The Anti-Aristocratic Thanksgiving Meal
Here I am with my annual reminder about how unusual American Thanksgiving is as a national meal. As nations were created from the eighteenth century on, all kinds of readily recognizable rituals and symbols were invented. Think of anthems, flags, stamps, football teams, and airlines.
National meals without links to earlier religious ones were not so common. Formal diplomatic meals continued for senior members of the state. Ox roasts, underwritten by local bigwigs, continued to be put on in Europe and the US. They were a way to win political support.
A home-cooked family meal, though, eaten by by the whole family including children on the same day. That was something new.
Much of the credit for both the holiday and the menu goes to the nineteenth-century “influencer” Sarah Hale. She worked for years to establish a ‘republican’ meal to displace the aristocratic meals prevalent for national occasions. It was and remains an important part of American political identity. (Although the ideal of republican motherhood that went along with it now seems outdated to large sections of the population).
Here is a link to a revised version of an article I wrote for the Boston Globe in 2013.
