the aspect of a past image or phenomenon that gets emphasized in the present is taken from the past. In other words, although the present exaggerates the past, how this is done is taken from the person or event that spurred the memory of the past. Schwartz illustrates this point in his analysis of how George Washington’s public image has evolved since the Civil War. Before the Civil War, Washington was remembered as a remote man most comfortable associating with genteel society, and concerned with aristocratic values.18 By contrast, after the Civil War, Washington was remembered as an intimate man allied with common people and most concerned with democratic values.19 Although Washington’s image changed between the pre- and post-Civil war eras, Schwartz argues that the ‘real’ Washington was both remote and intimate and reflected both aristocratic and democratic values. Different generations have focused on the aspects of Washington’s character that reflected their interests, and overlooked aspects that did not.20 The first aim of this paper is to show that presentist concerns and interests were more important than the pilgrim’s initial celebration, for shaping how Thanksgiving has been remembered and celebrated. I also aim to illustrate that in accordance with Schwartz’s work on Washington and Lincoln some of the ways Thanksgiving has been celebrated are rooted in the initial event. By contrast, I also hope to show that certain elements of Thanksgiving bear no relation to its initial celebration. This analysis of Thanksgiving is based on a variety of materials, including presidential proclamations, speeches, poetry, first hand accounts, magazines and other historical and social science interpretations of the holiday. I rely most heavily on newspaper articles, mainly from the New York Times. There are, of course, limitations with using these materials to analyze how people understood and celebrated the holiday. No one can be certain what most Americans during a given era believed or felt. We can only study the public tastes and impressions people had of Thanksgiving as they are illustrated in these materials. Nevertheless the impression given from these sources will reflect the public tastes, which some writers shared and others exploited. The way people generally conceived of the holiday should be reflected in the periodicals of that era. The analysis presented here covers four different eras, each signaling an important developmental moment in the meaning of the holiday, how it is celebrated, and the collective memory that is attached to it. I begin by looking at the late 16th and 17th centuries, which is when the collective memory of the pilgrims was created and ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.
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recognized on a national level. Next, I examine the period surrounding the Civil War, which is when Thanksgiving became a national holiday and associated with domestic sentiments and football. I then look at how the Macy’s Day parade was established in 1924. And, finally, I examine changing interpretations of the holiday at the end of the 20th century. How the Memory Was Started Although the pilgrims are often credited with starting the annual Thanksgiving Day celebration, they were not the first to have a festival of this sort in America and there have been many debates over whether their celebration was an actual ‘‘thanksgiving’’ festival. For many centuries, days of thanksgiving were frequently observed throughout the year to signify a deity’s beneficence. According to Siskind, these days were characterized as serious occasions for long sermons, prayer and abstinence from work and play, and preparation and consumption of a meal was not an important part of the ritual.21 According to a letter sent back to ‘old England,’ the Pilgrims’ celebration in 1621 included a large meal, recreational activities like exercising arms, entertainment, and minimal religious observance.22 The occasion then does not seem to fit the typical description of a thanksgiving celebration. In addition, settlements before the pilgrims had events that could be characterized as thanksgiving festivals. For example, Europeans who arrived at Berkley Plantation in 1619 agreed to observe the day they landed as a day of thanksgiving as did colonists traveling to Popham Colony in Maine in 1607.23 Moreover, following their initial celebration in 1621, the pilgrims did not have another festival for two more years and after that they only had them sporadically to celebrate the arrival of friends and supplies from Europe (1630) and the defeat of Indians (1637 and 1676).24 Since the Pilgrims’ initial celebration in 1621 follows a long tradition of thanksgiving festivals and they were not the first to hold this celebration in America, why then are they and their initial celebration, remembered and commemorated as the first Thanksgiving? By looking at how the pilgrims came to be remembered we will see that a general interest in forefathers at the end of the 17th century sparked the collective memory of the pilgrims, which then flourished during the Revolutionary War because the pilgrims came to signify America’s break from England. Although early Americans were not interested initially in remembering the pilgrims’ first celebration, in the late 17th century people began to develop a general interest in and idealize early settlers. As Dixon Wecter points out, around 1675 ‘‘a spirit of romance . . . turned to a composite ideal called the Pilgrim Fathers or ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.
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the Puritans.’’25 In 1676 an early Boston schoolmaster named Benjamin Tompson illustrated this point in his poetry where he dreamed about the first settlers and their ‘‘golden times, too fortunate to hold,’’ ‘‘No sooner pagan malice peeped forth But valor snubbed it. Then were men of worth, Who by their prayers slew thousands; angel-like, Their weapons are unseen, with which they strike.’’26
Although in the late 1600’s people began to romanticize early settlers, the symbol of the Pilgrim fathers was important for only those who resided in the Northeast. Southerners did not begin to participate in this celebration until the American Revolution. It was shortly before this time that the flight of the pilgrims to the New World from English tyranny was seen to have patriotic meaning. The Mayflower compact made the ‘Pilgrim Forefathers’ appear particularly democratic. In response to the Boston Tea Party, John Dickinson in 1768 wrote one of the most popular poems of the time, ‘‘The Liberty Song’’: ‘‘Our worthy Forefathers-let’s give them a cheerTo Climates unknown did courageously steer; Thro’ Oceans to Deserts for Freedom they came, And dying bequeath’d us their Freedom and Fame.’’27
In addition to the Liberty Song, other poems such as the Massachusetts Liberty Song and speeches such as Peter St. John’s ‘‘Taxation on America’’ became popular. They honored the forefathers and invigorated feelings of patriotism. Washington added to these feelings by giving the first national Thanksgiving proclamation at his presidential inauguration in 1789. He used his proclamation to mark the establishment of the Constitution and give thanks to God for the new nation. ‘‘[Let’s all give thanks] for His kind care and protection of the people of this country, previous to their becoming a nation . . . for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish Constitutions of Government for our safety and happiness and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed.. .’’28
The Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving was not remembered continuously from the initial events, rather the memory was sought after and developed later because people in America became generally interested in early settlers. Likewise, during the period leading up to the American Revolution, Americans sought out the pilgrims’ story and imagery because it expressed and invigorated feelings of ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.
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patriotism. As Halbwachs explains, collective memories change according to the needs and concerns of each generation. The analysis of Thanksgiving seems to take this point even further as present concerns determined what, if anything, about the pilgrims and how their initial celebration should and would be remembered. Civil War, Changes in Industry, and the Making of a Tradition Although in 1789 Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving Day proclamation, the holiday was not yet associated with spending time with family and friends or coming home, and the day was not yet established as a ‘national’ holiday. In addition, subsequent presidential proclamations were only sporadically given as some presidents, such as Thomas Jefferson, thought giving a Thanksgiving Day proclamation would indirectly assume authority over religious exercises, which were forbidden by the Constitution.29 If we look at the needs of the nation shortly after the Civil War, we will see that interests in social solidarity and family created a need for the holiday. Thanksgiving Day was officially established in 1863 shortly after the battle at Gettysburg. The Civil War had been a devastating blow to the new country and, as Robert Bellah points out, it involved so much national self-understanding that it required an expression in the civil religion.30 Thanksgiving marked this important moment in America’s history. Abraham Lincoln expresses this sentiment in his proclamation, which he couches in terms of the war and God’s blessings on the nation: ‘‘In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved. . . . The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. . . . No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Highest God.’’31
Immediately following the war the major political and cultural challenges were to find some common ground on which the North and South might envision themselves as part of a national family. According to Cecilia Elizabeth O’Leary, leaders in this movement, particularly Black southerners, tried to create this union by linking patriotism to racial equality and democracy.32 Although Thanksgiving imagery was used to express racial aversion, there were some that clearly expressed equality and democracy. For example, in 1869, a cartoon by Thomas Nast appeared in Harper’s Weekly on November 20, 1869 entitled ‘‘Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner’’, which shows an optimistic view of the holiday as a metaphor for the ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.
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Figure 1.
peaceful diversity of the nation. Beneath the portraits of Lincoln, Washington, and President Grant, Uncle Sam carves a turkey for his multinational guests, which include Columbia (The United States) seated between an Asian family that is being hosted by an AfricanAmerican family. Included in the scene are mottos like, ‘‘Come One, Come All,’’ ‘‘Free and Equal,’’ ‘‘Self Government,’’ and ‘‘Universal Suffrage.’’ In addition to representing patriotism and social solidarity, the holiday at this time was being cultivated into a domestic occasion. One of the people who helped persuade Lincoln to make Thanksgiving an official holiday was Sarah Josepha Hale, and she also had an important influence on establishing the day as a quiet occasion to spend with family. In 1827, when she was the editor of the Boston Ladies’ Magazine, Hale began writing editorials to have Thanksgiving recognized as a national holiday.33 She also sent hundreds of letters to governors, presidents and anyone else who she thought might be influential in advancing her ideas. In her editorials, Hale emphasized the national and domestic aspects of the holiday such as coming home. As she explains in her last article before Thanksgiving Day was ‘officially’ declared a national holiday, ‘‘The pious and loving thought that every American was joining in heart with the beloved family at home and with the church to which he belonged would thrill his soul with the purest feelings of ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.
