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Speaker 1: On this episode of Newsworld. As we gather with family

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Speaker 1: and friends later this week for the Thanksgiving holiday, I

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Speaker 1: wanted to devote an episode to the uniquely American tradition

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Speaker 1: and history of Thanksgiving. When we imagine the first Thanksgiving,

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Speaker 1: we think of the Mayflower Pilgrims and Native Americans gathered

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Speaker 1: together at a long table outside, celebrating with a feast.

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Speaker 1: In fact, what we consider the first Thanksgiving was celebrated

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Speaker 1: in October sixteen twenty one, after the Pilgrim's first harvest.

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Speaker 1: The feast lasted for three days and included games and

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Speaker 1: all around good cheer. It was attended by ninety Wapanoa

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Speaker 1: warriors and fifty three Pilgrims. According to Pilgrim Edward Winslow's account,

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Speaker 1: they gathered together to give thanks to the Lord for

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Speaker 1: the bounty of the harvest and the rich natural resources

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Speaker 1: of this American continent. Today's Thanksgiving still reflects the American

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Speaker 1: values of the holiday, as the Pilgrims originally celebrated in

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Speaker 1: sixteen to twenty one. Hospitality, time with friends and family,

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Speaker 1: bountiful food, and generosity to those in need. I'm pleased

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Speaker 1: to welcome my guest, Melanie Kirkpatrick, Senior Fellow at the

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Speaker 1: Hudson Institute, an author of Thanksgiving, The Holiday at the

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Speaker 1: Heart of the American Experience. First of all, what led

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Speaker 1: you to write Thanksgiving The Holiday at the Heart of

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Speaker 1: American Experience. I was in Manhattan downtown at near the

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Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal offices on the day that the Twin

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Speaker 1: Towers were attacked, and, like most New Yorkers, like most Americans,

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Speaker 1: that had a profound effect on me. One of the

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Speaker 1: things I did was start thinking more deeply about what

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Speaker 1: it meant to be an American. And I decided to

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Speaker 1: a book I'd never read before, which was William Bradford's

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Speaker 1: Journal of Plymouth Plantation, and I was really blown away

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Speaker 1: by it. And some of the challenges at the pilgrims

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Speaker 1: faced when they came to this continent and had to

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Speaker 1: think about were similar to what we Americans were thinking

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Speaker 1: about in the wake of the September eleventh attack. If

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Speaker 1: Thanksgiving got closer, I read ahead to the passage on

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Speaker 1: the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth in sixteen twenty one, and

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Speaker 1: I was struck by how similar it was to the

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Speaker 1: holiday we celebrate today, and that got me interested in

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Speaker 1: the holiday, and I began researching it. I wrote a

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Speaker 1: couple of od beds on different aspects of the holiday

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Speaker 1: for the Wall Street Journal, where I was working, and

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Speaker 1: then when I retired from the journal, I started writing books,

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Speaker 1: and the history of Thanksgiving, which nobody had really done before,

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Speaker 1: was at the top of my list. I'm fascinating for

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Speaker 1: a couple of reasons. One is it's always struck me

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Speaker 1: that one of the keys to Thanksgiving is that you

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Speaker 1: have to have something to give thanks for, and that

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Speaker 1: there's a real connectivity emotionally. And if you go back

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Speaker 1: to the very beginning, but if you look at Washington,

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Speaker 1: or you look at Lincoln or what have you, these

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Speaker 1: are folks who really are thankful. It's not just a

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Speaker 1: good day to eat turkey and watch football, but in fact,

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Speaker 1: it was a day where they truly were giving thanks

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Speaker 1: Why don't you start us, if you don't mind, at

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Speaker 1: the very beginning with what happened in Massachusetts and how

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Speaker 1: the original Thanksgiving started. There are two eyewitness accounts of

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Speaker 1: the first Thanksgiving, so you can extrapolate from them. And

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Speaker 1: the first thing I'll note is that the word thanksgiving

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Speaker 1: doesn't appear in either of those first person accounts. For

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Speaker 1: the pilgrims. The feast that we think of as the

