History and Origins of Thanksgiving Day

History and Origins of Thanksgiving Day Almost every culture in the world has celebrations of thanks for a plentiful harvest. The legend of the American Thanksgiving holiday is said to have been based on a feast of thanksgiving in the early days of the American colonies almost four hundred years ago. The tale as it is told in grade schools is a legend, a mythologized version that downplays some of the bleaker history of how Thanksgiving became an American national holiday. The Legend of the First Thanksgiving In 1620, the legend goes, a boat filled with more than one hundred people sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to settle in the New World. This religious group had begun to question the beliefs of the Church of England and they wanted to separate from it. The Pilgrims settled in what is now the state of Massachusetts. Their first winter in the New World was difficult. They had arrived too late to grow many crops, and without fresh food, half the colony died from disease. The following spring, the Wampanoag Iroquois Indians taught them how to grow corn (maize), a new food for the colonists. They showed them other crops to grow in the unfamiliar soil and how to hunt and fish. In the autumn of 1621, bountiful crops of corn, barley, beans, and pumpkins were harvested. The colonists had much to be thankful for, so a feast was planned. They invited the local Iroquois chief and 90 members of his tribe. The Native Americans brought deer to roast with the turkeys and other wild game offered by the colonists. The colonists learned how to cook cranberries and different kinds of corn and squash dishes from the Indians. In following years, many of the original colonists celebrated the autumn harvest with a feast of thanks. A Harsher Reality However, in fact, the Pilgrims werent the first immigrants to celebrate a day of thanksgiving- that probably belongs to the Popham colony of Maine, who celebrated the day of their arrival in 1607. And the Pilgrims didnt celebrate every year afterward. They did celebrate the arrival of supplies and friends from Europe in 1630; and in 1637 and 1676, the Pilgrims celebrated the defeats of the Wampanoag neighbors. The celebration in 1676 was memorable because, at the end of the feast, the rangers sent to defeat the Wampanoag brought back the head of their leader Metacom, who was known by his adopted English name King Philip, on a pike, where it was kept on display in the colony for 20 years. The holiday continued as a tradition in New England, however, celebrated not with a feast and family, but rather with rowdy drunken men who went door to door begging for treats. Thats how many of the original American holidays were celebrated: Christmas, New Years Eve and Day, Washingtons birthday, the 4th of July. Historians believe that there are two connections between the festival held in Plymouth colony and what we celebrate today. Those are a collective and cleaned-up national memory, which arose in the 18th century after the Revolutionary War established a new nation; and in the mid-19th century when that nation came perilously close to breaking, an editor provided a weary Abraham Lincoln an idea to attempt to unify that nation. A New Nations Celebration By the mid-18th century, the rowdy behavior had become a carnivalesque misrule that was closer to what we think of as Halloween or Mardi Gras today. An established mummers parade made up of cross-dressing men, known as the Fantasticals, began by the 1780s: it was considered a more acceptable behavior than the drunken rowdiness. It could be said that these two institutions are still part of Thanksgiving Day celebrations: rowdy men (Thanksgiving Day football games, established in 1876), and elaborate mummer parades (Macys Parade, established in 1924). After the United States became an independent country, Congress recommended one yearly day of thanksgiving for the whole nation to celebrate. In 1789, George Washington suggested the date November 26 as Thanksgiving Day. Later presidents were not so supportive: for example, Thomas Jefferson thought that for the government to proclaim a quasi-religious holiday was a violation of the separation of church and state. Before Lincoln, only two other presidents proclaimed a Thanksgiving Day: John Adams and James Madison. Inventing Thanksgiving In 1846, Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godeys magazine, published the first of many editorials encouraging the celebration of the Great American Festival. She hoped it would be a unifying holiday that would help avert a civil war. In 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln asked all Americans to set aside the last Thursday in November as a day of thanksgiving. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved... The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies... No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Highest God... It has seemed to me fit and proper that these gifts should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people; I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea, and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and a Prayer to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.  (Abraham Lincoln, October 3,1863) Symbols of Thanksgiving The Thanksgiving Day of Hale and Lincoln was a domestic event, a day of family homecoming, a mythical and nostalgic idea of the hospitality, civility and happiness of the American family. The purpose of the festival was no longer a communal celebration, but rather a domestic event, carving out a sense of national identity and welcoming home family members. Homey domestic symbols traditionally served at Thanksgiving festivals include: Turkey, corn (or maize), pumpkins and cranberry sauce are symbols which represent the first Thanksgiving. These symbols are frequently seen on holiday decorations and greeting cards.The use of corn meant the survival of the colonies. Indian corn as a table or door decoration represents the harvest and the fall season.Sweet-sour cranberry sauce, or cranberry jelly, was on  the first Thanksgiving  table and is still served today. The cranberry is a small, sour berry. It grows in bogs, or muddy areas, in Massachusetts and other New England states.The Native Americans used the fruit to treat infections. They used the juice to dye their rugs and blankets. They taught the colonists how to cook the berries with sweetener and water to make a sauce. The Indians called it ibimi which means bitter berry. When the colonists saw it, they named it crane-berry because the  flowers  of the berry bent the stalk over, and it resembled the long-necked bird called a crane.The berries are still g rown in New England. Very few people know, however, that before the berries are put in bags to be sent to the rest of the country, each individual berry must bounce at least four inches high to make sure they are not too ripe! Native Americans and Thanksgiving In 1988, a Thanksgiving ceremony of a different kind took place at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. More than four thousand people gathered on Thanksgiving night. Among them were Native Americans representing tribes from all over the country and descendants of people whose ancestors had migrated to the New World. The ceremony was a public acknowledgment of the Indians role in the first Thanksgiving 350 years ago. Until recently most schoolchildren believed that the Pilgrims cooked the entire Thanksgiving feast, and offered it to the Indians. In fact, the feast was planned to thank the Indians for teaching them how to cook those foods. Without the Indians, the first settlers would not have survived: and, furthermore, the Pilgrims and the rest of European America have done their level best to eradicate what were our neighbors. We celebrate Thanksgiving along with the rest of America, maybe in different ways and for different reasons. Despite everything thats happened to us since we fed the Pilgrims, we still have our language, our culture, our distinct social system. Even in a nuclear age, we still have a tribal people.  -Wilma Mankiller, Principal chief of the Cherokee nation. Updated by Kris Bales Sources Adamczyk, Amy. On Thanksgiving and Collective Memory: Constructing the American Tradition. Journal of Historical Sociology 15.3 (2002): 343–65. Print.Lincoln, Abraham. A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America. Harper’s Weekly October 17 1863. History Now, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.Pleck, Elizabeth. The Making of the Domestic Occasion: The History of Thanksgiving in the United States. Journal of Social History 32.4 (1999): 773–89. Print.Siskind, Janet. The Invention of Thanksgiving: A Ritual of American Nationality. Critique of Anthropology 12.2 (1992): 167–91. Print.Smith, Andrew F. The First Thanksgiving. Gastronomica 3.4 (2003): 79–85. Print.