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patriotism and the deepest emotions of thankfulness. . .’’34 Hale’s efforts and emphasis on coming home to spend time with family were supported by the New York Times and Harper’s Weekly, as the latter explains, ‘‘This private celebration, in the thanksgiving dinner is the most attractive feature of the occasion. It is not the costly dinner that gives it its value and chief attraction, but the opportunity thus afforded for the social mingling of family relatives and nearest friends.’’35 Like the emphasis on patriotism after the Civil War, Hale’s focus on the domestic aspects of the holiday, such as coming home and spending time with family, reflected the interests and concerns of the era. As Rogers M. Smith explains, the nation at this time was crossing the watershed between a largely agrarian society of small family farms to a new manufacturing one with large corporations and masses of workers.36 Industrial and commercial revolutions dislocated the family and a large-scale migration from New England had begun to weaken kinship ties. The ritual of returning home at Thanksgiving made it possible to reconcile individualism and obligation to family, and it also affirmed the importance of the extended family.37 How Football Became a Part of the Holiday Thirteen years after Lincoln made the holiday ‘official’, the first Thanksgiving football game was played on a field at Stevens Instate, Hoboken, New Jersey. The trend rapidly grew and by 1895 the Chicago Tribune estimated that as many as 120,000 athletes were involved in Thanksgiving Day games throughout the country.38 Today, millions of Americans will watch football with friends and family on Thanksgiving Day. However, football, in addition to rugby, its precursor, had not yet been invented when the pilgrims had their celebration in 1621. Moreover, the first Thanksgiving Day game was not held until thirteen years after Lincoln made the holiday official. If we take a look at the relationship between football and American and Christian virtues during the nineteenth century, we will see that football was introduced and remained a part of the holiday because it could be shaped to enrich the national and later the domestic meaning of the Thanksgiving celebration. Prior to the mid nineteenth century many Christians were opposed to sports because they thought they had a tendency toward idleness, worldly pleasure and gambling. However, in the mid nineteenth century when changes took place in industry, technology, physical sciences and the social climate, people began to associate sports and physical fitness with Christian and American virtues such as self-reliance, courage, endurance, and self-denial. As ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.
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many young men migrated to major cites in search of work, there was growing concern with how they would spend their free time. The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) describes the situation of men in London during the mid nineteenth century, ‘‘Far from home and family, these young men often lived at the workplace. They slept in crowded rooms over the company’s shop, a location thought to be safer than London’s tenements and streets. Outside the shop things were bad – open sewers, pickpockets, thugs, beggars, drunks, lovers for hire and abandoned children running wild by the thousands.’’39 As they built lives for themselves in major cities, physical fitness came to be seen as an acceptable way for young men to spend their free time.40 With 397 locations across America and Europe in 1853, YMCAs played a major role in encouraging and providing a place for them to do this. Because it was also a Christian organization the YMCA contributed to the link between Christian virtues and sports. As the relationship between sports and morality developed, organized games such as football began to be seen as a way to display national ideals. In 1889 a distinguished spokesmen for sports and Harvard geology professor, Nathaniel Shaler, announced that ‘‘football was coming to be seen as both a moral training ground and a mirror of American industrial capitalism.’’41 Around this same time a writer for Outlook contended that ‘out of the old Rugby game the people of the United States have made a game of unified team play that is distinctive and unique, corresponding to something fundamental in American instincts which it expresses and satisfies.’’42 After the game was associated with both American and Christian virtues, college football began to be played on Thanksgiving Day. A YMCA writer in 1892 explains the significance of football on Thanksgiving Day as he tries to justify the lack of church attendance as a result of it. ‘‘Because the old way of keeping Thanksgiving Day Christian is no longer adequate to hold the young men, does not prove that young men are becoming un-Christian . . . [rather] it suggests a new way to make them more Christian than they ever were under the old observances.’’43 After football games became televised, people could remain at home and celebrate the holiday by listening and watching the game with family and friends.44 In this way football became associated with the domestic aspects of the occasion. Fantasticals and the Macy’s Day Parade In addition to football, many Americans watch the Macy’s Day Parade on Thanksgiving Day. Macy’s sponsored its first parade in 1924, which was an almost instant success, and since that time it has continued to offer one annually. However, unlike football, the ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.
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parade has seldom been associated with national or religious sentiments. In fact, writing in 1924, journalist Samuel Strauss explained that the parade was to stand for ‘‘Consumptionism’’ and not for traditions invoking poverty (feeding the ‘poor’) or ethnic heritage.45 By looking at how the Macy’s Day parade developed we will see that parades in the form of marching fantasticals and ragamuffins have long been a part of the tradition. After Thanksgiving Day became a national holiday and domestic occasion, parades were still considered a somewhat acceptable way to celebrate because for many years they had been associated in some form with the day. During the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in many major North East American suburbs and cities such as New York, groups of men and boys would dress up in women’s clothing, and parade through the city blowing horns, making noise, getting drunk and harassing pedestrians on Thanksgiving Day. The men who participated in these events were referred to as Fantastics or Fantasticals and the custom, according to Elizabeth Pleck, seems to be derived from the English practice of masquerading door to door for treats.46 In addition to Thanksgiving, the Fantasticals would parade on other major holidays such as New Year’s Day, Christmas, Fourth of July, Washington’s Birthday, Easter Monday.47 An article in the New York Times for November 1885 when the practice was quickly declining describes one of the parades: ‘‘A mass of moving, shouting beings, whose costumes were as varied as the whims of a coquette, dazzling the eye with the variegated brilliancy of a kaleidoscope flitted about on the dancing platform with a quick step the pace of which Strauss’s most charming waltz could not have accelerated.’’48
In addition to parading in women’s clothing, the Fantasticals would often blacken their faces and masquerade as African Americans. On December 1, 1911 an interesting article appears in the New York Times about the recent Thanksgiving Day events. The title reads, ‘‘Hooting Mob Chased Black-Face Mummer: Crowd Thought Blonde Columbine Had a Negro Escort and Started Hue and Cry, Both Were White Youths.’’ According to the article, as 20,000 people gathered to participate in and watch the masquerading, a crowd mistook a white boy and his partner for a black man and a white woman. After someone shouted that it was a black man and white women a crowd gathered and started to chase, throw stones, and yell at the couple. Elements of black minstrelsy in the fantasticals performance expressed the racial relations that prevailed in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Referring to minstrelsy, Robert Toll explains ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.
