Verified Document

Culture And Thanksgiving Day And Beyond Annotated Bibliography

Thanksgiving Cultural Implications of Thanksgiving, Then and Now

How did the first Thanksgiving affect the culture of the time and also how does it affect our culture today?

The first Thanksgiving Day celebrations were not necessarily held on the same day of each year. Rather they were proclaimed by various ministers and governors to celebrate specific events that might include items such as a particularly good harvest or some sort of military victory (Smith, 2003). However, the first pilgrims' also understood that they needed to increase their population in order to survive in the new world and they must increase the immigration trend to the new land. It was this understanding that lead to the first dramatizations of the Thanksgiving holiday. During this period, the tales of feast were meant to make the promise of this new world more appealing to those who were considering migrating from the fear of religious persecution among other reasons.

Currently, Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday that is celebrated on the U.S. On the fourth Thursday in November of each year. Although the first Thanksgiving were actually an elaborate and expensive ritual that represented a time of abundance in regards to resources, they bear little resemblance to the stories that...

(Wallendorf & Arnould, 1991). The only commonalities that exist are the fact that these festivals represented a ritual in which one would feast on these material abundances in celebration. However, the stories in the modern culture that perpetuate about the original Thanksgiving are dramatically exaggerated and heavily commercialized to fit the modern day paradigm of material consumption in the "Holiday Season" that represents a major component of the modern day American economy.
However, the concept of the holiday has undergone a long evolution throughout the course of history before today's notion of the holiday became perpetuated. The great expansion of the culture of consumption in the last decades of the nineteenth century helped shift this basic socioeconomic perspective of the Thanksgiving holiday; holidays were originally thought to be more of an impediment to industrial production, holidays were found, on the flip side, to have all kinds of possibilities when it came to consumption (Schmidt, 1991). Working conditions were harsh in the early industrial period and the owners of capital would push their employees to their maximum capacities which did not include any time off for holidays or festivals.

Yet it was during this period that the early…

Sources used in this document:
Works Cited

Schmidt, L. (1991). The Commercialization of the Calendar: American Holidays and the Culture of Consumption,. The Journal of American History, 887-916.

Siskind, J. (1992). The Invention of Thanksgiving: A ritual of American nationality. Critique of Anthropology, 167-191.

Smith, A. (2003). The First Thanksgiving. Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, 79-85.

Wallendorf, M., & Arnould, E. (1991). "We Gather Together": Consumption Rituals of Thanksgiving Day. Journal of Consumer Research, 13-31.
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Diversity There Is a High Degree of
Words: 1308 Length: 5 Document Type: Essay

Diversity There is a high degree of cultural diversity within the Miami-Dade Public School System. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2010), the county has 73.8% white, 18.9% black, with other groups making up the rest. Within these categories, there is significant diversity. For example, 65% of the population reported Hispanic or Latino origin. Of the white population, only 15.4% reported being non-Hispanic. A full 71.9% of people spoke a language

Jesus' Teachings, Prayer, & Christian Life He
Words: 35411 Length: 109 Document Type: Dissertation

Jesus' Teachings, Prayer, & Christian Life "He (Jesus) Took the Bread. Giving Thanks Broke it. And gave it to his Disciples, saying, 'This is my Body, which is given to you.'" At Elevation time, during Catholic Mass, the priest establishes a mandate for Christian Living. Historically, at the Last Supper, Christ used bread and wine as a supreme metaphor for the rest of our lives. Jesus was in turmoil. He was

Mcdonald's Corporation
Words: 13617 Length: 30 Document Type: Term Paper

McDonald's Corporation This is an attempt to study the history and development of one of the great institutions of United States and a part of the images of the country that has spread in the whole world. As is well-known, the dominance of the world by United States came after the Second World War when the traditional leaders of United Kingdom and Germany lost their predominant positions due to the destructions

Why Did the Dot Com Industry Crashed After the Boom
Words: 11033 Length: 40 Document Type: Term Paper

Com industry crash after the boom This is a paper examining some of the factors that caused the dot-com crash Many believe the root cause of the dot-com crash was over valuation of stock prices relative to the actual underlying value of the companies themselves. Stocks of Internet companies traded at Price-Earning ratios of higher then 30, buoyed by a speculative bubble. When reality set in for investors many realized that

Educational Scenario
Words: 1411 Length: 5 Document Type: Essay

Education Scenario Response from District Superintendent Bill James How did the parents' letter make you feel? Be candid in your response. How did I feel when reading this belligerent letter? My first impression after reading half way through the letter was, here is a member of (or an ideological believer in) the Tea Party and the school's multicultural programs give him a perfect opportunity to rage against immigration. Reading all the way through,

Traditional Se Asian Bamboo Flutes:
Words: 28549 Length: 95 Document Type: Dissertation

Some Chinese researchers assert that Chinese flutes may have evolved from of Indian provenance. In fact, the kind of side-blown, or transverse, flutes musicians play in Southeast Asia have also been discovered in Africa, India, Saudi Arabia, and Central Asia, as well as throughout the Europe of the Roman Empire. This suggests that rather than originating in China or even in India, the transverse flute might have been adopted through the

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now