Thanksgiving Carnival 1940

About this day of Thanksgiving (discovered on youtube)
In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that Thanksgiving would be the next-to-last Thursday of November rather than the last. With the country still in the midst of The Great Depression, Roosevelt thought this would give merchants a longer period to sell goods before Christmas. Increasing profits and spending during this period, Roosevelt hoped, would aid bringing the country out of the Depression. At the time, it was considered inappropriate to advertise goods for Christmas until after Thanksgiving. However, Roosevelt's declaration was not mandatory; twenty-three states went along with this recommendation, and 22 did not. Other states, like Texas, could not decide and took both weeks as government holidays. Roosevelt persisted in 1940 to celebrate his "Franksgiving," as it was termed. The U.S. Congress in 1941 split the difference and established that the Thanksgiving would occur annually on the fourth Thursday of November, which was sometimes the last Thursday and sometimes the next to last. On November 26 that year President Roosevelt signed this bill into U.S. law.

Since 1947, or possibly earlier, the National Turkey Federation has presented the President of the United States with one live turkey and two dressed turkeys. The live turkey is pardoned and lives out the rest of its days on a peaceful farm. While it is commonly held that this tradition began with Harry Truman in 1947, the Truman Library has been unable to find any evidence for this. Still others claim that that the tradition dates back to Abraham Lincoln pardoning his son's pet turkey. Both stories have been quoted in more recent presidential speeches.

In more recent years, two turkeys have been pardoned, in case the original turkey becomes unavailable for presidential pardoning. Since 2003 the public has been invited to vote for the two turkeys' names. In 2006, they were named Flyer and Fryer. In 2005, they were named Marshmallow and Yam (who went on to live at Disneyland); 2004's turkeys were named Biscuit and Gravy; in 2003, Stars and Stripes.

Since 1970, a group of Native Americans and others have held a controversial National Day of Mourning protest on Thanksgiving at Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Thanksgiving Carnival: Colonial Life

In the few days left before Thanksgiving I'll try to post some of my Thanksgiving resources. This comes from the 2004 PBS series. The site is still active and it has many good resources including panoramic movies

Give It Back To the Indians

I did this last year for colonial history of New York and for Columbus Day and never posted it. My how things have changed. Last year I was so pissed at A-Rod for his failures in the clutch (thus Give him back...) Now the guy is a champ.
Lyrics:
Old Peter Minuet had nothing to lose when he bought the isle of Manhattan
For twenty-six dollars and a bottle of booze and they threw in the Bronx and Staten
Pete thought that he had the best of the bargain but the poor red man just grinned,
And he grunted "ugh!" meaning okay in his jargon for he knew poor Pete was skinned.
We've tried to run the city....but the city ran away...
And now Peter Minuet We can't continue it...Broadway's turning into Coney,
Champagne Charlie's drinking gin, Old New York is new and phony
Give it back to the Indians! Two cents more to smoke a Lucky,
Dodging busses keep you thin,Now New York is simply ducky,
Give it back to the Indians! Take all the reds, on the boxes made for soap
Whites on Fifth Avenue Blues down in Wall Street losing hope..
Big bargain today...Chief take it away! Come you busted city slickers,
Better take it on the chin. Father Nick has lost his knickers Give it back to the Indians!
When I posted this (without the movie version) last year I didn't know that "reds" referred to communists speaking on soapboxes in the 1930's and whites referred to Klan members. Blue, of course, referred to Wall Street financiers