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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, again, everyone. On this day before Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the amazing producers who are responsible for so much of what you hear on this show that's good. I'm responsible for the bad stuff. So I am thankful for Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, Esperanza Rosenbaum, and Zach Gottehrer-Cohen. I am thankful for our interns this term, Andrés Pacheco-Girón and Olivia Green.

I am thankful for Megan Ryan, our fearless leader, the head of Live Radio, and for Juliana Fonda, Milton Ruiz, Shayna Sengstock, Mayan Levinson, and Jason Isaac at the audio controls, making it all sound as if we planned it, on a daily basis, day in and day out. Thank you, thank you, thank you, everybody who makes this show. Now, we continue our WNYC centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things. Today, it's thing 43. 100 Years of how we celebrate Thanksgiving, with the historian and great storyteller, Kenneth C. Davis. Did you know, everybody, that the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was 100 years ago today?

That's right, November 27th, 1924. In this segment, we'll touch on the basics from the 1600s, just because people still get that history wrong. Yes, the immigrants were eating the geese, but the immigrants were the white people, but mostly, we'll trace origins of our modern Thanksgiving traditions. Like, how did Thanksgiving go from being a religious holiday to a secular one? Why did the president get involved in moving Thanksgiving on the calendar and stopping different states from setting their own dates? What happened to states rights? How did it get pinned Thursdays? How did a parade, or a Macy's, get involved in the first place?

Spoiler alert. First, it was a different department store chain. No, not Walmart. Where did watching football as a Thanksgiving thing come from? How did Black Friday get tacked on? Why don't we talk much about the Native American side of the story anymore, or get accused of being the woke police at dinner if we do? How did our Thanksgiving gatherings start to fall apart as much as they have, around our polarized politics? I think that traces to the George W. Bush era and predates Trump. We'll see what Ken thinks. Why does Canada, which until yesterday, I think we used to have a trade agreement with, celebrate Thanksgiving in October? What's wrong with those people?

We'll also invite your oral history calls with your favorite Thanksgiving story from your own family gathering, or anything you've ever expressed thanks for on Thanksgiving or today. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Joining us now is Kenneth C. Davis, author of the Don't Know Much About History, series of books, and his recent great short works of fiction and great short works of nonfiction books. Ken, always great to have you. Happy Thanksgiving, and welcome back to WNYC.

Kenneth C. Davis: It's always a pleasure, Brian. To your list of thanks, I will ditto that and add thanks to WNYC in general for the great service they provide, and Brian Lehrer, for his unique contributions to making our lives a little more interesting. Thank you all, and thanks to all the listeners.

Brian Lehrer: Very nice of you. Thank you. You want to do a little of the origin story first? The group we usually call the Pilgrims, which sounds so adventurous and wholesome, you also refer to as Separatists, which sounds more dark and rebellious. Why do you use that word?

Kenneth C. Davis: Well, we have to go back here without unpacking too much of this, to the great schism in Catholic history, starting with Henry VIII splitting with the Church of England. The Church of England, of course, made Henry VIII the head of the church, as well as the head of the country. Certain people within England think that that didn't go far enough. They thought that the Church of England was still too popish, as they would say, and they wanted to purify it. Hence, they became known as Puritans. There was a smaller sect of Puritans who wanted to go even further.

They thought the Church of England was beyond preservation, and so they wanted to literally separate. Of course, to separate from England meant to separate from the king. The king wasn't happy with that. At a certain point, the Separatists, as they were known then, went to Holland. They lived there in Leiden, in the Netherlands, for 10 years. Unhappy that their children were growing up more Dutch than English, they decided to go back to England and then join this joint venture that was going to send a couple of ships to the colony of Virginia.

This is in 1620 now. Those people were aboard the Mayflower. The second ship, which was called the Speedwell, I believe, proved to be unseaworthy, and so it never left port. About 60 days at sea for the Mayflower. It's a ship of about 100 feet long. There were 102 passengers packed below decks. There were 32 crew members who mostly lived and worked above decks. So, it was cramped, crowded, noisy, smelly. They brought chickens, dogs, pigs, and other livestock, as well as themselves. They brought shoes. They brought beer, which was better to drink than plain water. They made this extraordinary voyage, arriving in New England.

