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Category: Thanksgiving

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Masking and Mumming for the Holidays, Thanksgiving Style!

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Happy Thanksgiving! In this post, we’ll take a look at a set of interesting photos from the Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs Division. They depict a custom most people nowadays don’t know much about: Thanksgiving masking. Thanksgiving maskers, like trick-or-treaters on contemporary Halloween, used to go door to door, begging for handouts. They also …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Songs of the Harvest

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

Thanksgiving days were declared by United States Presidents at various times in American history, beginning with George Washington making November  26, 1789, a day of thanksgiving, but Thanksgiving was not established as a regular yearly Federal holiday until 1870. So there are not a great many songs specifically for American Thanksgiving, and these were composed …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Filling the Cornucopia

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

At this time of year we gather to give thanks, for many things that have been important to us during the year, but a common theme is thanks for our food. The holiday falls in the time of the harvest. Different cultural groups around the world also celebrate the harvest with a variety of customs …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Festive Foods Podcast in Time for Thanksgiving

Posted by: Stephen Winick

That’s right, Episode Two of the Folklife Today Podcast is ready for listening! Find it at this page on the Library’s website, or on iTunes, or with your usual podcatcher. Get your podcast here!   This blog post provides more background for the stories and the audio in the podcast. The first thing you’ll hear is …

In this painting, Pilgrims and Natives gather to share meal.

Don’t Worry, Turkey on Thanksgiving is Historically Accurate!

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Each year, as Thanksgiving Day rolls around, the blogosphere is bombarded with articles telling us that everything we know about Thanksgiving is wrong. In particular, these articles focus on the three-day event in autumn 1621, during which English colonists at Plymouth, Massachusetts, hosted 90 members of the Wampanoag tribe for a feast. Skeptical articles revisiting …