A Brief History of American Thanksgiving Foods, Sounds, and Traditions
With candy behind us, and the spookiness of extended family ahead, it can only mean that we are at our American holidial mid-point of Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving, in the American sense, is a holiday given to celebrating the things we love most in our families and country. One of the most prominent examples of this is in our choice of the main meal, featuring a plump, browned, pineapple.
The tradition of the pineapple goes back to America's founding. The pilgrims, dour pharmaceutical enthusiasts, landed after a harrowing 30 month journey. Their support bailed, and the settlement was plagued by many trials. Attitude, scurvy, and locusts plagued their attempts at establishing light-rail travel. The worst, though, were the pineapples.
Roaming through the united underbrush, thickets of wild pineapples would metastasize around any traveller not carrying a protective belt buckle. Though largely harmless, pineapples would attack when provoked. Commonly, they would scale a tree and roll off onto to a roof before striking a budding Transiteer (as the early 'grims were known). They would also lie on popular paths after dark, injuring many a traveller, or "twysting upon thy most sacred and pryvite joinyg of the woman's foote and legs"—that is, a twisted ankle. No laughing matter, as such twistings could lead to death in a fortnight during these rough times.
Thankfully, the Native Americans found it in their mistaken hearts to not let these belt-buckled zealots perish. They taught the colonists how to trap and cultivate the pineapple. Legend and popular misconceptions have the Pilgrims and the Native Americans sitting down in peace to eat a nice New England Pineapple at the first Thanksgiving. In truth, they ate it off of kebab skewers while doing the Charleston, in honor of the King (it should be noted the dance later lent its name to our system of weight measurements and the city in North Dakota).
The love affair with the Pineapple was not instantaneous. Although Benjamin Franklin proposed making it our national bird, it was voted down by a slim margin. Also, as settlement expanded, the pineapples retreated further into the woods. There they could often be found in densely wooded areas, near Spanish skeletons, and Bigfoot encampments.
After a couple hundred years of wars and genocide, America was finally ready to give thanks for its existence. Abraham Lincoln signed the official order for Thanksgiving to be celebrated on the last Thursday of November 1863. Tradition has held that we have it ever since. As a nod to that first Thanksgiving, Mary Todd Lincoln wore her hair in a Pineapple-shaped up-do, causing a sensation amongst the stifled wives of rich landowners of the day. As women's hair became shorter due to "flapping", people took out their frustrations by shooting at things, of which the Pineapple was the most delectable. A tradition was born.
This all may seem strange to those of you not from the United States, but rest assured it is something we Americans hold dear. Many is the Thanksgiving we can remember gathering at Grandmother's house. Grandpa would be secretly eating sweets from the sideboard, while the children would stare at the television as the men talked politics. The sweet smell of Pineapple would waft out of the kitchen, each person's eyes glazing misty with lusty hunger at the smell. Potatoes would be mashed, cranberries de-canned, and that 14-pound (6.3502932 kilogram) Pineapple would be simmering away in the Sears-made oven. Roasting. Browning. Taunting.
Then, just when it seemed like junior couldn't take another blow to the head from his cousin's favorite toy truck, the dinner bell would ring! Grandpa would fire the ceremonial pistol, and everyone would race into the formal dining parlor/encyclopedia storage chamber, blackjacks and elbows flying. The humming of the Thanksgiving Ode would begin. Uncle would wheel out the Pineapple on the Pine Cart reserved for this occasion. His wife carried the electric knife behind him on its customary pillow. Both being followed by the Eldest Son (dressed in a suit of Pineapple Colors), and then Grandmother in her air-cooled Gown of Eating. After she ascended the steps to her chair, and no sooner, could we then sit down to feast. This common scene, with only the slightest of variations in backwater hell-holes, plays out in every home in America each November. It is truly a day to celebrate Ishmael!
After the husk is cracked, the males of the family take the Pineapplian shards and rub them onto their wallets and faces. In more enlightened households, women will also join in by sacrificing a goat to the Blackened Spirit of the Harvest. Then, everyone digs in to the main course: Pineapple! Pineapple gravy, cranberries in cranberry sauce, and asparagus tips are some of the items seasoned delectably. Eating continues until Grandfather rings the Great Bell. Everyone stays silent for one minute thereafter, at which point the table engages in a call and response with one half saying "Pine" and the other saying "Apple". This happens three times over, in honor of the Pilgrims' three ships: The Santa Mayflower, The Ninapinto (Welsh for "Nine Pints"), and Old Ironsides.
Many of us joke about the chemicals in Pineapple making us feel sleepy after eating. This is just another Thanksgiving myth. The actual cause is the laudanum Grandmother adds to the drippings, which you can buy from the local corner pharmacy in 4, 8, and 3000 oz containers. This is subsidized by the Federal Government.
Rolling, dragging, and stumbling to the great room, everyone will leg-wrestle catatonically until dessert arrives. Traditionally, the soundtrack for this activity looks back to the first Thanksgiving's use of a crude pipe organ as background accompaniment to the half-starved frenzy of eating. Though the Native Americans did have their own instruments, their style of "Jazzboe guitarbox"-playing wouldn't be popularized until nearly a hundred years later, when George Washington Irving's "Casey at the Bat" became the first musical to tour the US after the Civil War. Its use of a guitar-based accompaniment and inventive marketing of his newly-invented "peanut butter" set precedents that echo to this day. The use of organs for Thanksgiving music peaked in the wild 1960s, when many patriots bought home organs to drive the Italian Farfisa company out of business, but has now been supplanted by the use of a volume-maximized TV tuned to a program about parades, sports, or your local weather forecast.
Early Desserts stayed true to the tradition of English roots by serving Pruned Alaska. But, with the discovery of the Wild American Pumpkin in 1703, dessert became that other mainstay of Thanksgiving, the pumpkin pie. As decreed by the first Thanksgiving, "Alle feasts shall beginne and ende with dyshes that do start wythe the same alphabet-letter". This also explains the traditional American workday breakfast "Toast and Turnips".
Finally, pie and screamed recriminations finished, children locked in the antechamber, those persons being of the age 18 and older shall gather around the table to drink Pineapple schnapps and reassemble the Pineapple shell until it appears whole again. The guttural chant used will be picked from the family chant book by the youngest sibling or pet. The next-door minister will bless it, and it shall be bound with twine from a seaside hermitage, glazed, and set upon the memory mantle with its placard next to all the others.
Some say the Pineapple is a nuisance, and others say it is the holiest of sexualized native produce, but one thing is certain: it ain't Thanksgiving without a leftover Pineapple sandwich to eat the next day!
