HIST 3773 Chapter Thanksgiving: Thanksgiving reading notes

• School: Fordham University
• Department: History
• Course: HIST 3773
• Professor: Samantha Iyer

Document Summary

"modern celebration of thanksgiving day is a ritual affirmation of what americans believe was the pilgrim experience, the particularly american experience of confronting, settling, adapting to, and civilizing the new world" (robertson, 1980: 15). For the great majority of americans, of course, their relation to these pilgrims is neither biological nor cultural, neither ethnic nor religious. Thanksgiving is a time to establish, affirm and believe that this is their culture history. In anthony wallace"s sense that the goal of ritual is a transformation of state to some desired end (wallace, 1966), participation in this ritual transforms a collection of immigrants into americans by connecting them to a cultural history stretching back to the "founding" of the country. Two of the early thanksgivings celebrated victories over native americans. The co-occurrence of wild and domesticated birds makes a perfect metaphor for. Like the turkey, indians were either wild or domesticated.