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that the ridiculed caricatures of African-Americans by working class white men demonstrated the tensions between the two groups who were competing for similar jobs and resources.49 Like the fantastics’ parades, Susan Davis explains that ‘‘Christmas impersonations, like minstrel shows, mocked urban blacks’ attempts to ‘act white’; that is, to participate equally in city life the homemade masquerades were part of an informal means of creating group unity.’’50 Eric Lott adds more complexity to this display of racial aversion explaining that these performances embodied a peculiar kind of love, although more akin to identification than affection. Minstrelsy was ordered by ‘‘envy as well as repulsion, sympathetic identification as well as fear.’’51 Along with racial tension, blackening up and then being able to wash off the burnt cork to bare white skin expressed for immigrant groups like the Jews, according to Michael Rogin, their assimilation into the racially exclusionary American melting pot.52 In addition to illustrating the racial tensions, Fantasticals also expressed the strained relations between poor and middle classes. Writing in 1908, novelist W. D. Howells explains that, while the middle classes recognized the holiday as a domestic occasion, ‘‘The poor recognized the day largely as a sort of carnival,’’ a time to get drunk and break rules.53 The way the working class behaved on Thanksgiving collided with the private celebration and middle-class expectations for behavior on the holiday. The different ways of celebrating revealed the tensions between the two groups and created an occasion for the people within them to express their solidarity. In 1885 the New York Times described the Fantasticals’ masquerading as ‘‘Fun of a Lively Sort’’54 and in 1870 a Pennsylvania newspaper editorial defended the Fantastics on the grounds that ‘‘it is better to be merry than sad.’’55 However, by the beginning of the nineteenth century the Fantasticals had dissolved into bans of children called ragamuffins who would dress up in Fantastics’ clothing and go door to door begging for money. Charitable organizations, government officials, and the middle class disapproved of the children’s begging on the grounds that it did not fit with the ‘meaning’ of the holiday. A November 1911 New York Times article affirmed this sentiment; ‘‘Here in New York we are in danger of falling into a custom which is inconsistent with the whole spirit of the day. This is the habit of giving pennies and larger coins to children who put on fantastic clothing. . .’’56 Similarly, a November 1913 article protests against the children, ‘‘With the recurrence of Thanksgiving one of our most characteristic national holidays, we must expect to have the cheer of the day again molested by the hordes of ill-bred, ungovernable children. . .’’57 Likewise, a November 1920 newspaper article submits an ‘‘Annual Protest’’ explaining, ‘‘It ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.
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is difficult to understand by what crook of fate it happened that ‘Ragamuffins’ Day’ and ‘Thanksgiving Day’ occur on one and the same date. Certainly the two occasions could not be more opposite in meaning and signification. . .’’58 Why the Fantasticals’ disruptive behavior declined and people began to see the ragamuffins’ begging as inappropriate is related to the changing social climate in America at the turn of the century. Between 1890 and 1920 an influx of immigrants produced a greater fear of social disorder that resulted in public disapproval of the Thanksgiving holiday’s disruptive aspects. According to Pleck, there is no evidence that misrule was more disruptive than before, but the public now felt more threatened by even minor disturbances of peace.59 Along with a greater concern over social disorder, the government became increasingly interested in ways to ‘‘Americanize’’ new immigrants, who were seen as failing to be sufficiently American. One of the major ways they did this was through public education. As Rogers M. Smith points out, few scholars would disagree that one of the major functions of public education at the turn of the century was propagation of cultural homogeneity.60 Americanization in public schools was, as Desmond King explains, transmitted through English language instruction, expressing allegiance to the American flag, singing American songs, learning about the historical narrative of the United States, and celebrating American holidays such as Thanksgiving.61 By the 1920’s Thanksgiving had become the most frequently celebrated holiday of the school year.62 It encouraged immigrant children to celebrate with their fellow citizens the founding of the nation and collectively remember the struggles and successes of the pilgrims – the ‘first’ group of immigrants, who were also model citizens, imbued with religious conviction, and members of a Chosen people. For national sentiments to be consistently associated with Thanksgiving Day, aspects of the holiday such as begging, drinking and harassment, which were socially disruptive and inconsistent, had to be eliminated. Although the Fantasticals and ragamuffins gradually disappeared, they paved the way for the Macy’s Day parade, which started in 1924 and included floats such as the Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe, Little Miss Muffet and Red Riding Hood.63 There were also marching bands, acrobats, men on stilts, clowns, wild animals in cages, Santa, and numerous children of Macy’s employees dressed as the comic strip characters Mutt and Jeff.64 Because they thought the events did not fit with the patriotic and religious meaning of the holiday, the parade was protested by groups such as the Allied Patriotic Society (APS), which was made up of citizens interested in preserving what they believed valuable in American life, including ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.
