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Name: Thanksgiving: The Biography of an American Holiday (Revisiting New England): Baker, James W., Gomes, Peter J.: 9781584658016: Amazon.com: Books
Price: 16.8 USD
Availability: LimitedAvailability
Rating: 4.2 (21 reviews)

James W. Baker

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Thanksgiving: The Biography of an American Holiday (Revisiting New England) Paperback – Illustrated, October 30, 2009

by James W. Baker (Author), Peter J. Gomes

21 ratings

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In this, the first in-depth study of the most American of holidays, James Baker sweeps away lingering myths and misconceptions to show how this celebration day was born and grew to be an essential part of our national spirit. Thanksgiving: The Biography of an American Holiday opens with an overview of the popular mythos of the holiday before discussing its possible religious and cultural precedents. This classic Yankee holiday is examined in historical and contemporary detail that embraces everything from proclamations, sermons, and local and regional traditions to family reunions, turkey dinners, and recipes. Thanksgiving's evolving face is illustrated with charming and often revealing period prints that chart our changing attitudes: the influence of Victorian sentiment in Thanksgiving's development, Progressive utilitarianism, intellectual "debunking," patriotic wartime reclamation, and 1960s-era protest. Thanksgiving remains controversial up to the present day, as Mayflower descendants, Native Americans, and commercial exploiters compete for the American public's opinion of the holiday's contemporary significance and its future status. This is an intelligent and illuminating introduction to a beloved holiday and a fascinating cultural history of America and Americana.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Baker has incorporated all the available research on Thanksgiving and enriched it with his unparalleled access to original sources as the former director of research at Plimoth Plantation. Most appealing about this book is that it has been produced by an expert on the topic, and one who is also a Plymouth, MA, native. He shows us how Thanksgiving is seen through each generation's reality, having morphed from a holiday for pilgrim hats and turkeys to a cause for Native American protests to a holy day to several ancient holidays combined and a full-scale orgy of food and football. Thanksgiving is not the holiday you think it is and will not be the holiday you know now in 100 years, but it can be whatever holiday you need. There is now a desire to make it an international holiday-Who knows? . . . . This is destined to become the accepted text for research on the history and myth of this most American holiday, and it will be an enjoyable, fascinating read both for students and for anyone looking for a good story."―Booklist

"For good or ill Americans have always considered themselves exceptional. This remarkable self image first appeared on a fall day in 1621 when the Pilgrims gathered 'so [that] we might after a special manner rejoice together' and reflect on the 'special providence' God had granted them. Their Native American guests watched bemused. Like 'Camelot' Baker writes 'there once was a time when with the best intentions, two very different cultures came together.' From that moment on Thanksgiving has become the most persistent, if not controversial, celebration in America. Perfectly historical (mythological?) and encrusted over the centuries in hyperbole and invention, it has nonetheless survived as one of the least pretentious of all our national holidays dedicated to simple fare and family gathering. No one but Jim Baker could unravel the true meaning of this holiday with such expertise and grace. By explaining 'Thanksgiving' Baker goes to heart of revealing American character."―William M. Fowler, Jr., Distinguished Professor of History, Northeastern University

Review

“For good or ill Americans have always considered themselves exceptional. This remarkable self image first appeared on a fall day in 1621 when the Pilgrims gathered ‘so [that] we might after a special manner rejoice together’ and reflect on the ‘special providence’ God had granted them. Their Native American guests watched bemused. Like ‘Camelot’ Baker writes ‘there once was a time when with the best intentions, two very different cultures came together.’ From that moment on Thanksgiving has become the most persistent, if not controversial, celebration in America. Perfectly historical (mythological?) and encrusted over the centuries in hyperbole and invention, it has nonetheless survived as one of the least pretentious of all our national holidays dedicated to simple fare and family gathering. No one but Jim Baker could unravel the true meaning of this holiday with such expertise and grace. By explaining ‘Thanksgiving’ Baker goes to heart of revealing American character."--William M. Fowler, Jr., Distinguished Professor of History, Northeastern University

"For anyone interested in New England and America and the lengths to which our collective fascination with the past influences what we do today, James Baker's Thanksgiving: The Biography of an American Holiday is a must read. Combining a lifetime of research with a wonderfully readable prose style, Baker has created a tour de force of historical and cultural analysis."--Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Mayflower

“The history of this quintessentially American holiday is both more complex and hotly disputed than most of us gathered around the Thanksgiving dinner table realize. James Baker convincingly argues that there is no direct line of descent from the Pilgrim harvest festival of 1621 to the modern American celebration. Instead, Baker leads us on a fascinating and circuitous route through Puritan days of fasting and thanksgiving and Yankee celebrations of Forefather’s Day right up to the American Indian Movement’s “Day of Mourning.” Little in the way of evidence escapes the eye of this keen cultural historian; he shows us early nineteenth-century recipes for turkey and all the appropriate fixings; the first (though surprising late) visual images of the Pilgrim Fathers and their Native guests; classroom efforts to Americanize recent immigrants through pageants and the ubiquitous cut-out paper decorations; and the floats of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Baker serves up an appropriately rich feast for the occasion.”--John W. Tyler, Editor of Publications, The Colonial Society of Massachusetts

About the Author

JAMES W. BAKER was the director of research at Plimoth Plantation for many years and has acted as an authority for numerous Thanksgiving Day exhibits, articles, newscasts, and children's books.