New England was pretty well-known to the English by this point. It wasn't like they were the first ones there. We'll discuss that at greater length. They landed first at the tip of what we call Cape Cod. What is now Provincetown. They actually got off and wandered around Cape Cod for a while, didn't find a suitable place to live, but got back on the ship. Now, only half of those people, those 102 passengers, it was 103 by the time they arrived, because a baby named Oceanus had been born during the voyage.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, Oceanus. That's so appropriate.

Kenneth C. Davis: Half of those passengers were not the people we would call Pilgrims. They were people who were, first of all, some were indentured servants, some were hired guns, like Miles Standish, who was a soldier, and a soldier of fortune of sorts, and he was going to provide the new colony's defense. Some were just people coming for an opportunity to get a piece of land in this new world, this New England, because most of the land in England was either in the hands of the church or the aristocracy. It was a joint stock venture [chuckles] as it started out.

Over time, of course, we came to call all of these people Pilgrims. That was a name that was applied to them later on by one of their company, the very famous Governor William Bradford. That's how the first comers, as they were also known, later came to be called the Pilgrims.

Brian Lehrer: I love that baby name. I didn't know that they named the baby Oceanus. I love that. Also, everybody knows the name of the ship, the Mayflower, but I never knew until you just said it. The other one was the Speedwell, which I think would make a great model of bicycle. The Trek Speedwell. 21 speech.

Kenneth C. Davis: Much better than the Mayflower.

Brian Lehrer: You say the Pilgrim's Thanksgiving was originally the opposite of a day to feast. It was a day to fast. Why was that?

Kenneth C. Davis: That's exactly right. To the Pilgrims, to these very, very strict, devout people who believed that church was really just meant to be a solemn time, about three hours long, with a long sermon, which would usually talk about how you were destined to die in hell, they would have thought of Thanksgiving as a day of prayer and fasting. What we call Thanksgiving, the first Thanksgiving, even though we can discuss this, too, it's far from the first Thanksgiving in America. This would have simply been a harvest festival. A harvest feast.

Most likely, the one we celebrate as the first Thanksgiving happened in 1621, and it happened probably in October, although there's no certainty of the date. We only have a few very sparse records about what actually happened that day. Again, partly thanks to Governor Bradford, who wrote the first history of the Plimoth Plantation, and another document from that period which described this harvest feast. First of all, it lasted three days. You think your Thanksgiving dinner goes on a little bit too long? Three days. There were only about 50 people there.

About half of the Mayflower passengers died during the first terrible year. They died of exposure, disease, perhaps an epidemic of some kind of plague, which was quite commonplace in that part of the world, and especially to the Native people who were living there. That's another part of this story.

Brian Lehrer: I read on the Encyclopedia Britannica site that the first Thanksgiving feast didn't feature turkey, so much as ducks and geese, because ducks and geese were more plentiful in that part of Massachusetts and an easy kill. How did turkey get pinned as the Thanksgiving main dish for the ages?

Kenneth C. Davis: Okay, there's a lot to unpack here, but let's talk about what they did eat on the first. The so-called first Thanksgiving. We'll call it the first Thanksgiving. First of all, it was much more of what I guess we would describe as surf and turf, because there they were on the shores of the Atlantic. The ocean waters were teeming with fish. So, cod, mussels, clams were-- maybe lobster, were on the menu, for sure. There would have been wild game. We don't know precisely which birds were considered wild game, but certainly ducks, geese, and perhaps turkey, but wild turkey. Very different from the turkey we're familiar with this year.

There would have been cranberries, but not in cranberry-

Brian Lehrer: Sauce.

Kenneth C. Davis: -sauce or jelly or jam. There would have been raw cranberries put into what they would have called a salad. There would have been beans, squash, and corn, the three sisters of Native American tradition, because indeed the Native Americans helped keep these settlers alive. We should come back to that story in a bit, too. How did we get to the turkey dinner? That really belongs to a woman that most people have never heard her name, but she's really, in a way, one of the most significant women in American history, in some respects.

