This Thursday as you celebrate another holiday by enjoying your Thanksgiving meal, ask yourself this question: Why turkey? Why not eat spaghetti? Or steak? Or some other type of fowl?The answer might surprise you as it represents the result of a serious amount of 19th century political and social lobbying. And its champion point proved an unexpected source: a Boston writer who believed a woman’s proper place was in the home. That writer: Sarah Jesopha Hale.
Cultural Context of the Thanksgiving Meal
It’s not as if the idea materialized out of the blue. One of America’s strongest cultural legends involves the Pilgrims celebTrating the survival of their first year in New England. To show their gratitude, they decided to celebrate with a First Thanksgiving at which they invited the native Americans who had helped them. However, historians claim that the main dish at that first meal likely was not turkey, but chicken or wild game instead. Though families in many states adopted celebrating the “First Thanksgiving” with a splendid meal, the practice largely remained confined to the New England states
Hale Steps In
However, by 1854 more than thirty states reported celebrating the event in some unofficial fashion. At the same time, tensions between the abolitionists and the pro-slavers had reached a fever pitch. By then, many people agreed with Hale’s assessment that a national holiday celebrating Thanksgiving could help Americans “put aside sectional feelings and local incidents” and unify the republic.
Hale seemed in some ways particularly qualified to promote such a concept. Born in New Hampshire where her family annually observed a day of thanks, she devoted an entire chapter in her first and best-known novel Northwood: A Tale of New England, to describe such a holiday feast. An accomplished poet (“Mary Had a Little Lamb”) and editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book for over forty years, she acted as an ardent supporter of women’s education (helping found Vassar College) and fundraiser for the Massachusetts Bunker Hill Monument and George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate.
Hale and Lincoln
Still, Hale’s efforts to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday had come to naught by the outbreak of the Civil War. The uncanny coupling of Thanksgiving with victory celelbrations by the presidents of both antagonists (particularly Lincoln after Gettysburg) spurred acceptance of a national observance of a day of thanks. Within a week of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, his Secretary of State, William Henry Seward, drafted an official proclamation that Thanksgiving should be observed on the final Thursday in November, a move both men hoped would help “heal the wounds of the nation.”
Practical Concerns About the Thanksgiving Meal
However, Lincoln’s pronouncement did not institutionalize turkey as the main course at Thanksgiving. Though Hale advanced Thanksgiving as a unifying national holiday, she never envisioned everyone eating turkey to celebrate it. In fact, her main argument defending Thursday as the appointed day of celebration was that it gave women time to prepare a substantial for the holiday while providing enough time afterward to prepare the traditional Sunday meal as well. Consequently, pragmatic considerations come to the fore to accomplish this end. John M. Cunningham’s entry in the Encyclopedia Brittanica supplies three solid reasons for turkey playing the central gastronomic role:
- they were raised primarily for their meat;
- a single turkey was large enough to feed an entire family;
- turkeys were plentiful in the United States.
Hale may have been a staunch advocate for political and social unity, but her vision sprung from a deep-seated set of traditional values. In her view, women should be allowed to own property, for example, but only to operate within the domestic framework of home and hearth.
Hale’s Thanksgving Meal Legacy
Sarah Jesopha Hale’s impact on our national culture cannot be denied. Without her lobbying state and national leaders for over 50 years, our annual feast of devouring a fowl Benjamin Franklin once advocated for our national bird might never have happened. Born from an honest fervor to preserve national unity, consuming turkey to celebrate a national holiday provides one of the few instances left to us to preserve and strengthen the sense of a shared national identity.
What do you plan to eat this Thurday? How do you feel about the day in general? Give us your thoughts in the Leave a Reply section below:
