Thanksgiving Myths, Foods & Forgotten Traditions- Bonus Holiday Episode

Speaker 1 Today, on something you should know, our second holiday bonus episode.

Speaker 1 Every November, we picture the First Thanksgiving as this big feast with roast turkey, stuffing, potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie.

Speaker 1 But here's the thing, almost none of that was actually on the table in 1621. The real menu was very different and may have even included eel meat.

Speaker 1 There were no pies, no sweet potatoes, and probably no cranberry sauce. So what did they eat at the first Thanksgiving?

Speaker 2 One of the things that they always ate, and they ate to excess, and they have eaten it since 1620 and they're still eating it, is pumpkin. Pumpkin was hugely important.

Speaker 2 New England was the Pumpkin Dominion and the first folk song was written in 1620 and it was about how they ate too much pumpkin all the time.

Speaker 1 We'll find out more about the people, the land, and the myths that shaped America's Thanksgiving meal Right after this.

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Speaker 1 Something you should know, fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, something you should know with Mike Carruthers.

Speaker 1 There is certainly a lot of history and tradition around the whole holiday season, which is why it's so much fun to do these bonus holiday episodes.

Speaker 1 And today we're going to start with the tradition of pardoning the turkey.

Speaker 1 Every year right before Thanksgiving, the President of the United States steps out onto the White House lawn and pardons a turkey.

Speaker 1 And it's a light-hearted moment, lots of cameras and bad turkey jokes and one very lucky bird who gets to skip Thanksgiving dinner. But where did this tradition come from?

Speaker 1 Well, the idea of presenting turkeys to the president actually goes back to the 1800s.

Speaker 1 Farmers and civic groups used to send turkeys as holiday gifts, basically saying, here's your Thanksgiving dinner, Mr. President.

Speaker 1 The first recorded turkey presentation was to President Abraham Lincoln, and according to some accounts, his son Tad begged his father to spare the bird, which Lincoln did.

Speaker 1 But this was just a one-off. It wasn't a tradition in the making.
Fast forward to 1947, the National Turkey Federation began formally presenting a turkey to the president every year.

Speaker 1 And that year, President Harry Truman posed for pictures with that turkey. So many people assumed that he had pardoned it.
But he didn't. He ate it.

Speaker 1 The first president to officially pardon a turkey was George H.W. Bush in 1989.
During that ceremony, he said, this fine Tom Turkey has received a presidential pardon.

Speaker 1 And from that point, every president has kept that tradition alive. These days, the lucky turkeys are often given names, sometimes a pair of names, like peanut butter and jelly or liberty and bell.

Speaker 1 And after their pardon, they're sent to live out their days on farms or at universities.

Speaker 1 So the next time you see the presidential turkey pardon, remember it's a mix of history and humor and a little bit of myth, served with a side of White House tradition.

Speaker 1 And that is something you should know.

Speaker 1 Most of us learned in school about the first Thanksgiving, how pilgrims and Native Americans came together for this big feast, and they ate turkey. and pumpkin something or other and they gave thanks.

Speaker 1 And I have to admit, I don't remember too much of what I learned about the first Thanksgiving. And in fact, I wonder how much of what I did learn was in fact fact or fiction.

Speaker 1 Here to talk about what really went on at the first Thanksgiving and how some of our customs around this holiday actually came later is Leslie Landregan.

Speaker 1 She's been writing about New England history for over 10 years and she's author of a book called Historic Thanksgiving Foods and the People Who Cook Them, 1607 to 1955. Hi, Leslie.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 2 Thanks, Mike. I'm happy to be on.

Speaker 1 So it seems like there's always been this fascination about what they ate at the first Thanksgiving. I'm not sure why that is, but

Speaker 1 is it a mystery? Is it a theory? Do we really know what they ate?

Speaker 2 We know two things. We know that they had four deer

Speaker 2 that the natives brought, the 90 natives, and we know that the men went out shooting birds

Speaker 2 with the natives and the Englishmen.

Speaker 2 So birds, deer, probably shellfish, probably corn. That's what we know for sure.
Lobster, maybe.

Speaker 1 And do we know why that first Thanksgiving

Speaker 1 how these people came together and did they call it Thanksgiving? And like, what what's in as briefly as you can what's the quick story of why these people came together?

Speaker 2 What's interesting to me if you call the meeting of Indigenous people and English colonists in you know the early 17th century to eat food in

Speaker 2 autumn. If you're going to call that a Thanksgiving, then the pilgrims in 1621 were not the first Thanksgiving.

Speaker 2 The first Thanksgiving would have been in 1607 in Phippsburg, Maine, where

Speaker 2 a failed colony was established for about a year. But the circumstances were very, very similar.
The two groups came together basically

Speaker 2 It was more of a state dinner than it was a Thanksgiving. They were negotiating alliances.
They would trade with each other and they would defend each other against common enemies.

