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 | HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! IN THE MELTING POT... A FORUM WITH ANTHROPOLOGIST SIDNEY MINTZ |
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Join us for a forum on foods and traditions with Dr. Sidney Mintz, a noted anthropologist from Johns Hopkins.
What kind of wine goes with turkey?
Wine tips from one of our staff.
OUTSIDE LINKS (History and Fun...)The First Thanksgiving Proclamation
The Smithsonian American Indian Museum
Jamestown, Virginia Archeological site-- they've found the fort!
George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation
Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving Address
FOOD FOR THOUGHT In an age of dissolving social structures, psychologists and other experts say sustaining old traditions and inventing new ones can be a holiday tonic. ''Traditions are an anchor point in a chaotic world,'' according to one expert, and "Thanksgiving is like a fingerprint, " says another.
According to Dr. Sidney Mintz of Johns Hopkins University, the Thanksgiving meal "reawakens our attachment" to our early homes, and helps "define our cultural identity."
An anthropologist, Dr. Mintz says the Thanksgiving meal is more than nourishment, it provides cultural definition with its "foods of distinction, flags we raise to say who we are."
SUSTAINING OLD TRADITIONS... But who are we? We're regional, we're ethnic. Some of us are vegetarian, some of us are libertarian. Accomplished food writer Joan Nathan has described a few vivid examples of the melting pot Thanksgiving Day meal that gives form to what an eclectic nation we really are.
Of an Italian American from Providence, R.I., Nathan quotes: "At my grandmother's, the Italian part of Thanksgiving was enough for a whole meal.
Of a Lebanese-American family Nathan quotes, "At Thanksgiving, we ate hummus, stuffed squash, stuffed grape leaves, an okra-and-lamb dish served over rice, and always turkey."
Nathan also singles out a Chinese-American variation on the turkey itself,
created by Susanna Foo, a Philadelphia restaurateur and author of "Chinese Cuisine" (Chapters, 1995) Foo's Chinese Turkey With Eight-Treasure Stuffing, adapted from her book seems like an fascinating blend of the "old and the new".
WHAT OUR TRADITIONS AND FOODS SAY ABOUT AMERICA
The Online NewsHour welcomes Dr. Sidney Mintz, an noted cultural anthropologist recently honored by the National Association of Anthropologists.
Is our Thanksgiving celebration original, or does it have roots in ancient customs?
Professor Sidney Mintz responds:
I don't know if Thanksgiving can be said to have roots in ancient customs, other than its being a giving of thanks to a higher being for the gift of life, celebrated by the ritual eating of food -- which is certainly a common, if not universal, form of celebration.
Is there any religious symbolism behind the foods we eat? Do turkey or corn or cranberries stand for anything "special" and what are the roots of the symbols, if they do?
Professor Sidney Mintz responds:
The traditional foods of Thanksgiving were foods associated with the New World, rather than with the place of origin of the celebrants. They were, that is, foods people learned to eat or to prepare in their new home, and in association with the inhabitants of the land to which they -- and not those inhabitants -- were new.
Of these, maize was certainly most important -- the staff of life not only of the Eastern woodlands, but also of a vast area of what is today the eastern U.S., as well as of much of the land to the south, and extending as far south, for example, as the Inca Empire. It was their being INDIGENOUS foods that lent these things their special meaning.
What are the social politics behind the foods we eat on Thanksgiving? Are whole industries affected by our food choices?
Professor Sidney Mintz responds:
"Social politics" is a term unknown to me. American food habits are shaped and satisfied in good measure by an enormous industry. Turkeys, for example, became THE food for Thanksgiving for millions of people, who learned to forgo their traditional food choices to become American by eating turkey at Thanksgiving.
But because turkey has turned out to be an economical food choice, particularly as people have become more nervous about red meat, it has successfully moved from being mainly a holiday food into the substitute meat category, as well. Such shifts are not CREATED by the food industry, of course. But advertising, time pressure, shelf life, and conceptions of choice and of freedom all help to guide and to mould the ways we perceive what we eat, and what we should eat.
On a larger canvas, American food habits have been shaped by such large forces as war -- I discuss this at length in my book "Tasting Food Tasting Freedom" (Beacon 1996), and won't go over that ground here -- and demography. The movement of Asian and Latin American populations into the U.S. in recent decades have introduced new choices, and have led to some shift in them, particularly in eating-out choices.
Do we really maintain deeper values, or have holidays become just another way to indulge, and take a day off from work or school? And who do we celebrate with? The traditional nuclear family, or a variation on the theme?
Professor Sidney Mintz responds:
Commercialism has not eliminated the celebration of "deeper values," but has rather affected the ways that they are celebrated. Fans feel deeply, for example, about pro athletic teams -- when the Colts left Baltimore, and when the Browns left Cleveland, fans were profoundly upset and angry. But these changes were purely commercial in nature; they were carried out by owners for profit. Fans can only protest by giving up their fun -- which few are prepared to do. They continue to be angry -- but also to attend and to emote; they identify with "their" teams, who do not belong to them, but whose members and managements collude in creating that illusion -- it sure pays.
Food's different, of course; but there, too, commercialism does not terminate or eliminate "deeper values." Food in celebration is always food in celebration with emotionally significant others. They're usually family; but needn't be.
The commonly great geographical distance that separates grandparents and grandchildren in American life is probably the single most important general change within the family structure itself. It makes occasions like Thanksgiving dinner even more important than otherwise, but also usually means that the relationships between grandparents and grandchildren are occasional rather than ongoing. This is a BIG difference when compared, say, to Europe, and especially rural Europe.
Why is it at holidays that traditional gender roles seem so entrenched?
Professor Sidney Mintz responds:
Traditional gender roles are no more entrenched at Thanksgiving, I suspect, than at other times. It's really little more than that women usually cook, and holidays are cooking times, isn't it? That entertainment has now become looking at television (especially sports) is chronic for our leisure experience -- men become dormant after they eat, and "watch football." Women -- as usual -- "clean up."
What is also traditional is the food. We do as we do because thus was it done when WE were little kids. Doing it that way says who we are to each other, as it did before. We assert our collective identity by asserting our collective identity! It sounds circular -- it IS circular. But it means something. Eating familiar foods in a traditional way means that the world is still the same world -- or so we hope.
Holidays, like life-crisis celebrations -- birth, confirmation, circumcision, death -- remind us that there is eternal life because though we die, others live after. The meaning in life is restored and validated by continuity.
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