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Speaker 1: First Thanksgiving was not a Thanksgiving day. It was more

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Speaker 1: of a harvest festival. And of course, though the pilgrims

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Speaker 1: gave thanks, because they were champions giving thanks, they were

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Speaker 1: giving thanks in every aspect of their lives. It was

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Speaker 1: a three day festival, and we know that at some

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Speaker 1: point during the three days, the ninety Indian braves appeared,

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Speaker 1: and I've always thought that's interesting because that was twice

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Speaker 1: the number of pilgrims that were left, and of course

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Speaker 1: some of the pilgrims were women and children. One of

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Speaker 1: the things we read is that they shot off their

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Speaker 1: arms as a kind of sport, you know, or entertainment

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Speaker 1: during the three days, and I've often wondered if that

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Speaker 1: perhaps was intended as a signal to their Native American

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Speaker 1: neighbors that even though they were small in number, they

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Speaker 1: were well prepared to fight off any possible attack. But anyhow,

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Speaker 1: the Native Americans were led by a very brilliant and

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Speaker 1: I think generous king by the name of Massasoit. He

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Speaker 1: had a peace treaty with the English settlers, and as

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Speaker 1: they arrived for the harvest festival, we don't know whether

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Speaker 1: they were invited or whether they just arrived. Another thing

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Speaker 1: we learn from Winslow is that the wampano and Indians

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Speaker 1: brought five deer, five dead deer which they had shot.

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Speaker 1: And you think about it, what do you do if

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Speaker 1: you're invited to a Thanksgiving feace today? You ask what

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Speaker 1: can I bring? So those five deer would have served

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Speaker 1: the group for several days. I actually, in writing this,

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Speaker 1: consulted a friend of mine who I live in New England,

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Speaker 1: who is a hunter, and he described to me how

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Speaker 1: much each deer, how many meals it would provide, and

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Speaker 1: back then they would have used and eaten part of

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Speaker 1: the parts of the deer that we don't eat today.

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Speaker 1: So if you want to eat what the Pilgrims ate,

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Speaker 1: you have to start with venison. Turkey is also mentioned.

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Speaker 1: Were big flocks of wild turkey and flocks of other

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Speaker 1: fowl that the two talk about, and corn and beans

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Speaker 1: would have been on the menu. The Wampanoan taught the

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Speaker 1: Pilgrims how to plant those vegetables using fish as fertilizer.

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Speaker 1: Then there were native plants that they might well have

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Speaker 1: learned how to use. Again, thanks to the Native Americans,

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Speaker 1: and those include jerusalem artichokes, garlic, concord, grapes, walnuts and chestnuts,

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Speaker 1: and even cranberries, though it's unlikely that cranberries were on

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Speaker 1: the menu because if you've ever tasted one cranberry, you

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Speaker 1: know that it's really sour you don't want to eat

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Speaker 1: a second one, and the Pilgrims did not have sugar

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Speaker 1: with them. Cranberry sauce recipes came later in the century.

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Speaker 1: Pumpkins could have been on the menu too, though not

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Speaker 1: as pie. Pumpkins were native to the area, and of

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Speaker 1: course the English knew how to make pie, but they

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Speaker 1: didn't have wheat, so pumpkin pie didn't appear until later.

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Speaker 1: That said, they could very well have hollowed out a

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Speaker 1: pumpkin and cooked it over a fire of some sort,

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Speaker 1: so it's possible that something akin to a pumpkin pie

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Speaker 1: was on the menu. The Pilgrims had many things to

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Speaker 1: be thankful for at that first Thanksgiving. Of course, they

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Speaker 1: were thankful to have arrived in the New World after

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Speaker 1: a difficult journey. They were also thankful to have survived.

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Speaker 1: About half original Pilgrims died in the first winter due

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Speaker 1: to cold and poor nutrition, and disease. That's unclear what

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Speaker 1: it was that struck after they had been there about

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Speaker 1: only two weeks, so they were thankful for their survival.

