COLUMN: Thanksgiving traditions in cultural context
Traditions are wonderful things. Some traditions are patriotic, like the national anthem before a sports event. Some traditions connect to local roots, such as Cache Valley’s own Summerfest. Other traditions promote state-wide socialization, like obscene t-shirts and posters at BYU-Utah State basketball games. And then there are other traditions which are simply good for gelatin businesses, such as the JELL-O slide on Old Main hill.
Yet even in spite of these wonderful aspects of traditions, sometimes there are traditions that seem to go stale and lose popularity, such as the tradition of calling fathers “sir,” the political traditions of monarchies, and the family tradition of gathering around the radio to listen to episodes of the “Lone Ranger,” among many other traditions we simply don’t know about
because they’ve gone the way of the dodo (that means “extinct” for you non-naturalists out there).
Now as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, I fear that this wonderful holiday is converting to those same ranks of dying traditions. I’m sure that you are all with me in not wanting this to happen, first of all because Thanksgiving is a time you get to spend with your family, and second of all – and maybe most importantly – because it’s a break in classes.
While these are good reasons to want Thanksgiving around, if we’re not careful, it could be the next tradition to go. There is, however, no need to despair. You see, the reason traditions fade away into nothing is because people aren’t able to adjust them to fit modern times. Take the rapidly declining popularity of monarchies, for example. Some may argue that the reason monarchies have fallen to the wayside is because people have wanted more democracy. Though that might have a little bit to do with it, I think it’s mainly because the public couldn’t relate to the royalty when they went around wearing strange, out-of-date garb such as robes and metal hats. I’ll tell you right now that the way to save a depreciating monarchy is to have
the king and queen start strutting around in baggy pants and large headphones.
The same can and should be applied to Thanksgiving. How are kids going to grow up relating to a story about people wearing buckle shoes and bonnets and hunting down wild turkeys? They can’t. That’s why, when we tell the Thanksgiving story, we need to tweak the details a little bit to make the story more applicable to our day and age (does this attitude, coupled with the fact that I’m going into history teaching, scare anyone?). To demonstrate this, I am giving a hypothetical conversation that could be had between myself and my niece, Lily, at the Thanksgiving dinner table:
LILY: What’s Thanksgiving Uncle Marty?
MARTY: Well, Lily, Thanksgiving is the holiday where we remember a feast that the first European settlers had with the Native Americans.
LILY: What did they eat?
MARTY: They hunted down BigMacs with laser guns and harvested an excellent crop of pizzas.
LILY: Wow. Then they all ate together?
MARTY: That’s right, while listening to the tunes of J-Lo and Outkast.
LILY: Uncle Marty, I will love Thanksgiving forever.
MARTY: I sure hope so, Lily … pass the pumpkin-flavored Doritos, would you?
I hope that you can all learn from this exchange and educate your family this upcoming Thanksgiving vacation. Once that is done successfully, then we’ll be able to move onto the even more complicated job of saving our Christmas traditions. Hint: it will have something to do with Santa wearing a trenchcoat and beanie and the newly proposed boy band, “Rudolph and the Flying Reindeer.
Marty Reeder is a senior majoring in history education. Comments or turkey corn dog recipes can be sent to martr@cc.usu.edu