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the exclusion of communist ideas 65 and restrictions on immigration.66 Hugh White Adams, a member of the APS explained to a New York Times’ editor in 1926 ‘‘that there was growing up in America an attempt to vilify the Pilgrim fathers; and that Thanksgiving Day was the suitable day for worshiping their memory. A parade put on by a commercial house should not be allowed on that day.’’67 However, the APS could not gain enough support to get the parade cancelled. The closest they came was in 1926 when they convinced Macy’s to move the parade to the afternoon instead of the morning because it interfered with morning worship services.68 But a few years later Macy’s returned to the earlier time presumably so that the parade would not compete with afternoon football games.69 Although it did not express the ‘national’ meaning of the holiday, the Macy’s Day parade gained acceptance because it was not disruptive. In addition, Northeastern parades in the form of ragamuffins and Fantasticals had long been associated with this and other major holidays.70 Collective Memory and Change The analysis of the Macy’s Day parade shows how the holiday has become conflated with the celebration of others. Similar to football, the parade also illustrates how the concerns and needs of the era affect the way it is celebrated and represented. But in addition to the influence of contemporary interests, there is another way that the celebration of the holiday, its memory, and what it symbolizes, has evolved, and that is when forgotten elements of the tradition are brought to light. Drawing on the historic past, many Native Americans and their sympathizers see the holiday today as representing the defeat of native peoples and the exploitation of other ethnic groups at the hands of white settlers. As mentioned above, since their initial celebration, the pilgrims had additional harvest festivals and thanksgivings for a variety of different reasons. One of the subsequent thanksgivings was the celebration of triumph by the people in Plymouth after Captain Church, who was from Plymouth colony and led a ranger company that supported the English army, defeated the Wamapanoag and their leader, King Philip. The Wampanoag was an Indian tribe located in Southeastern Massachusetts, not far from the Pilgrim’s settlement. Squanto, who was one of the first people to befriend the Pilgrims and show them how to plant crops, was originally from this tribe. According to the records of Plymouth church, as the congregation at Plymouth finished their Thanksgiving, Captain Church’s company returned carrying the head of King Philip.71 As the text on the plaque commemorating King Philip in Plymouth’s ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.
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Post Office Square explains, ‘‘his head was impaled on a pike and was displayed near this site for more than 20 years. One hand was sent to Boston, the other to England. King Philip’s wife and son, along with the families of many of the Native American combatants, were sold into slavery in the West Indies by the English victors.’’72 Since it was one of the early thanksgiving celebrations, the holiday could be seen as representing the defeat of Native Americans. In addition, although many Americans see Thanksgiving as a time to celebrate the first European settlement, Europeans brought genocide, disease and war to millions of Indians. However, until recently little attention on a national level has been given to the Native Americans’ perspective of the celebration and meaning of Thanksgiving Day. But in 1970 this perspective gained national attention when Wamsutta, a descendent of the Wampanoag Tribe, which first met the pilgrims, was asked by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to deliver a speech celebrating the 350th anniversary of the landing of the pilgrims. Before he delivered it, the Department of Commerce and Development reviewed Wamsutta’s speech, found it unacceptable, and asked that he change it. In the speech, Wamsutta explained that after they arrived, the pilgrims robbed his ancestors’ graves, and stole corn, beans and other provisions for the winter.73 He pointed out how ‘‘the early Pilgrim settlers led the Indian to believe that if he did not behave, they would dig up the ground and unleash the great epidemic again.’’74 And he mentioned how the white man sold natives into slavery, took their land, and abused it. Instead of speaking at the anniversary, Wamsutta gathered with a few hundred other Native Americans and their supporters on Thanksgiving Day in 1970 to observe the first National Day of Mourning, which ‘‘honors Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today.’’75 The ceremony of mourning turned into a demonstration that included speeches denouncing the ‘white man’s society’ and symbolic destruction of Plymouth Rock and a replica of the Mayflower.76 The demonstrators covered Plymouth rock with piles of sand and after boarding the replica of the Mayflower they tossed a pilgrim dummy overboard and replaced the flag of St. George with the flag that had flown over liberated Alcatraz Island. Since these events, American Indians and their supporters gather every Thanksgiving Day in Plymouth to observe the National Day of Mourning, and this has often included a demonstration of some kind. Although most of the demonstrations have been peaceful, in 1997 a number of protesters were arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and riotous assembly; in turn some alleged police brutality.77 To settle charges of police misconduct, Plymouth officials ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.