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Speaker 1: They were also thankful for the bounty of the harvest,

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Speaker 1: and that was of course due in part to the

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Speaker 1: bounty of the forests and the sea right near them,

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Speaker 1: but also thanks to the help of the Native Americans.

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Speaker 1: I don't think the Pilgrims would have survived that first

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Speaker 1: winter if it had not been for the help of

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Speaker 1: the Native Americans. And finally, I would say another great

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Speaker 1: accomplishment for which they were deeply grateful was peace with

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Speaker 1: the Native people. Now that wouldn't last, and as the

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Speaker 1: decades went by there would be terrible wars and lots

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Speaker 1: of deaths on both sides. But at the time of

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Speaker 1: the first Thanksgiving, the two people were living in harmony.

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Speaker 1: And I like to think that that image points the

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Speaker 1: way to the multicultural people we've become. So I understand

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Speaker 1: it did not become an automatic every year holiday at

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Speaker 1: that point. That's exactly right. The first day of thanks

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Speaker 1: that the Pilgrims celebrated officially was two years later, and

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Speaker 1: it was in July, hardly a season we think of

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Speaker 1: as Thanksgiving season. There had been a drought that had

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Speaker 1: lasted from May. Their crops were dying and it rained,

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Speaker 1: so they gave thanks for the rain and called a

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Speaker 1: day of Thanksgiving. And those early days of Thanksgiving were

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Speaker 1: spent in worship for the most part, and I'm talking

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Speaker 1: now about the early seventeenth century, but there would be

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Speaker 1: sometimes the meal after the Thanksgiving services. And there is

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Speaker 1: the earliest example I could discover of Thanksgiving generosity and

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Speaker 1: Thanksgiving hospitality was from the sixteen thirties in Situate, Massachusetts,

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Speaker 1: where there was a call for a Thanksgiving and after

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Speaker 1: which the richer sort were asked to take care of

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Speaker 1: the poorer sort. So that tradition of hospitality and generosity

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Speaker 1: does go back a long way. As the seventeenth century progressed,

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Speaker 1: Thanksgiving days varied from colony to colony. Connecticut was the

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Speaker 1: first to call for a colony wide day of general Thanksgiving,

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Speaker 1: and that was in sixteen thirty nine. Now, a general

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Speaker 1: Thanksgiving is different from the kinds of Thanksgivings that were

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Speaker 1: usually celebrated before that. Before that, communities or churches would

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Speaker 1: call a Thanksgiving for a specific event, such as a

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Speaker 1: victory over Native Americans, in a military skirmish or a

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Speaker 1: reign that ended a drought, that kind of specific event.

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Speaker 1: But in sixteen thirty nine, Connecticut called for a day

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Speaker 1: of general Thanksgiving, which was the time for people to

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Speaker 1: come together in worship and give thanks for God's many blessings.

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Speaker 1: This was a controversial idea which is hard to believe

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Speaker 1: in the context of the twenty first century, but some

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Speaker 1: people argued that having a day of general thanksgiving would

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Speaker 1: mean that people would take gratitude for granted. However, if

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Speaker 1: there were specific blessings for which to give thanks, that

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Speaker 1: would make them more deeply grateful. They actually had an

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Speaker 1: argument about this and did the general thanksgiving people finally win?

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Speaker 1: They did. By the end of the seventeenth century, general

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Speaker 1: thanksgiving were the norm. They were usually followed by a

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Speaker 1: large meal with family and friends. That of course continued

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Speaker 1: into the eighteenth century, where we begin to read more

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Speaker 1: about the thanksgiving celebrations themselves and the kinds of food

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Speaker 1: that were eaten. At some point, every colony would name

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Speaker 1: a Thanksgiving Day and that would be proclaimed by the

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Speaker 1: governor of the colony. And my understanding it starts in

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Speaker 1: New England, but does it spread rapidly to all of

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Speaker 1: the colonies. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, colonies would

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Speaker 1: hold their own Thanksgivings, but it was more from a

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Speaker 1: religious tradition than a New England tradition. Though as the

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Speaker 1: country expanded, especially in the nineteenth century, New Englanders took

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Speaker 1: the holiday with them to the frontier, and that's how

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Speaker 1: the holidays spread. By the time we get to the

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Speaker 1: American Revolution, I gather it's pretty widespread to have Thanksgiving.

