Greetings from the Great Bend Public Library! Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and as a reminder, the Great Bend Public Library will be closed on the 25th and 26th in observance of the holiday. I would like to wish everyone a happy and safe holiday whether you are celebrating at home or traveling to see friends or family. 

Since Thanksgiving is just around the corner, what a perfect time to talk about Thanksgiving traditions. The first Thanksgiving that we often think of when talking about the holiday conjures up images of big juicy turkeys, yams, pies, and a whole spread of traditional dishes. However, historians will tell you that is not likely to have been what was actually served. In fact, there are no records to support them eating turkey and it was more likely a Thanksgiving duck or goose, and they certainly weren’t stuffing them with bread crumbs. The colonists didn’t even have wheat. Potatoes were off the menu too, no mashed, baked, stewed, or sweet. The colonists didn’t have access to such crops yet.

Historical records do show that they ate a lot of pumpkin at the time as it was plentiful, but not in any kind of pie. Records from the time also indicate that the first Thanksgiving probably looked more like a seafood buffet, as that was a plentiful resource. So the first Thanksgiving was less turkey, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie and more lobster, eels, and cooked gourds. So next time you decide to go for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner skip the turkey, grab a goose and try the fish, and certainly no pumpkin pie.

So if what we eat today isn’t even close to what the colonists ate or even are foods they had access to, how did a traditional Thanksgiving become traditional? Well, the answer is more simple than you might think. Turkeys are big fat birds native to the United States and they are plentiful. Turkeys became popularized for the holiday because they had the capability of feeding a large number of people with just one bird. They were roaming most people’s land and they also set us apart from say the British, at a time when America was trying to capture its own identity.

As for other traditional foods, they were either developed from traditional dishes like the roasted pumpkins turning into pumpkin pie, and stuffing consisting of nuts and berries morphing into bread stuffing with nuts and seasoning, or likely were already popular dinner items we incorporated into our Thanksgiving feast – like mashed potatoes.

If we can take away anything from Thanksgiving history it’s that traditions develop and adapt over time. There’s no real “traditional meal” when it comes to your Thanksgiving table. Whatever you eat this year, I hope you have a wonderful holiday.

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Written by Hannah Grippin, Outreach Manager at the Great Bend Public Library.