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agreed to put up $100,000 to educate the public about Indian history. They also allowed American Indians to post in Plymouth two plaques; one to honor King Philip and another commiserating the National Day of Mourning.78 Wamsutta and others have brought to light forgotten elements of the pilgrims’ story, which is contributing to a shift in the holiday’s meaning. The reason for this shift is related to developments in America’s social climate. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the pilgrims represented for many new Americans an immigrant group, which had struggled and successfully made a life for itself in America. For recent immigrants the holiday provided hope for the future, a national identity, and solidarity with other Americans. However, as European immigration has slowed and the Civil Right’s Movement has passed, attention has been gradually brought to the inconsistency between the traditional story of Thanksgiving and how many Americans came to the United States on slave ships79 or how people such as native Americans were largely destroyed because of European settlements. As events such as the killing of King Philip and his people are reintroduced, more people are recognizing that the pilgrims’ story is not applicable to everyone or shared by every community. Many schools still have Thanksgiving Day pageants and numerous textbooks continue to give the traditional story. Nevertheless, many Americans are beginning to see the holiday simply as a time to be thankful for what one has, or they have tried to incorporate the struggles of groups, such as American Indians, into their interpretation of the tradition. Conclusion This paper has sought to show how perceptions of Thanksgiving Day have changed many times throughout history. As Halbwachs’ argues, collective memory reconstructs the past rather than preserving it whole. The past is reconstructed with the aid of the material traces, rites, text and traditions left behind, and with the aid of recent psychological and social data.80 We have seen that as time has passed, Americans’ interpretation of the pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving events, as well as the associated symbolism, changed dramatically. In the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century, a desire to generate patriotic fervor in the face of war and concerns with further nation building gave rise to the initial construction of collective memory of the pilgrims’ Thanksgiving Day. Then, in the late nineteenth century at the end of the Civil War, Lincoln made the holiday official. Eventually, the holiday became a domestic occasion due in part to the influence of editorials in a popular women’s magazine. Thirteen years later, football was ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.
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incorporated into the Day’s celebration because people felt the game represented patriotism and Christian values. At the turn of the twentieth Century, the Macy’s Day Parade superceded the marauding fantasticals and ragamuffins of a previous age. Finally, in contemporary times, criticism by Native Americans and their supporters has prompted further reevaluation of the meaning of Thanksgiving. This analysis shows that theories emphasizing the influence of the past on current collective memories cannot explain how Thanksgiving has been transformed over the years into the holiday as currently commemorated. In Shils’ theory of tradition, the past becomes infused with sacredness because of its origins, and initial events determine what comes later.81 If the main influence for Thanksgiving was the pilgrim’s initial celebration, neither the Macy’s Day parades nor football games would have become integrated into the holiday. Although Thanksgiving’s origins may not be critical to the celebration today, we retain some symbolic connection to the initial events. Contemporary interests shape how people celebrated the pilgrims, but some elements of the tradition are connected to the past, in support of Schwartz’s theory of collective memory. For Schwartz, collective memory ‘‘is a representation of the past embodied in both commemorative symbolism and historical evidence.’’82 Moreover, the present, according to Schwartz, can sustain different memories, which is perhaps illustrated best in the different representations of Thanksgiving reflected in contemporary American society.83 Similar to the pilgrims’ initial celebration, many people today celebrate the holiday by having a large meal accompanied by a prayer where they may give thanks for God’s blessings. For others, Thanksgiving symbolizes European settlers invading indigenous Americans’ land, and by analogy, persistent mistreatment of other minorities. Like Schwartz, Halbwachs argues that shifts in collective memory take place in accordance with larger societal changes. Although it is possible for various groups in society to reconstruct the past in very different ways, Halbwachs argues that society can only congeal if there is sufficient consensus among these different perspectives. In order to achieve relative consensus, individual and group memories that diverge from the norm may be suppressed. Society will also rearrange its recollections in such a way as to adjust them to the variable conditions of its equilibrium.84 The different memories maintained by various groups in America illustrate this shifting equilibrium. Although some elements of the tradition have a link to the initial event, there are others that have a minimal relation to the historical events, which challenges the idea that forms of commemoration and ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002.
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celebration always contain some connection to origins. Perhaps the clearest example of this is the Macy’s Day parade. Taking cues from the Fantasticals and other holidays like Halloween and New Year’s Day, the parade illustrates how the tradition has been conflated with that of other celebrations. The parade contains some elements of American pop culture. For example, characters like Snoopy and Bart Simpson now appear and Santa Clause comes at the end of the parade. These characters are tied to the symbolic message that it is the beginning of the gift giving and buying season. However, the Macy’s Day Parade bears no resemblance to initial Thanksgiving celebrations, nor any relation to early thanksgiving concerns such as the nation’s origins or Christianity. Commemoration is linked to collective memory in the sense that it reinvigorates what gets remembered through union with others. Historical accounts potentially challenge the authority and authenticity of collective memory but group affiliations, which maintain collective memories, preclude the application of historical analysis to collective memory. As this analysis of Thanksgiving has shown, present interests and needs are the main source of change in collective memory and commemoration. Although some collective memories are grounded in historical accounts, other elements of commemoration emerge sui generis. On Thanksgiving, participants may find as much meaning from the Macy’s Day Parade and football, of relatively recent origin, as centuries-old traditions like eating turkey and feeling patriotic. Commemoration can formulate and perpetuate new memories and meaningful forms of celebration bearing no relation to the initial event. Acknowledgement The author gratefully acknowledges David Lavin for support on an early version of this paper and Jacob Felson for comments and encouragement on the final draft. A version of this article was presented at the 2001 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. Notes 1 David Maines, Noreen Surge, and Michael Katovich, ‘‘The Sociological Import of G. H. Mead’s Theory of the Past’’ American Sociological Review 48 (1983: 161–173). 2 David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 3 Edward Shils, Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1975), 198.