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Speaker 1: Do we have any notion that it existed anywhere else

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Speaker 1: outside what would become the United States. Certainly no country

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Speaker 1: has a tradition other than the United States that's been

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Speaker 1: associated with many events in our history. The Thanksgiving tradition

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Speaker 1: was followed by the Continental Congress, and it issued several

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Speaker 1: days of Thanksgiving during the Revolutionary War. But it was

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Speaker 1: Washington who was the first to call a national Thanksgiving

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Speaker 1: for America as a nation. So up until then it

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Speaker 1: had been mostly provincial, and suddenly you have a nationwide

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Speaker 1: all thirteen colonies and later all thirteen states. Right, it

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Speaker 1: went from Thanksgivings called and celebrated by individual churches and

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Speaker 1: individual communities to then being celebrated in an individual colony

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Speaker 1: and eventually during the Revolutionary War, and then when we

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Speaker 1: became a country celebrated nationally. In A Washington's case, doesn't

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Speaker 1: he tie it directly to the notion that our achievements

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Speaker 1: really were providential, That you could not understand how we

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Speaker 1: had defeated the greatest empire in the world without awareness

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Speaker 1: that God had a hand in it. That's exactly right.

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Speaker 1: I should say that Washington mentions God very prominently in

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Speaker 1: his Thanksgiving proclamations, and every president since Lincoln has followed

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Speaker 1: that example. God is very much present in those Thanksgiving proclamations.

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Speaker 1: The idea of a Thanksgiving proclamation was controversial. In seventeen

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Speaker 1: eighty nine, Congress had a very vigorous debate over whether

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Speaker 1: the president had the authority to do that. There were

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Speaker 1: two objections. One was that he didn't have the authority

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Speaker 1: under the Constitution, and the authority to call a Thanksgiving

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Speaker 1: belonged to the governor of the individual states, not to

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Speaker 1: the president of the United States. And the second objection

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Speaker 1: was that it was a religious holiday and the president

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Speaker 1: shouldn't have anything to do with it. But in the

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Speaker 1: end there was a vote, it passed, and a delegation

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Speaker 1: went to Washington and asked him to declare a Thanksgiving Day,

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Speaker 1: and he did a very smart and wonderful thing. At

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Speaker 1: that point. He issued the proclamation, but he didn't order

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Speaker 1: anybody to celebrate the day. Instead, he sent a copy

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Speaker 1: to every governor and requested them to ask their people

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Speaker 1: to celebrate on the day that he designated. And of

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Speaker 1: course every governor was only too happy to comply, and

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Speaker 1: the governors then issued their own proclamations and the country

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Speaker 1: celebrated as a whole. You then get the great trauma

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Speaker 1: of the Civil War. You again get Lincoln coming back

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Speaker 1: with Thanksgiving being a very important date to him. And

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Speaker 1: there is an interesting story there about a woman who

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Speaker 1: deserves to be better known than she is, and her

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Speaker 1: name was Sarah Joseph Hale. She was a New Englander

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Speaker 1: and she was editor of the most popular magazine of

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Speaker 1: the pre Civil War period, Godie's Ladies Book, And for

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Speaker 1: twenty some years she had been pressing a campaign to

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Speaker 1: have a national Thanksgiving, because even though Thanksgiving was now

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Speaker 1: being celebrated in most states and in most parts of

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Speaker 1: the country, it was all on different days. And she

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Speaker 1: thought that if we had a national Thanksgiving, if Americans

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Speaker 1: were celebrating on the same day, that it would help

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Speaker 1: to preserve the Union as well as be a unifying

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Speaker 1: force in American culture. She thought that Americans still were

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Speaker 1: not unified as a culture, that we had won the war,

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Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War, but we hadn't developed our own distinct culture,

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Speaker 1: and Thanksgivings she saw as part of doing them. Anyhow,

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Speaker 1: She wrote to four or five presidents during that period,

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Speaker 1: and she was probably the best known woman in America

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Speaker 1: in the pre Civil War period, and they all replied, no,

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Speaker 1: we're not going to do it. When the eighteen sixties

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Speaker 1: came around, she wrote to Lincoln, of course, and Lincoln,

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Speaker 1: inspired by her letter, issued a proclamation in eighteen sixty three.

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Speaker 1: The timing of that proclamation was interesting too, because it

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Speaker 1: came a couple of months after the Battle of Gettysburg,

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Speaker 1: and by that point, I believe it was clearer that

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Speaker 1: the Union was going to win. And so Lincoln's proclamation

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Speaker 1: has beautiful language in it, and it points the way

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Speaker 1: to the post war period when Americans can come together again.

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Speaker 1: It has very lyrical, lovely language. Lincoln is using Thanksgiving

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Speaker 1: as a holiday to bring us together. Then you get

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Speaker 1: Franklin Roosevelt who sort of plays around with the date.

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Speaker 1: What was he trying to achieve? Franklin Roosevelt in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirties had the idea that if he made the

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Speaker 1: date of Thanksgiving a week earlier, that Americans would have

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Speaker 1: more time to shop for the Christmas holidays, and that

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Speaker 1: would give the economy a boost. Now this was a

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Speaker 1: pretty dumb economic idea. Americans weren't going to spend more

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Speaker 1: money if they had an extra week, for the simple

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Speaker 1: fact that they didn't have the money to spend. But

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Speaker 1: be that as a may He called a press conference

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Speaker 1: announcing that he was changing the date of Thanksgiving, and

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Speaker 1: the country erupted. FDR had a good sense of how

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Speaker 1: things would play among the public, but here he failed completely,

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Speaker 1: and so the country split. Because there was no law

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Speaker 1: designating the date of Thanksgiving, it was just a tradition.

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Speaker 1: The president really didn't have any authority here. So half

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Speaker 1: the states decided to stick with the traditional day of Thanksgiving,

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Speaker 1: which was the last Thursday of November, and the other

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Speaker 1: half decided to go with Roosevelt's date. There was the

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Speaker 1: Democratic Thanksgiving and the Republican Thanksgiving, as they would call it,

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Speaker 1: and sometimes they even referred to the Democrat of Thanksgiving

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Speaker 1: as Franksgiving after Roosevelt himself. This caused an uproar throughout

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Speaker 1: the country and it made it difficult for a lot

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Speaker 1: of people, And my mother was an example of that.

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Speaker 1: She was in college in Boston, where they, of course

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Speaker 1: celebrated the traditional date of Thanksgiving, but she lived in Buffalo,

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Speaker 1: in New York State, Roosevelt state, where they celebrated the

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Speaker 1: Democrat at Thanksgiving, and she couldn't go home for Thanksgiving

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Speaker 1: the four years she was in college. In nineteen forty one,

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Speaker 1: it was clear that the experiment was a failure. The

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Speaker 1: economy had not improved, people didn't spend more money during

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Speaker 1: the holiday shopping season, and so Congress past a resolution

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Speaker 1: making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday of the month. One of

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Speaker 1: the most famous paintings to celebrate Thanksgiving was Norman Rockwell's

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Speaker 1: Freedom from Want, which was the third of the four

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Speaker 1: Freedom series of oil paintings, which were inspired by Roosevelt's

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty one Steady Union address. Why do you think

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Speaker 1: that particular painting has had such longevity and what does

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Speaker 1: it tell us about American culture? Tells us a couple

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Speaker 1: of things. One is it tells us about the prosperity

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Speaker 1: of America. You look at that picture which shows people

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Speaker 1: around the Thanksgiving table and Grandma is presenting an enormous

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Speaker 1: turkey to the family. She's about to set it on

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Speaker 1: the table and Grandpa is going to carve it. The

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Speaker 1: American people were creative enough to create this vibrant economy

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Speaker 1: that would produced such a meal. And by the way,

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Speaker 1: when that picture was on display in the Soviet Union

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Speaker 1: in the fifties or sixties, people there thought it was

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Speaker 1: an exaggeration, that it was not possible to have a

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Speaker 1: meal like this, and that it was just American propaganda.

