\u2018Over the river, and through the wood, to Grandfather\u2019s house we go,\u201d says the 1844 Thanksgiving poem. These days, it\u2019s more often sung as \u201cGrandmother\u2019s house,\u201d and we\u2019re more likely to travel by 747 than by sleigh. Still, it\u2019s a familiar journey. Thanksgiving remains very much associated with grandparents. More than any other holiday on our national calendar, it\u2019s about honoring the family matriarch, patriarch and more distant ancestors.<\/p>\n
\n
Children may enjoy watching the Macy\u2019s parade or look forward to pumpkin pie. But Thanksgiving activities aren\u2019t centered on kids. There are no candies to collect, gifts to unwrap or eggs to hunt. There\u2019s no staying up past bedtime for fireworks or Santa or the ball-drop in Times Square.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve heard neighbors talk about \u201cgoing home\u201d for Thanksgiving but \u201cstaying home\u201d for Christmas. Even with the notoriously bad Thanksgiving traffic, people are willing to travel to their parents\u2019 or grandparents,\u2019 in deference to earlier generations. (It\u2019s become a choice time to bring home significant others for parental approval.) By contrast, with Christmas being so much about kids, parents or grandparents may more often be asked to travel to where their offspring live.<\/p>\n
The symbolism of Thanksgiving, too, distinguishes it as a holiday geared toward older relatives. Rather than a baby in a manger, or baby Cupids, or baby chicks, Thanksgiving prompts us to think about the Pilgrims. In many ways, the United States traces its beginnings to the settlers at Plymouth, the Mayflower Compact and of course the celebrated harvest Thanksgiving feast of 1621. We reserve the term \u201cFounding Fathers\u201d for the revolutionaries of 1776, but mythically, if not historically, we see the Pilgrims as our ancestors \u2014 the first generation of Anglo-America, progenitors of what would come later and what still flourishes today. On Thanksgiving, we look back to an imagined past in which America was conceived.<\/p>\n
[Keep reading. . .]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Folklorist Jack Santino observes that Thanksgiving is pretty much the only national holiday that hasn\u2019t shifted its focus to children.\u00a0 In fact, they are often shunted off to the \u201ckids\u2019 table.\u201d\u00a0 The emphasis instead is on grandparents, patriarchs and matriarchs, family traditions going back for generations, and blessings that adults are in the best position […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[2180],"class_list":["post-20253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holidays","tag-thanksgiving"],"yoast_head":"\n
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