Her name is Sarah Josepha Hale. She was a novelist. She wrote a very early anti-slavery novel. She was from New England, and she then became the editor, for many decades, of a magazine called, Lady Godey's Book. This was, I suppose you would call it, the Good Housekeeping of its day. Perhaps more appropriately, she was the Martha Stewart of her day. Sarah Josepha Hale began a campaign of writing to every president, for nearly 30 years, to establish a national day of Thanksgiving. She thought that the country needed one.

As the country moved towards war in the 1850s, and finally in 1861, she believed that this idea would be a unifying celebration of all things, to her mind, American. She was very, very influential in the sense that Abraham Lincoln eventually caves, in 1863, and says, "Okay, I'll make a proclamation." It was Sarah Joseph Hale who really established what the Thanksgiving meal would look like. In the early 19th century, it was remarkably like what we think of today as the Thanksgiving meal, although no lasagna or mac and cheese.

Brian Lehrer: And the Natives, the Wampanoags, they weren't invited guests to what we usually call the first Thanksgiving. In 1621, they just kind of showed up.

Kenneth C. Davis: That's correct. Led by their chief, who goes by the name Massasoit, although that may have actually been a title rather than his name. Massasoit shows up with 90 warriors. Governor William Bradford describes this. Very good guess. They go out and kill five deer. So, there was certainly venison also on that first Thanksgiving. I don't know if venison steaks is on anybody's menu, but it would be very, very historically appropriate. Then there were three days of feasting. By the way, there were only four women who survived that first year from the Mayflower.

Obviously, they were responsible for all of the cooking for 100 plus people. Bradford describes that there were games of running, and wrestling, and they also demonstrated the use of their muskets, which was probably more a message, a not so subtle message. That, "We have these muskets," which they, of course, had carried across on the Mayflower, "and we know how to use them."

Brian Lehrer: Not to gloss over the tough stuff, the era of good feeling that ensued after that didn't last all that long. There was a series of wars later that century, that almost wiped out the colonists, and then mostly did wipe out the Wampanoag. Correct?

Kenneth C. Davis: This is very, very correct. It's the son of that chief, Massasoit, whose name was Metacom, but the English had decided to call him King Philip, and he had a brother who they also anglicized his name. By the, maybe 30 or 40 years after the first Thanksgiving, the Native people could see that these waves and waves of Puritan became more Puritan than Pilgrim settlers coming into New England were appropriating their land, they were converting Native people to Christianity. The first book published, the first Bible published in New England or in North America was a Bible published in one of the Native languages. In Abenaki language.

Converting these people was very, very important to the Pilgrims and later Puritans. There were religious differences, there was the appropriation of land, which was usually done in fairly sneaky ways. So, the era of good feelings that started in 1621 was certainly gone 50 years later, and a terrible, long, deadly war called King Philip's War swept over much of Massachusetts and the rest of New England, decimating the Native population by as much as 80%, and also almost wiping out the Anglo-American settlers at the time.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, as usual in our 100 year segments, we're inviting some oral history calls from you. We're going to segue now from some of the origin story of Thanksgiving, which Kenneth C. Davis has written about so beautifully in various places, and just described so beautifully, and we're going to get into what this series actually is labeled as, which is 100 Years of 100 Things, this day before Thanksgiving, 100 years of how we celebrate Thanksgiving. For today, who has a favorite Thanksgiving story from your or your family's past? 212-433-WNYC. Your oral history of Thanksgiving.

Give us a quick story. Got to keep everything short, because we have a lot to get to. How have you seen Thanksgiving celebrations change over your lifetime? If you have any observations about that in your household, or in the general culture. If you're from an Indigenous background, what do you do on Thanksgiving, and how do you feel about the holiday? Has that changed for you over time? Because so many people are feeling so raw about so many things right now, we'll invite you to simply say out loud something that you're thankful for this year.

That's for anyone. Just name one thing or a person that you're thankful for this year. Call or text, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Any of those things for historian Kenneth C. Davis. Moving more toward the present, Ken, how did Thanksgiving go from being a religious holiday to a secular one?