Speaker 1 The food that they ate, which we'll get into very soon here, but is it the food that they always ate or was this some real special kind of food?

Speaker 2 It was the food they usually ate. They may have dressed it up a little bit and it would have been plentiful.
because of the time of year, but it was pretty much what they ate.

Speaker 2 I was going to say, one of the things that they always ate and they ate to excess and they have eaten it since 1620 and they're still eating it is pumpkin. Pumpkin was hugely important.

Speaker 2 And you know how we call people in Wisconsin cheese heads? People used to call New Englanders pumpkin heads.

Speaker 2 New England was the pumpkin dominion and the first folk song was written in, the first American folk song was written in 1620 and it was about how they ate too much pumpkin all the time.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 what was the magic of pumpkin just because there were so many? I mean, that wasn't something that came over from England, right?

Speaker 2 Actually, they did know a pumpkin in England, and pumpkin pie was really popular. The Spanish had brought it over, and then it kind of fell out of favor.
But

Speaker 2 it grew well.

Speaker 2 It was more resistant to deer and insects and fungus and things like that.

Speaker 2 So I think it was just its heartiness. And, you know, it kept for a while.

Speaker 1 In addition to a pie, what do you make out of pumpkin?

Speaker 2 They tended to stew it.

Speaker 2 They would do a lot with it, but mostly they'd chop it up and stew it and mix it up with other stuff. I don't know that it was terribly appetizing.

Speaker 1 Well, if you ever eat pumpkin, because we feed our dog pumpkin on recommendations of the vet, and it it isn't much. I mean, without spicing it up, it doesn't really

Speaker 1 bland.

Speaker 2 It's pretty nutritious, though.

Speaker 1 Right. That's why the dog eats it.

Speaker 2 Well, you know,

Speaker 2 the natives, they grew what was called the three sisters, the pumpkin or squash, beans, and corn,

Speaker 2 which for some reason, having to do with amino acids or carbohydrates or something, I don't know, makes for a very nutritious diet.

Speaker 1 At the center of today's Thanksgiving dinner is typically a turkey. Was it their center of the table?

Speaker 2 No, it wasn't for a long time.

Speaker 2 They may have had turkey at the first Thanksgiving. Turkeys are, wild turkeys are really stupid birds.
They roost in the same place all the time.

Speaker 2 So, you know, if you want dinner, you just go get yourself a turkey. But in fact, they were so easy to kill that they were obliterated from New England

Speaker 2 probably by the Civil War. Turkey, it was a part of the meal and it was something they ate, but chicken pie was the big thing for a long time.

Speaker 2 And it was a woman named Sarah Josepha Hale, who was a widow with five kids and needed money.

Speaker 2 So she wrote a book in 1827. It was a novel.
I can't think of the name of it. But

Speaker 2 she described a Thanksgiving dinner in New England, a classic New England Thanksgiving, which was really at the time only celebrated in New England.

Speaker 2 And the book sold well, and she got a job as the editor of what became Goti's Ladies' Book, which was this tremendously influential magazine. It was way more influential than Martha Stewart.
And

Speaker 2 she was an American influencer, and she was the one who made turkey the centerpiece of the American meal. And she was also the one she lobbied for a long time to make Thanksgiving a national holiday.

Speaker 2 And finally, Abraham Lincoln was the one who said, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 So can you run down without going into, you don't have to stop at any of them and go into any detail because we can do that later, but just like, what's the menu look like at these early Thanksgiving-y kind of dinners?

Speaker 1 What's on on the menu?

Speaker 2 Well, for the pilgrims, it would have been something called nasamp,

Speaker 2 which was a native

Speaker 2 kind of a porridge made with cornmeal and nuts, berries, and maybe a sweetener. They probably

Speaker 2 would have had striped bass.

Speaker 2 which was a fish that was easy to catch and that was also sustaining them. Probably would have had shellfish.

Speaker 2 They would have had deer probably.

Speaker 2 And I'm guessing a lot of different kinds of wildfowl.

Speaker 2 They,

Speaker 2 I don't know that they would have had dessert, but they did develop this thing called Indian pudding, which was cornmeal with milk and a sweetener.

Speaker 1 What about potatoes, stuffing, and gravy?

Speaker 2 Oh, potatoes.

Speaker 2 Well, in 1620, we're talking about that first Thanksgiving, that first alleged Thanksgiving, they would have known about potatoes, but the potato they would have known about was the sweet potato, which the Spanish had brought to Europe.

Speaker 2 And it was highly prized because it was believed to be an aphrodisiac.

Speaker 2 And it was a luxury item. So some of the pilgrims who were of the gentry would have been familiar with the sweet potato.

Speaker 2 But the sweet potato didn't come to America, I think, until 1764.

