Millions of Americans gather every year in the spirit of the first Pilgrims to celebrate family and togetherness. Since William Bradford gave an account of the First Thanksgiving in “Of Plymouth Plantation,” other writers have also put pen to paper to describe more recent versions of this holiday, real or imagined. Less, however, than you might think.
Louisa May Alcott
The most notable case is probably Louisa May Alcott’s short story “An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving.” It might also be the best Thanksgiving story in which cooking is the main plotline.
The Bassetts, a New Hampshire family, are “poor in money, but rich in land and love.” While preparing a Thanksgiving feast, Mrs. Bassett is called away to look after her sick mother, leaving her eldest daughter, Tilly, in charge.
Tilly takes to her new role with gusto, but a series of mishaps ensue as the inexperienced children bungle the recipes. While her brothers ruin their appetites on “doughnuts and cheese,” Tilly’s younger sister Prue accidentally mixes catnip and wormwood into the stuffing. Tilly observes, “It doesn’t smell just right, but I suppose it will when it is cooked.”
When Mrs. Bassett returns with other family members in tow, they all laugh at the meal’s shortcomings, despite “choking” over the stuffing and tasting pudding “as hard and heavy as one of the stone balls on Squire Dunkin’s great gate.”
They finish the evening with “apples and cider, chat and singing,” and the guests all go on their merry way.
3 Poets on Thanksgiving Themes
If we move beyond a strict definition of Thanksgiving literature in terms of subject matter and think instead about what the holiday symbolizes, we'll find a wider selection of authors to draw upon. Gratitude, generosity, and togetherness are themes found in much of world literature.Homer
Homer may seem an odd choice, since the ancient Greeks didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. But there are many parallels to modern life in his lines.Greetings, stranger! Here in our house you'll find a royal welcome. Have supper first, then tell us what you need. (trans. Robert Fagles)
After Telemachus escorts Athena to a place of honor, his servants bring her “bread,” “appetizers aplenty,” “platters of meat,” and “golden cups” of wine. The Greeks’ lavish hospitality and affinity for public dining might be seen as a precursor to our holiday.John Keats
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel ...
Robert Frost
Frost is beloved for his depictions of American rural life. Much of his poetry reverberates with themes of the harvest and thanksgiving (in the broader sense of that term).
In “The Death of the Hired Man,” we encounter the lines: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.”
Echoing Homer, we can see that hospitality is just as important now as it was in the time of Odysseus. However, taking advantage of this custom today is unlikely to start a blood feud.
For I have had too much Of apple-picking: I am overtired Of the great harvest I myself desired. There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
Beyond the obvious references to the harvest, one could draw more symbolic analogies to Thanksgiving here. In these lines, and the narrator feeling a need for rest coming on at the end, I’m reminded of the surfeit one feels after emptying the dinner table, and the abundance of tryptophan in turkey that makes many of us want to take a nap.
In celebrating community and nature, Thanksgiving-themed literature invites us all to reflect on the power of gratitude and the simple joys of the season.