Kenneth C. Davis: That's a really good question and an important question. I think we talked about Lincoln and the first Thanksgiving proclamation in 1863. Other presidents, from Washington forward, had made Thanksgiving proclamations. Had nothing to do with the Pilgrims, had nothing to do with the foundation myth. They were truly days of Thanksgiving. Washington declares one, I think in 1789, in gratitude for the Constitution. James Madison declares one in 18-- after the War of 1812, that the war has ended. There've been these sporadic ones, but as I said, Sarah Josepha Hale had really lobbied presidents for years.

Finally, Lincoln does it in 1863. I'll just briefly cite from Lincoln's 1863 proclamation. "It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledge with one heart and one voice by the whole American people, again, this idea of bringing the country together. I do here therefore invite my citizens, and also those who are at sea, and those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday, November, as a next day of thanksgiving and praise. I recommend that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to him, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his care all those become widows."

The following year, he has a similar message, that we should really spend this day set apart, and again, Lincoln's words, "Humble yourselves in the dust and then offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the great disposer of events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land." So, clearly, in Lincoln's mind, this was thanking providence as he would have used it, thanking God. This was very much the tradition that had come down through Sarah Josepha Hale, and the Puritans who settled New England and then were really flourished, of course, and spread out across the country.

They had taken this tradition, which they had first called Founders Day, which hearkened back to the Pilgrim's arrival, and then the Puritans who followed them. This was a very much a Puritan, we could call it a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant New England tradition. They really did spread this across most of the north. The southern states did not have the same traditions. A very different tradition of which Englishmen went to the south. One of the other main differences between the two parts of the country. I think that there's no simple answer to your question, Brian. That it's like a lot of things in American life, eventually they become secularized.

Certainly, the fact that more immigrants were coming into the country, bringing their own traditions, bringing their own faith. Certainly, the late 19th century saw many Irish come into the country. They were not welcome for the most part. They were followed by Italians, who were also not welcomed. So, certainly by the early 20th century, Thanksgiving had become much more of a holiday celebration. Much the way we think of it today. Nobody is going to humbly ask for penitence tomorrow while they're sitting down to dinner.

Brian Lehrer: To that point, kind of, listener writes, "I'm grateful for--" Oh, now we're getting so many texts. I may have to summarize it. Let's see. It says, if I can find it again, "I'm grateful that Thanksgiving is a secular holiday. As someone from a large New Jersey family that's part Jewish, part Italian, part Irish, it's nice to have one holiday with no religious overtones."

Someone else writes, "A story. One Thanksgiving morning, I walked onto a packed Metro-North train at Grand Central. I saw a few people with food trays on their laps looking straight ahead and apprehensive like they were going to Sing Sing prison. I found the last seat just in time, and I said to the young woman next to me, 'Going to see the relatives?' And she gasped, 'Uh-huh.' I had two bottles of wine and one vodka. Let's just say me and two other passengers had an interesting breakfast. We were zooming up the tracks by the time we got to White Plains." [chuckles]

I think this is a good segue to Marie in Stephentown, New York. Marie, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in. Happy Thanksgiving.

Marie: Thank you. Happy Thanksgiving to you too, Brian. I was a conductor in the Long Island Rail Road for 20 plus years. I worked my share of Thanksgivings. Long story short, if it weren't for family making the turkey, I don't know what my kids would have eaten, as I was a single parent, but I just want everyone, as they're going about their business, think about the bus drivers, the cops, the firefighters, the train conductors, the engineers, and everyone who is working to get you where you need to go safely, and just spare a thought to those people. Maybe thank them. It means a lot.

Brian Lehrer: I'm glad you called with that. I do try to say, when I talk about long holiday weekends and things like that, for those of you who are off, and for those of you who are working to make the long holiday weekend as pleasant as possible for the rest of us, thank you, thank you, thank you. So, Marie, thank you for all your service on the Long Island Rail Road. Yes, let's, everybody remember that as like that person who texted, Marie, who was on the Metro-North train-

Marie: I was on the Metro-North. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: -with those people who weren't happy to be going to their relatives. All right, thank you very much.

Kenneth C. Davis: Brian, could I jump in just for a second there?

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Please.

Kenneth C. Davis: Because I think that one of the texts you read talked about a blended family, and that's why Thanksgiving, I think, is maybe Christmas is still more popular and it's also been very secularized, but Thanksgiving, I think a lot of people feel the way that the text meant. Every successive group has come and either been welcomed or not, but eventually, they become part of the American society. This is a tradition that I think crosses all boundaries. Maybe the vegans really don't like it, but [chuckles] we've tried our share of tofu turkeys over the year, but that's another story.

I do think it's this very, very American idea. Despite our differences, and there are many right now, people still see this as just the way Sarah Josepha Hale envisioned it, as a way to bring Americans together.

Brian Lehrer: Listener writes, "I am thankful that at the age of 72, I still have the ability to serve my community as an EMS first responder." Another one, "Greetings." So many on those essential workers who have to work these holidays. Another one writes, "I'm from Warwick, New York, and I'm so grateful for all the firefighters and emergency workers who worked so hard to preserve our homes from the Jenny Creek fire. Really was an amazing effort by all." When we continue in a minute with Ken Davis and more of your Thanksgiving calls and texts, we're going to find out how a parade got involved 100 years ago today in the case of Macy's. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, in our 100 Years of a 100 Things, WNYC centennial series. It wasn't just WNYC that was born in 1924, it was the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, 100 years ago today, November 27th, 1924. As we continue with your Thanksgiving stories and things you're thankful for, and the historian and great storyteller, Kenneth C. Davis, from the Don't Know Much About History series of books, and the Great Short Books. A couple of books that he's written as well. One on short nonfiction, one on short fiction.

By the way, just as a program note, tomorrow on Thanksgiving, when me and my team will be off and we'll be replaying some of our favorites from the year, we're going to replay our conversation with Ken about his book released this year on great books of nonfiction, short books of nonfiction. Ken, parades. How did parades get involved in Thanksgiving? First, it was a different department store, not Macy's, and not in New York, right?

Kenneth C. Davis: That's correct. The real first Thanksgiving Parade actually belongs to Philadelphia. It was Macy's old competitor, Gimbels, that was behind it. The Macy's parade begins in 1924. Very important, too. First of all, we have to look back at what was going on. United States had just come through the end of World War I in 1918, plus something we've discussed a number of times, Brian, the influenza of 1918. The country had been traumatized by these two events, just as we know that we've been traumatized over the past few years.

Things had slowly been returning to normal. America had really retreated into a more of an isolationist stand. There was a lot of anti-immigrant mood. One of the other signal events of 1924 is the passage of an immigration act that included Chinese and many other Europeans, including Italian.

Brian Lehrer: That excluded. That excluded.

Kenneth C. Davis: Yes, excluded. Forgive me.

Brian Lehrer: We did another 100 years segment on that law, and how it changed America. It shut down the Ellis Island era at that time, et cetera, but go ahead.

Kenneth C. Davis: Extremely important, but what's interesting is that most of the employees at Macy's were, at that time, were largely immigrants. Fairly recent immigrants. The idea for the parade, which had started, as we said, in Philadelphia, Macy's decided to do it in 1924. The employees, many of them recent arrivals, or recent immigrants, had a tradition of a grand parade, usually at harvest time in the fall. This fit in with a European tradition. The Macy's employees were the first marchers in that first parade, which began up in Harlem, and then came all the way down to Herald Square.

This speaks a little bit to what you asked before, about going from a religious holiday to a secular one. I think that the Macy's parade didn't do it, but it emphasized how this holiday was moving from a religious one to a more secular one. That also ushered in, as we know, the holiday season, because bringing up the tail end of the parade in 1924 was Santa Claus, who was then installed in Macy's. That is part of American legend as well. In fact, The New York Times said that this was-- Santa was being crowned as the Kiddie King of Christmas at the Macy's parade.

There were no balloons at that time, but there were floats, horse drawn floats. That was the beginning of this unbroken, except for World War II, series. That's why, it's 100 years ago, but I think they're calling this the 98th parade, because it was interrupted during World War II, because they didn't have-- They couldn't use helium for the balloons, and there was a shortage of rubbers for the tires for the floats, and just the sense that we shouldn't be having this parade while we're in the midst of a war.

Brian Lehrer: I guess in 1924, there was no Bluey balloon or Diary of a Wimpy Kid balloon or Pikachu balloon, like we have this year. Marie in Manhattan has a parade story. You're on WNYC. Hi, Marie.

Marie 2: Hi. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: I can.

Marie 2: Hello?

Kenneth C. Davis: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Hello.

Marie 2: Oh, okay. I used to take a friend, a classmate of my daughter and her two siblings to the parade. I was a single parent at the time. Their mother was so grateful, she always invited us for Thanksgiving dinner. One year, instead of standing out in the cold, we were invited upstairs to a relative's apartment on 72nd Street in Central Park West. So we saw the whole parade from beginning to end. One of those kids was named Cindy, and she decided that she was going to learn how to juggle. To teach herself how to juggle. She became a juggle champion known as Cindy Marvell. It was a wonderful memory.

We also got to know a guy who showed up every year, named Duke Rotnak. He would call out [chuckles] to all the celebrities passing by. "My name is Duke. This is me, Duke." At some point, we would start to yell to the celebrities who were going by, "Hey, don't forget about Duke Rotnak. He's right here with us." [laughs] They'd all look over and wonder about whom we were speaking. It was just so wonderful and so charming to be able to do that, and a very treasured memory.

Brian Lehrer: Nice story, Marie. Thank you very much. Chris in Lexington, New York, has a story, too. Chris, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Chris: Hello. Yes, my family's immigrants from Belgium. The first year or a couple years we were in the United States, my grandfather came for around Thanksgiving. He was a professionally trained chef from Belgium. My mother explained to him that in the United States, it was customary for, around this time, for people to do a turkey, an entire turkey, which was kind of rare in Belgium. He says, "Turkey. Okay, not a problem." My mother put the turkey on the table in front of him, the kitchen table. He sat down, and with a very small knife, he went in and he deboned the turkey from the inside out without breaking the skin.

Not the legs, obviously, but the entire body cavity. All that. He just took, cut all the bones out without breaking the skin, and then my mother put the stuffing in, cooked it, and then we could just kind of slice it like as if it was a giant turkey loaf.

Brian Lehrer: So you are Americans now?

Chris: Oh, yes. Yes, we are Americans now. That's how he dealt with a turkey.

Brian Lehrer: Chris, thank you. Thank you very much. So, Ken, where did watching football as a Thanksgiving thing come from? I think it was college football at first, before the NFL, right?

Kenneth C. Davis: It was indeed college football. Princeton played Yale on Thanksgiving in 1876. Now, the Canadians seem to want to-- just as they have a different Thanksgiving Day, they seem to want to take some credit for the introduction of football. We'll leave that for another show, sometime. It became, again, this is part of the secularization, I think, of Thanksgiving. That Thanksgiving became a very big traditional day of college, and then eventually high school football games. When the NFL came along, which wasn't until the early-- around 1920 or so.

Some of the teams started to play on Thanksgiving, but not regularly, because the day was still shifting around. Remember, this was not a national holiday yet. We haven't talked about that. Didn't really become a national holiday until 1941. The Detroit Lions owner owned a radio station, and he went to the NFL and said, "I'd like to do a real game on Thanksgiving Day," in 1934. So it's a 90th anniversary year. The NFL agreed. Because of the connection to his radio station, which is WJR in Detroit, NBC then agreed. I think it was NBC, agreed to also broadcast the Thanksgiving game.

That became Detroit's annual event. A Thanksgiving Day game. For many years, not to discourage any Detroit fans out there, I know they're having a good season, but watching Detroit on Thanksgiving was not a gift for a long time, but they had the day to themselves. Until about the 1960s, the NFL went to the teams and said, "We want to have a second game on Thanksgiving." Because it proved popular. People were sitting around the house and not having anything to do, so they could watch a football game. So, the Dallas Cowboys then became the second team to get an annual home game on Thanksgiving Day. They've since added a third game as well.

The tradition is a very, very old one, that predates professional football, and was a very big deal. In fact, we haven't talked about Franksgiving, but there was a year when Thanksgiving was moved around a little bit by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and a lot of the teams were upset because he was moving the day they had already scheduled their games. So this caused considerable upset, in 1939.