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Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality, (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 34. Emile, Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life, (New York: The Free Press, 1995). 6 See Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, ed., The Invention of Tradition, (London: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Howard Schuman and Jacqueline Scott, ‘‘Generations and Collective Memories,’’ American Sociological Review 54, (1989: 359–381). 7 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1950). For an elaboration of Halbwachs’s s theory see Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 8 George Herbert Mead, The Philosophy of the Present, (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1932), 29. 9 Maurice Halbwachs, La Topographie Legendaire des Evangiles (The Legendary Topography), (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1941), 7. 10 Halbwachs, On Collective Memory and Legions of Topography, 183. 11 Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, (New York: Harper & Row, 1951), 48. 12 Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, 84. 13 Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 222. 14 Pierre Nora, ‘‘Between Memory and History,’’ Representations 26 (1989: 7–25), 8. 15 Pierre Nora, ‘‘The Era of Commemoration,’’ in Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past, Volume III: Symbols, edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman, translated by Arthur Goldhammer, (New York: Columbia University Press), 618. 16 Barry Schwarz, ‘‘Collective Memory and History: How Abraham Lincoln Became a Symbol of Racial Equality,’’ The Sociological Quarterly 38 (1997: 469-496), 471. 17 Schwartz, ‘‘Collective Memory and History,’’ 491. 18 Barry Schwartz, ‘‘Social Change and Collective Memory: The Democratization of George Washington,’’ American Sociological Review 56 (1991: 221–236), 232. 19 Schwartz, ‘‘Social Change and Collective Memory,’’ 232. 20 Schwartz reiterates his point in his analysis of how Abraham Lincoln became a sign of racial equality. He explains that ‘‘if Lincoln’s historical role had been less decisive, his place in the black community’s memory would not now be what it is. African Americans made Lincoln a symbol of racial equality by starting with the real man and improving him.’’ See Schwarz, ‘‘Collective Memory and History.’’ See also Barry Schwartz, ‘‘The Social Context of Commemoration: A Study in Collective Memory,’’ Social Forces 61 (1982: 374–399). 21 James Baker cited in Janet Siskind, ‘‘The Invention of Thanksgiving: A Ritual of American Nationality,’’ Critique of Anthropology 12 (1992: 167–191), 170. 22 Mourt’s Relation or Journal of the Plantation at Plymouth, (Boston: John Kimball Wiggin, 1865). The documents found here are usually cited as Mourt’s relation on account of the signature of G. Mourt, found at the end of the address to the reader, though it is clear that he did no more than commend the work to the public. There is general agreement that G. Mourt was George Morton, and that the Relation was the work of William Bradford and Edward Winslow. 23 Edwin T. Greninger, ‘‘Thanksgiving: An American Holiday,’’ Social Science 54 (1979: 3–15). 4. See also Siskind, ‘‘The Invention of Thanksgiving,’’ 170. 5
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24 Robert Myers, Celebrations: The Complete Book of American Holidays (New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1972), 277. 25 Dixon Wecter, The Hero in America: A Chronicle of Hero-Worship, (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1963), 42. 26 Cited in Wecter, The Hero in America, 42. 27 Cited in Wecter, The Hero in America, 43. 28 Cited in Myers, Celebrations, 278. 29 Many of the southern states were also slow to establish the holiday because presumably they did not like the idea that New Englanders who were urging abolition were promoting the occasion. See Greninger, ‘‘Thanksgiving: An American Holiday,’’ 4–5. 30 Robert N. Bellah, Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World, (Berkeley: University of California Press), 176. 31 Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln VI, 1862– 1863 ed. Roy Basler and Christian Basler (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press), 496. 32 Cecilia Elizabeth O’Leary, To Die For: The Paradox of American Patriotism, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. 33 Myers, Celebrations, 279. 34 Sarah Josepha Hale, Godey’s Lady’s Book of Philadelphia, (1863). (Quoted in Myers, Celebrations, 280). 35 ‘‘Thanksgiving,’’ Harper’s Weekly, November 30, 1867, 754. See also ‘‘Thanksgiving,’’ Harper’s Weekly, November 28, 1868, 762 and The New York Times, November 25, 1864. 36 Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 349. 37 Elizabeth Pleck, ‘‘The Making of the Domestic Occasion: The History of Thanksgiving in the United States,’’ Journal of Social History (1999: 773– 789), 775. 38 ‘‘Chicago Tribute, November 29, 1895; 13. (Cited in Pope, ‘‘God Games and Glory’’). 39 ‘‘A Brief History of the YMCA Movement,’’ YMCA Official Website, www.ymca.com 7/20/00. 40 A New York YMCA illustrates this point in 1866 with its statement of purpose in 1866 to improve the ‘‘spiritual, mental, social and physical condition of young men.’’ See ‘‘A Brief History of the YMCA Movement,’’ 2000. 41 Nathaniel S. Shaler, Atlantic, (1889). Quoted in Steven W. Pope, ‘‘God, Games and National Glory: Thanksgiving and the Ritual of Sport in American Culture, 1876–1926,’’ International Journal of the History of Sport 10 (1993: 242-249), 243. 42 ‘‘The Fall War Game,’’ The Outlook, November 2, 1927; 369. 43 Warren H. Wilson, ‘‘College Department,’’ Young Men’s Era 18 (1892), 1554. 44 Pleck has pointed out the irony of the football game characterized as a ‘family’ event. As Peck explains, mostly men listen to the game, which it noted for its aggressive body contact, warlike language, male bonding, and the ability of contestants to withstand pain. Similarly, it is mostly women who make the Thanksgiving Day meal. The separate activities in which the sexes participate in creates gender segregation on what is usually considered a family holiday. See Pleck, ‘‘The Making of the Domestic Occasion,’’ 782–783. 45 William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, the Rise of a New American Culture, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 334. 46 Pleck, ‘‘The Making of the Domestic Occasion,’’ 776. 47 See also Myers, Celebrations, 114. 48 ‘‘Fun of a Lively Sort,’’ New York Times, November 27, 1885; 8.