Speaker 2 The Irish potato didn't come to the United States until 1718,

Speaker 2 when a bunch of, there were five shiploads of Scots-Irish who came to Boston, and the Boston Puritans didn't want to have anything to do with them, so they sent them to the New Hampshire frontier.

Speaker 2 And in what is now dairy New Hampshire, they planted the first potato, the first Irish potato. And it was viewed as a food for the poor, for pigs, and for the Irish.
You just didn't eat the potato.

Speaker 2 And the French hated the white potato even more. They banned its harvesting, or they banned the planting of the potato because they thought that it caused leprosy.

Speaker 2 But then, during the Seven Years' War, around 1755 or so, there was a French pharmacist who was captured by the Germans. And while he was imprisoned, they made him eat potatoes.

Speaker 2 So after he got released, he

Speaker 2 got really interested in nutrition and he rehabilitated the potato.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the French came to embrace the noble spud.

Speaker 2 And they served Thomas Jefferson french fries in Paris when he was minister to France. And Thomas Jefferson liked the french fries, so he served them at the White House when he was president.

Speaker 2 And that's how the white potato became a popular menu item at Thanksgiving.

Speaker 1 You said the sweet potato didn't come here until the 1700s, but I thought you said that it was at the first Thanksgiving, which would have been before then.

Speaker 2 So help me understand. No, no, no.
They would have known about the sweet potato, but they wouldn't have had them here.

Speaker 2 It was something, you know, it was like a really fancy food.

Speaker 1 I'm speaking with Leslie Landragan, who's been writing about New England history for years. She's author of Historic Thanksgiving Foods and the People Who Cooked Them, 1607 to 1955.

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Speaker 1 So Leslie, there are foods that I think of as New England-y foods that are often associated with Thanksgiving. Were they, and those would be cranberries, apples, things like that.

Speaker 1 Were those there or not?

Speaker 2 Oh, they would have had cranberries, definitely. The natives revered the cranberry.
In fact,

Speaker 2 there are some Wampanoag people who live on Martha's Vineyard, and

Speaker 2 their Thanksgiving is the

Speaker 2 second Thursday, I think, in October. And it's cranberry day.

Speaker 2 And the kids get out of school and they eat cranberries. It was a very, very useful.

Speaker 2 was used as a dye. It was used as a sweetener.
It had medicinal properties.

Speaker 1 Were the early settlers here, the pilgrims, were they big on vegetables, meaning did they have like peas and celery and carrots and things like that?

Speaker 2 They would have eaten the three sisters, the pumpkins, the beans, and the squash. Celery is kind of an interesting vegetable because it didn't

Speaker 2 really come to America until the American Revolution, the 1770s, and it was

Speaker 2 kind of a fancy food. But think about it.
You're celebrating Thanksgiving in

Speaker 2 late fall and vegetables are mushy, but there's this nice green, crisp vegetable. And for many years, it was the most popular item on U.S.
restaurant menus next to coffee and tea.

Speaker 1 So talk about the people because you mentioned this the one woman who was kind of the Martha Stewart of her or bigger than Martha Stewart, but I imagine that there are other people in this story that kind of steer the menu a bit or the legend of the menu.

Speaker 1 Yes?

Speaker 2 Well, the people who stick in my mind are the first four women who cooked Thanksgiving. Because after that first winter, there were only four adult women left in Plymouth Colony.

Speaker 2 And there would have been some 48 others who survived and

Speaker 2 90 Native Americans. So that's cooking for 140 people.
Here are these four women who

Speaker 2 have to pluck all the birds that the men caught. They probably have to cut up the deer.
They have no running water. They've got to cook outside.

Speaker 2 It just would have been a nightmare. I can't even imagine it.
But I can tell you who they were. There was Mary Brewster, who was older.

Speaker 2 She was in her 50s, and she was the wife of William Brewster, the spiritual guide.

Speaker 2 There was Susannah Winslow, who was the wife of Edward Winslow, who was one of the leaders. And those two were saints, which means they were the Puritans who came for religious reasons.

Speaker 2 So the other two women were Elizabeth Hopkins

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 Elizabeth Billington. And the Billingtons were bad news.
Her husband, John Billington, was hanged for murder. Her son

Speaker 2 was

Speaker 2 a troublemaker who got lost and nearly started a war between the pilgrims and the natives. And she was whipped for slander.

Speaker 2 But the one who really interests me is

Speaker 2 Elizabeth Hopkins. Her husband was Stephen Hopkins, who was in a Shakespeare play.

Speaker 2 He had come over to North America one more time, one time previously, as an indentured servant, and his ship got wrecked, and they lived on Bermuda for nine months, and we built the ship and went to Jamestown.

Speaker 2 And Shakespeare heard the story and wrote The Tempest. And so Stephen Hopkins, who came back to North America after returning to England, he was Stefano in The Tempest.
He was the power mad butler.