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Speaker 1: Another thing the painting tells us is it talks about

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Speaker 1: American togetherness, the importance of family, the fact that we

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Speaker 1: have this tradition that can trace its origins back almost

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Speaker 1: four hundred years. It's a statement about that. It's a

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Speaker 1: link to the past as well. There are two images

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Speaker 1: from the second half of the nineteenth century about Thanksgiving

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Speaker 1: that I think are just marvelous. One is a very

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Speaker 1: famous lithograph by Courier and Ives titled Home to Thanksgiving,

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Speaker 1: and it's a farm scene and it shows a family

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Speaker 1: arriving at the Farmhouse's a young family, and the grandmother

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Speaker 1: and the grandfather have come out to greet them at

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Speaker 1: someplace in New England unspecified, and there is so much

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Speaker 1: snow there, which is a hoot because in the middle

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Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century it was the end of the

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Speaker 1: Little Ice Age and there was so much more snow

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Speaker 1: on Thanksgiving than there typically is today. We still get

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Speaker 1: snow here in New England on Thanksgiving, but certainly not

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Speaker 1: every year. And this painting looks more like a New

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Speaker 1: England Christmas today than it does like a New England Thanksgiving.

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Speaker 1: The second piece of art that I think speaks volumes

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Speaker 1: about the meaning of Thanksgiving is a cartoon titled Uncle

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Speaker 1: Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner, and it was published in eighteen sixty nine,

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Speaker 1: and it shows Uncle Sam presiding over a large Thanksgiving table.

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Speaker 1: He's carving the turkey, and then you start looking at

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Speaker 1: the people around the table, and they're from all parts

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Speaker 1: of the world. There is a Native American wearing a feather,

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Speaker 1: there is a Spanish woman wearing a mantilla on her head,

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Speaker 1: a Muslim man with a fez on his head, an

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Speaker 1: African American grouping, and a Chinese man with a long

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Speaker 1: queue down his back and The idea of the cartoon

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Speaker 1: is that here we are all Americans having made it

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Speaker 1: to this country, and this is how we celebrate together.

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Speaker 1: This is an image of what the spirit of America is,

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Speaker 1: what the essence of America is. And the cartoonist, by

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Speaker 1: the way, was an immigrant from Germany. The cartoon also

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Speaker 1: carries a political message. There's a banner on one wall

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Speaker 1: that reads fifteenth Amendment and it hangs over the portrait

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Speaker 1: of President Grant and the cartoonist, Thomas Nast, was by

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Speaker 1: putting this in his cartoon, he was endorsing the ratification

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Speaker 1: of a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee the voting

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Speaker 1: rights of all Americans, regardless of race. Just as all

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Speaker 1: Americans have a right to sit at the Thanksgiving table,

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Speaker 1: Nast was trying to say, they also have a right

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Speaker 1: to share in the full benefits of being a citizen,

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Speaker 1: including voting. I was intrigued because you described teaching at

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Speaker 1: a recent immigrant high school where they all kind of

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Speaker 1: got it. What was that experience, like, Oh, this was

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Speaker 1: a wonderful experience for me. I went to Newcomer's High

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Speaker 1: School in Queens, New York, that is in New York

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Speaker 1: City and it's a high school for recent immigrants. The

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Speaker 1: day I was there to talk about Thanksgivings, there were

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Speaker 1: students from I think sixty countries, and they spoke dozens

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Speaker 1: of languages. They all were about to celebrate their first

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Speaker 1: or second Thanksgiving, and those kids had a better understanding

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Speaker 1: of the meaning of the holiday than some American kids

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Speaker 1: I think. For example, when we were discussing the holiday,

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Speaker 1: a boy from Tibet spoke up. Now, Tibet has not

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Speaker 1: existed as a country since nineteen fifty when China took

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Speaker 1: it over. He nonetheless talked about being from Tibet, where

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Speaker 1: he was not allowed to practice his religion, which was

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Speaker 1: the Buddhism of the Dalai Lama. So he said he

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Speaker 1: was like one of the pilgrims. He came to this

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Speaker 1: country seeking religious freedom. And then a girl spoke up,

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Speaker 1: and she was from Egypt. She was a copt which

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Speaker 1: is an ancient form of Christianity, and she said that

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Speaker 1: her family came to America too for freedom of religion.