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49 Robert Toll, Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America, (New York, 1974). 50 Susan Davis, ‘‘Making Night Hideous: Christmas Revelry and Public Order In Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia,’’ American Quarterly 34 (1982: 185–198),193 51 Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 8. 52 Michael Rogin, Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). 53 W. D. Howells, Through the Eye of the Needle: A Romance, (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1907), 48. 54 ‘‘Fun of a Lively Sort,’’ New York Times, November 27, 1885; 8. 55 Alfred L. Shoemaker, ‘‘Fantasticals,’’ Pennsylvania Dutchman 4 (1953), 31. 56 ‘‘Don’t Give to Mummers,’’ New York Times, November, 29, 1911; 10. 57 ‘‘Thanksgiving Nuisances,’’ New York Times, November 26, 1913; 10. 58 ‘‘An Annual Protest,’’ New York Times, November 30, 1920; 10. See also ‘‘O’Shea Acts to End Parades of Thanksgiving Ragamuffins,’’ New York Times, November 22, 1930; 17 and ‘‘Thanksgiving ‘Fantastics,’’’ New York Times, November 29, 1902; 8. 59 Pleck, ‘‘The Making of the Domestic Occasion,’’ 778. 60 Smith, Civic Ideals, 465. 61 Desmond King, Making Americans: Immigration, Race, and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000), 89. 62 For survey see Clarice Whittenburg, ‘‘Holiday Observance in the Primary Schools,’’ Elementary School Journals 35, (1934: 193–195). For more on Thanksgiving and how it was observed in the classroom see Thanksgiving; its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse, ed. Robert Haven Schauffler. (New York: Moffat, Yard & Company, 1907). 63 ‘‘Greet Santa Clause as ‘Kind of Kiddies,’’’ New York Times, November 28, 1924: 5. 64 William, Leach. Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture. (Patheon Books: New York, 1993). 335. 65 Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920’s, (New York, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1997). 66 ‘‘Jewish Involvement in Shaping American Immigration Policy, 1881– 1965: A Historical Review,’’ http://www.p-m-s.freeserve.co.uk/texts/USpol1.htm, 12/10/01. 67 ‘‘Object to Parade on Thanksgiving Day,’’ New York Times, November 4, 1926: 27. See also ‘‘Concerning Holiday Observance,’’ New York Times, November 22, 1926; 22. 68 ‘‘Alters Macy Parade Plan,’’ New York Times, November 23, 1926; 19. 69 Pleck, ‘‘The Making of the Domestic Occasion,’’ 782. 70 Leach, Land of Desire, 332. 71 William De Loss Love, The Fast and Thanksgiving Days of New England, (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1895), 203. 72 ‘‘Text of Plaque Commemorating Metacomet (King Phillip) in Plymouth’s Post Office Square,’’ United American Indians of New England Website, http://idt.net/~uaine19, 6/8/00. 73 ‘‘The Surpressed Speech of Wamsutta (Frank B.) James,’’ United American Indians of New England Website, http://idt.net/~uaine19, 6/8/ 00. 74 ‘‘The Surpressed Speech of Wamsutta (Frank B.) James,’’ 6/8/00.
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75 ‘‘Text of Plaque Commemorating Metacomet (King Phillip) in Plymouth’s Post Office Square,’’ 6/8/00. 76 ‘‘Mourning Indians Dump Sand on Plymouth Rock,’’ New York Times, November 27, 1970; A26. 77 ‘‘Protest in Massachusetts’’, New York Times, November 28, 1997; A28. 78 ‘‘Revenge of the Wampanoags’’, New York Times, November 25, 1998; A25. 79 See ‘‘America: Haven for Some,’’ Letter to the editor, New York Times, December 7, 1970; 44. 80 Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 91. 81 Shils, Center and Periphery, 198. 82 Schwartz, ‘‘Collective Memory and History,’’ 471. 83 Schwartz, ‘‘Social Change and Collective Memory,’’ 234. 84 Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 183.
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