Speaker 1 So you have this image that we got in school of the Native Americans and the pilgrims coming together as some sort of like

Speaker 1 community dinner and that they're all getting together and sharing their food. Is that what this was?

Speaker 1 Was there a lot of,

Speaker 1 let me help you cook that, or here's how we do it here as Native Americans? Or was there that kind of relationship?

Speaker 2 I think there would have been. One thing I'm really unclear about is whether the Native women came because

Speaker 2 they might have brought some nasamp or some cornbread or something.

Speaker 2 There were servants, and there were children, and so I think everybody would have been pressed into service.

Speaker 2 They'd been working together for

Speaker 2 over a year.

Speaker 2 You know, the pilgrims had things that the Indians wanted,

Speaker 2 guns, for example, or,

Speaker 2 you know, trade goods, pots.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the natives had something that the pilgrims wanted, which was fur. There was a huge, huge market for beaver fur in Europe.

Speaker 2 And the natives taught

Speaker 2 the pilgrims how to fish. So I think it would have been a cooperative effort.

Speaker 1 So the natives and the pilgrims have this big meal together. But was this like a special occasion?

Speaker 1 They came together, had this meal, and then they went their separate ways, or did these people mingle together all the time?

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 they intermingled a lot. As a matter of fact,

Speaker 2 Edward Winslow, who was the husband of Susanna Winslow, who cooked that dinner, he saved the chief's life at one point. Massasoit had some illness and Edward Winslow came and

Speaker 2 I think, honestly, I think he fed him something like chicken soup and did something to save his life. So, yes.
And of course, Squanto,

Speaker 2 the native who breeded them,

Speaker 2 taught them how to grow corn. So they were, they were, they mingled a lot.

Speaker 1 What else about this holiday or the first Thanksgiving anyway, or the early traditions of Thanksgiving, do you find people still don't understand, or maybe is a bit of a myth, or

Speaker 1 anything like that?

Speaker 2 It wasn't really Thanksgiving until the 19th century. It was kind of forgotten.
And

Speaker 2 Thanksgiving was something that

Speaker 2 the English celebrated

Speaker 2 in England and here, it wasn't a harvest meal. A real Thanksgiving was

Speaker 2 getting the community together because you were thankful for something

Speaker 2 that could be rain after a drought or a military victory.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 after the Battle of Saratoga in the Revolution,

Speaker 2 Sam Adams in Massachusetts declared a day of Thanksgiving. You could have Thanksgiving in April.
You could have, your town could have a Thanksgiving.

Speaker 2 Thomas Jefferson actually declared Thanksgiving when he was governor of Virginia. And it didn't really become

Speaker 2 a national holiday until Abraham Lincoln declared it.

Speaker 1 But the idea of Thanksgiving, as you say, came later. So what did they view it as? When they came together, they're coming together saying, hey, thanks for coming coming to our

Speaker 1 what?

Speaker 2 I think it would have been like a state dinner. You know, they didn't sign any treaties, but that would have been the point of it.

Speaker 1 Well, it sounds like the Thanksgiving we have today that we celebrate in our homes with our family and friends is very different than those early Thanksgivings and, frankly, seems a lot tastier.

Speaker 1 But it is fun to hear you talk about what those real Thanksgiving meals were like. I've been speaking with Leslie Landrigan.

Speaker 1 She is author of a book called Historic Thanksgiving Foods and the People Who Cooked Them, 1607 to 1955. And there's a link to her book at Amazon in the show notes.
Leslie, thank you.

Speaker 2 Terrific. Thanks so much, Mike.

Speaker 1 Of course, you know the song Jingle Bells. It is one of the most famous Christmas songs ever written.
But here's something you may not know. It wasn't written for Christmas at all.

Speaker 1 Back in 1857, a songwriter named James Lord Pierpont composed Jingle Bells, but the original title was The One Horse Open Sleigh. And it wasn't about Santa or Christmas or even winter festivities.

Speaker 1 It was written for Thanksgiving. Pierpont was living in Medford, Massachusetts, a town famous at the time for its sleigh races.

Speaker 1 And during the snowy Thanksgiving season, young people would race their sleighs down Salem Street, laughing, shouting, and jingling bells to warn pedestrians to get out of the way.

Speaker 1 Pierpont wanted to capture that energy in a song.

Speaker 1 The tune was first performed by children at a Thanksgiving concert at their church, and it became so popular that people started singing it again a few weeks later at Christmas.

Speaker 1 Over time, it just stuck. So the next time you hear jingle bells playing during the holidays, remember, you're actually listening to a Thanksgiving song that accidentally became a Christmas classic.

Speaker 1 And that is something you should know.

Speaker 1 From everyone here at Something You Should Know, I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I appreciate you listening to this special bonus holiday episode of Something You Should Know.