Brian Lehrer: Didn't FDR move Thanksgiving specifically to boost the economy by moving the date back a week, third week of November instead of the fourth week, so the Christmas shopping season could start earlier during the Depression?

Kenneth C. Davis: That's exactly right. It had been because Lincoln had set it on the last Thursday in November, and this was a presidential proclamation. Not a state, not a national holiday, but it certainly had the effect of making that pretty much the national day of Thanksgiving. The merchants, including the head of Macy's, it was the midst of the Depression, came to Roosevelt and said it was a very late Thanksgiving, as it is this year, and they said, "Please move your proclamation up a week, to the third Thursday in Thanksgiving, in November." Forgive me. Roosevelt agreed, because it didn't really matter that much to him.

We can fight about everything in America, politically, and so they thought about the day of Thanksgiving in 1939. Some states, the governors said, "No, we're going to keep it where it was." There were 48 states at the time. I think 25 went to Roosevelt's and 13 stayed with the original. So, there was a Democratic and a Republican Thanksgiving that year. The Democratic one was derided as Franksgiving, like Franklin D. Roosevelt. It caused considerable consternation, but that really prompted Congress then to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, which they did in 1940, but it was then celebrated and set on the fourth Thursday in November, where it is today.

Brian Lehrer: It feels kind of like we should have separate Democratic and Republican Thanksgivings again. Do you agree with my memory that this era of, "Oh, I can't stand to go because we're so divided on politics, how can I talk to my--" I think it was Bush loving uncle, when this kind of really got started in the modern era, around the time of the Iraq war, and people so polarized around that.

Kenneth C. Davis: Yes. No, that's a good question, Brian. I can't remember, because I don't think it had quite the element of what social media has meant now, that we're talking so much about how I don't want to talk to my uncle at the table, or the other day, The Times had a column about, "My mother voted for Trump, how am I going to talk to her on Thanksgiving?" So, it really became, I think, a more heightened issue in the last 10 years or so, but it may indeed go back to some of the divisions, and certainly then the divisions that happened in 2000, over the election. That was hanging over the Thanksgiving of the year 2000. That the election was still basically undecided.

Brian Lehrer: Listener writes, "I am grateful. Last week I had the pleasure of hosting a public talk at NYU with the Indigenous culinary anthropologist and chef, Claudia Serrato. I am grateful to Dr. Serrato for her work on Indigenous food sovereignty and re-Indigenizing American cuisine, and for sharing her knowledge, experience, and wisdom with the world." Ken, we just have like 30 seconds left. I did say in the intro we would ask why Canada celebrates its Thanksgiving in October. What's wrong with those people? Is it because the fall harvest season is just earlier up there?

Kenneth C. Davis: No. It's more appropriate to the original American idea of Thanksgiving, but their Thanksgiving had nothing to do with the Pilgrims either. It didn't come about until the late 19th century. They created a day of Thanksgiving because the Prince of Wales had recovered from an illness.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, wow.

Kenneth C. Davis: So, this traditional idea of harvest festival was there as well, and so it was established there. They also wanted to keep it away from November 11th, our Veterans Day. In Canada, Remembrance Day, which is of course the day that the World War I ended.

Brian Lehrer: Well, maybe if we keep allowing global warming to expand, we'll have to move Thanksgiving to the day before Christmas. That's 100 Years of 100 Things. Thing 43, 100 years of how we celebrate Thanksgiving. We will do number 44 on Monday, 100 years of freedom versus 100 years of fascism, with Yale history professor, Timothy Snyder, author of the books, On Tyranny and On Freedom. If you didn't get enough Ken Davis today, tune in tomorrow when we will be replaying some of our favorite segments from this year. While you cook or drive carefully through the rain or snow on Thanksgiving morning, we will re-air our chat about his book of books, released this year called, The World in Books: 52 Great Works of Short Nonfiction. Ken, thanks for today. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

Kenneth C. Davis: Thanks, Brian. It's always a pleasure and an honor to sit in with you. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Listeners, to all of you, from me.

 

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