Discover Ideas Through Brainstorming

Discover Ideas Through Brainstorming In composition, brainstorming is an invention and discovery strategy in which the writer collaborates with others to explore topics, develop ideas, and/or propose solutions to a problem.  Business Dictionary  says that brainstorming is the process for generating creative ideas and solutions through intensive and freewheeling group discussion. Every participant is encouraged to think aloud and suggest as many ideas as possible, no matter how seemingly outlandish or bizarre. The purpose of a brainstorming session is to work as a group to define a problem and find a plan of action to solve it. In writing, brainstorming aims not just to think of topics to write about but to allow a group to problem-solve when a writer in the group is, essentially, suffering from writers block. Theory and Rules of Brainstorming Alex Osborn, an early proponent of brainstorming, explained the process in his 1953 book Applied Imagination: Principles and Practices of Creative Thinking as a stop-and-go, catch-as-catch-can operation- one which can never be exact enough to rate as scientific. The process, he said, includes some or all of these phases: Orientation: pointing up the problemPreparation: gathering pertinent dataAnalysis: breaking down the relevant materialHypothesis: piling up alternatives by way of ideasIncubation: letting up, to invite illuminationSynthesis: putting the pieces togetherVerification: judging the resultant ideas Osborne established four basic rules for brainstorming: Criticism is ruled out.  Adverse  judgment of ideas must  be withheld until later.Freewheeling is encouraged. The wilder the idea, the better.Quantity is the goal. The greater the number of ideas, the more likely it is that useful ideas will result.Combination and improvement are sought. In addition to contributing ideas of their own, participants should suggest how ideas of others can be turned into better ideas or how two or more ideas can be joined into still another idea. Analysis, discussion, or criticism of the aired ideas is allowed only when the brainstorming session is over and evaluation session begins. Whether in a   classroom, business meeting, or composition brainstorming session, you seek ideas- no matter how wild. Only after the brainstorming session is over, or perhaps at the end of it, do you start to cull the good (and workable) ideas from the bad. Brainstorming Strategies Brainstorming strategies are many and varied, but they can be grouped into the following basic areas, as described by  The Writing Center  at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: Cubing:  This strategy enables you to consider your topic from six different directions, just as in a cube, which is six-sided. In cubing, you take an idea and describe it, compare it, associate it, analyze it, apply it, and argue for and against it.Freewriting:  When you freewrite, you let your thoughts flow freely, putting pen to paper (or dry erase pen on a whiteboard) and writing down whatever comes to your mind, or to the group members  minds.Listing: In this technique, also called bulleting, you jot down lists of words or phrases under a particular topic.Mapping: With mapping, you list a lot of different terms and phrases that jut out from the main topic. This method is also called webbing because you end up with something that looks like a spider web with your brainstormed ideas branching out from the main topic in the center.Researching: Also called the journalistic method, with this technique, you use the â€Å"big six† questions that journalists rely on to rese arch a story: who, what, when, where, why, and how. You and your group then take a few minutes to research the answers to these questions if needed or simply discuss the answers if group members know the information.   Methods and Observations Some theorists say that brainstorming does not work. Debate and criticism, far from impeding the search for ideas or efforts to solve a problem, actually stimulate discussion and problem-solving, says Jonah Lehrer, in a 2012 article Groupthink: The Brainstorming Myth published in the New Yorker. Lehrer notes: Dissent stimulates new ideas because it encourages us to engage more fully with the work of others and to reassess our viewpoints. But thats where the teacher or facilitator plays an important role. While she doesnt criticize ideas, and discourages others from doing so, the teacher or facilitator  does  prompt and probe, as Dana Ferris and John Hedgcock write in their book, Teaching ESL Composition: Purpose, Process. The facilitator asks questions such as What do you mean? Can you give an example? or How are these ideas related?- recording these ideas on the board, an overhead transparency, or an electronic display. Far from sitting back and simply writing thin, feel-good ideas on the board or paper, the facilitator nudges participants to think about and enhance their thoughts so that they will be more useful. Its also important to note that brainstorming is just a first step in generating an interesting and well-thought-out essay, with ideas that go beyond the superficial, says Irene L. Clark in Concepts in Composition: Theory and Practice in the Teaching of Writing. Clark says that a useful invention strategy that follows brainstorming and precedes the drafting of an essay is the points-to-make list, which enables a writer to sort and narrow ideas.   Although different writers do this in individual ways, most good writers will take time to write down, examine, and revise their ideas in an informal list that is not as rigid as an outline. So think of brainstorming as a first step to help get your creative juices flowing, either on your own or preferably with the help of a group of collaborators. Then revise the ideas from a list or web to create an outline for a powerful and well-thought-out paper.