From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by by Alexander Nazaryan Even in these deeply partisan times, Thanksgiving remains beloved across political and ethnic divides. In its current incarnation, the holiday calls for little more than gathering with family and eating to excess. What creed or culture will frown at that? James Baker, a former researcher at Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts, does not wag a scholar's dour finger at what has become a turkey-and-football jamboree. But in his comprehensive and readable history of the holiday, he does remind us that Thanksgiving is more than those "ubiquitous, mass-produced images of buckle-hatted Pilgrims, generic Indians, turkeys, pumpkins, and cornstalks." For the Puritans aboard the Mayflower, Thanksgiving was a religious service to acknowledge God's providence. Its focus was prayer, not festivity. And while the Massachusetts Pilgrims did celebrate a harvest holiday in fall 1621 with friendly Wampanoags, Baker argues that this landmark event "meets none of the qualifications for an orthodox Thanksgiving." But as the country grew, so did its need for a national mythology. With the "Yankee diaspora" fanning out from New England, Thanksgiving shed its origins in religious ritual and became conflated with the "narrative of courage, suffering, and perseverance" that had marked the first harvest in the New World and now infused the westward push of Manifest Destiny. Toward the end of the 19th century, with railroads crisscrossing the nation and factories dotting its landscape, Thanksgiving attained a sentimental image promulgated by popular entertainments like the pastoral prints of Currier & Ives. For those stuck in cities and displaced from families, such rustic reveries represented "the virtues many citizens felt had been lost in the industrialization and modernization of American culture." Idealized -- and inaccurate -- images of the first Thanksgiving continued to reinforce traditional values in an increasingly fragmented society. "Thanksgiving to me means Obeying," schoolchildren recited in 1937. Two decades later, the Cold War further subjugated Thanksgiving to a "streamlined version of American history that had all the corners rounded off." Those corners sharpened again in the 1960s. Native Americans arrived in Plymouth for the 1969 holiday to defiantly declare that "Indians have nothing to be thankful for." Revisionist historians berated Puritans for "rigid fundamentalism," while other states -- Virginia, Florida, even Texas -- made competing claims on the original thanksgiving service. Baker acknowledges Native American grievances and sorts assiduously through the erroneous depictions of this "enthusiastically muddled" holiday: Pilgrims did not adorn themselves with buckle hats and ruffled collars, the Wampanoag bore little resemblance to the Plains Indians they are usually depicted as, and log cabins did not exist in Colonial New England. And still Thanksgiving evolves, absorbing the myriad cultures of our patchwork land. Some years ago USA Today suggested a dizzying Thanksgiving feast that included Chinese sweet potato-coconut puree, Cuban corn stew, Jamaican chutney and turkey basted in Mexican molé. Christmas has nothing on that. bookworld@washpost.com
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1584658010
Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of New Hampshire Press; First Edition (October 30, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781584658016
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1584658016
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.8 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #733,508 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #85 in Holidays (Books)
- #911 in England History
- #19,200 in United States History (Books)

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L. M Young
Thanksgiving Through The Years
Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2011
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Your typical Thanksgiving book for adults is a cookbook, whether of traditional foods or new twists, like using other ethnic foods for "spice." The book may also have tips on decorating: "tablescaping" and other ideas of how to set a pretty table. Let's say I hate cookbooks, unless they have something historical to offer, like THE LITTLE HOUSE COOKBOOK. Very few adult books ever talk about the holiday itself or its history. Those are mostly reserved for children, and run the gamut from the old "Pilgrims and the Indians" story—even though we have known for years now that most of our stories about "the first Thanksgiving" are myths created after the fact, many people still think that Pilgrims wore black and had hats and boots with buckles, that the feast they celebrated in 1621 was a "Thanksgiving," etc.—to stories about being generous and giving thanks. Baker's BIOGRAPHY is a very readable companion piece to Diana Appelbaum's THANKSGIVING, but is an easier read without being simplistic. It also touches more on things like images, writings, and films about Thanksgiving, changes in menus in the intervening years, and parades and football games. The one thing that this book makes very clear is that the now "iconic" AUTUMN Thanksgiving imagery of Pilgrims and Indians only became emphasized at the very end of the 19th century and during the early decades of the 20th, back when the United States became flooded with non-English speaking immigrants whom the schools wished to impress upon some idea of the country's heritage. Previous to that it was simply a WINTER New England holiday which spread as New England residents moved westward, and involved reunions with family and friends. Even fictional short stories about Thanksgiving mostly emphasized reunions between estranged or long-parted relatives; Pilgrims and Indians were rarely to never mentioned.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to read more about the history of the Thanksgiving holiday and its changing face over four centuries.

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Liz
Interesting read…
Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2024
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This was an interesting book for anyone wondering about the true origins of and traditions surrounding Thanksgiving.

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Amazon Customer
I'm glad that I bought the book
Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2015
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I bought the book to give to a friend when I visit her on Thanksgiving; that is her favorite holiday, and I thought that she would like to know more about it. I knew that the book existed, but never got around to buying it until now. I have begun it and plan to finish it before I have to turn it over. So far, it has quite exceeded my expectations and makes me want to learn even more about colonial and 19th-century American history.

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4 people found this helpful

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richard t brooks
so so ok
Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2022
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book ok but their's words outlined and cycled and markings on the pages as well...i'll keep it any way ..but thanks......

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Historyprof
The beginning is really good . . .
Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2012
I haven't yet finished this book, but so far I really like it. The use of primary sources is excellent. The frustrating part is that the endnotes aren't hyperlinked within the Kindle text, and no true index is given to find the endnotes.

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5 people found this helpful

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lomowen
Bliss Trading
Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2017
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Book wasn't new as described. Do not purchase from Bliss Trading.

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3 people found this helpful

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5.0 out of 5 stars Thanksgiving Through The Years

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting read…

5.0 out of 5 stars I'm glad that I bought the book

3.0 out of 5 stars so so ok

5.0 out of 5 stars The beginning is really good . . .

1.0 out of 5 stars Bliss Trading

Thanksgiving Through The Years

Interesting read…

I'm glad that I bought the book

so so ok

The beginning is really good . . .

Bliss Trading