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Speaker 1: Then some other kids started talking about how their families

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Speaker 1: came to America and the reasons that they came here.

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Speaker 1: One spoke about how the father of the family had

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Speaker 1: a better job here, and the family could live better

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Speaker 1: here and get better education. And this girl, too felt

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Speaker 1: a kinship with the Pilgrims for that reason. They were

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Speaker 1: all looking forward to their first Thanksgiving, and for them

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Speaker 1: it was a rite of passage in becoming an American

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Speaker 1: and in becoming embedded in their new culture. I think

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Speaker 1: that's true, though it has been true since the ways

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Speaker 1: of immigrants began coming here in the mid nineteenth century.

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Speaker 1: Did you point out in the very total of your

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Speaker 1: book Thanksgivings one of the things that makes us different,

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Speaker 1: and that there is kind of an American uniqueness the

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Speaker 1: Thanksgiving as a piece of that from your perspective, would

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Speaker 1: that be an accurate statement that you see Thanksgiving as

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Speaker 1: a distinct part of a tradition, so it's different from

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Speaker 1: what a lot of other people have. Oh. Absolutely. The

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Speaker 1: statement that I think describes Thanksgiving best of all is

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Speaker 1: won by the late historian Samuel Elliott Morrison, who in

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirties wrote that the Pilgrims are the spiritual ancestors

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Speaker 1: of all Americans, whatever their stock, race, or creed, And

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Speaker 1: that is a statement that should hold true today, but

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Speaker 1: is increasingly being questioned today as we become a lot

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Speaker 1: more divisive, and there's a greater focus on what divides

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Speaker 1: us rather than what unites us. Thanksgiving helps to bring

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Speaker 1: us together. Think about gratitude to God and or gratitude

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Speaker 1: if you don't. But it's also a patriotic holiday in

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Speaker 1: my view. It links us to our past in our

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Speaker 1: history where Thanksgiving played a role and every person has

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Speaker 1: a seat at the Thanksgiving table. It also suggests American generosity.

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Speaker 1: That's another aspect of our national character that helps define us.

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Speaker 1: I think American generosity is most evident around Thanksgiving. It's

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Speaker 1: become the beginning of the giving season. And it's not

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Speaker 1: just money, it's volunteerism. You think about the people who

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Speaker 1: volunteer on Thanksgiving Day or around Thanksgiving at homeless shelters

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Speaker 1: or elsewhere. Just about every American is included in the holiday,

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Speaker 1: whether they are soldiers stationed overseas, whether they're the homeless.

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Speaker 1: People look out for their fellow Americans on Thanksgiving. I

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Speaker 1: really appreciate you doing this. Well, thank you, and let

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Speaker 1: me be the first to wish you and Colosta happy Thanksgiving.

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Speaker 1: Oh well, thank you very much. Thank you. To my

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Speaker 1: guest Melanie Kirkpatrick, you can get a link to order

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Speaker 1: her book, Thanksgiving The Holiday at the Heart of the

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Speaker 1: American Experience on our show page at newtsworld dot com.

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Speaker 1: Newts World is produced by Gingwich Street sixty and iHeartMedia.

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Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Garnsey Sloan, our producer is Rebecca Howell,

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Speaker 1: and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the

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Speaker 1: show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the

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Speaker 1: team at Gingwidge three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld,

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Speaker 1: I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate

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00:29:36,160 --> 00:29:39,040
Speaker 1: us with five stars and give us a review so

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Speaker 1: others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners

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Speaker 1: of newts World can sign up from my three free

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Speaker 1: weekly columns at Gingwichtree sixty dot com slash newsletter I'm

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Speaker 1: newt Gangwish. This is Newtsworld four