SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK
Thanksgiving in America continues
to be one of the most traditional holidays. It still features the original four
hundred year old activities of overeating, football, and complaining about
Black Friday.
In the Hunter household, as in all
of Indiana and much of the world that’s not outside this country, we battle the
overeating. How? By serving food that the rest of the year we hate. Stuffing
stuff. Cranberry things. Pumpkin anything. It was good enough for the Pilgrims
and the Wampanoag Indians, who the Pilgrims politely invited to share a meal in
the new home they’d just stolen from the Wampanoag. The Indians brought a housewarming
gift of deer, mostly because they didn’t want to eat cranberries or pumpkin.
But what was actually served at
that original celebration? And did they really all sit down at long tables
outside, in New England, in November? That’s a recipe for a nice heaping
helping of frostbite.
The first Thanksgiving was a three
day event, leaving one day each for the meal, football, and Black Friday
shopping. The Pilgrims were naturally dismayed to discover no mall or Wal-Mart
in sight. Rumor had it there was a Target down the road, but both the trip and
the name were a bit more dangerous at the time. They compensated by throwing
another feast that third day, during which they discussed the football.
Governor William Bradford sent four
men on a fowling mission beforehand. We don’t know for sure what they brought
back, but it might have been turkey. It also might have been ducks, geese, or
swans, which explains the song they invented about the meal and the
entertainment. If it hadn’t taken so much time to memorize it, the song would
have been “The Twelve Days of Thanksgiving”. That would have turned our holiday
world upside down.
Why are game birds called “fowl”?
Because they had no refrigeration. It was a warning: “Eat it fast, before it’s
fowl!”
On a related note, this has carried
over into football, which during the first Thanksgiving was so primitive that
it was watched on a black and white TV, with no remote control, or blimp.
Whenever a player gets caught doing something that stinks, it’s called a foul.
The spelling was changed during the Great Depression, when a letter shortage
caused double U’s to be singled.
There was
indeed an abundance of cranberries at the First Thanksgiving, mostly because
the Natives used them as dye. (Good dye, although it tended to run in the
washing machine.) By then the Pilgrims had run out of sugar, so there was no
cranberry sauce or relish or anything cranberry. That’s one of the things they
were thankful for.
Potatoes were … absent. The Spanish
had discovered them in South America, but they weren’t popular with the English
yet. Instead they probably had seafood—lobster, clams, oysters, all that stuff
you find on the Thanksgiving menu today. Actually, these days the closest we
get to that is either oyster dressing or “see? Food!”
Pumpkin? Absolutely: in their pie,
their coffee, donuts, milkshakes … kidding—Starbucks didn’t deliver. Actually
they did have pumpkins, but no butter or flour for any kind of crust. They may
have hollowed out the pumpkins, filled the shell with milk, honey, and spices,
and roasted them in hot ashes.
I’m not making this up. I get paid
to do this research.
I’m sure you’re all wondering what
kind of beer they washed this all down with. I mean, Sam Adams, right? That’s
the state beverage of Massachusetts. But no, it turns out they hadn’t had time
to make beer, and didn’t yet have apples for cider, so they drank water. This
helps explain all those Pilgrim paintings with dour expressions.
Add this to native foods like
plums, grapes, leeks, and squash, and you get … *gasp* … a meal that’s good for
you! It turns out health food nuts aren’t a new thing; it’s just that back then
it was involuntary.
Interestingly, I found no reference
from historical records about stuffing being served at the first Thanksgiving.
I suspect the Pilgrims planned it, until the Wampanoag heard about the idea:
“So, once we get the birds ready,
we’ll mix old bread crumbs and tasteless vegetables together, throw a bunch of
spices on them, and stuff them up the fowl butt. Instant side dish!”
“Um … we’ll just take our smallpox
blankets and go.”
Imagine how they reacted to fruitcake.
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