Thanksgiving is a holiday celebrated in many countries around the world. In the United States, this holiday is celebrated at a certain time every year- the third Thursday of every November. In today's United States society, Thanksgiving is viewed as a day to give thanks for what you have, celebrate traditional family rituals, and eat A LOT OF FOOOOOOODDD!!!!!
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This is an example of a typical United States Thanksgiving dinner. The main dish is usually a meat product, in this case we see turkey. Turkey is the most common meat to eat during the Thanksgiving holiday but there are other options for those who don't eat Turkey, such as Tofurky (a log of meat made of soy product), ham, chicken, or turdunkin (a chicken within a duck within a turkey). While the turkey is the common denominator in most Thanksgiving dinners, side dishes may vary by family. Examples of side dishes could be cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes and gravy, yams, stuffing, corn, green peas, pickles, olives, deviled eggs, pumpkin pie, and bread rolls. People usually experience regional or ethnic identities by the side dishes.
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These above pictures depict what most United States citizens consider as gender roles during the holiday. The top picture shows a group of the female gender wearing clothing covers called "aprons". These are used to keep the clothes underneath clean. What we can surmise from this picture is that these women are in the kitchen (the place where food preparation and cooking happens in a dwelling of the United States), all cooking the Thanksgiving meal together. There are young and older women. The cooking of the Thanksgiving dinner is a wonderful ritual in which the elders hand down very specific cooking knowledge to the youngers. The hope, of course, is that one day the youngers will host their own Thanksgiving dinner with their own friends and family.
As you can see in the other picture, the men are sitting around a device called a television. A television is a device that receives data that has been transmitted from one specific spot in the world. This football game (a sport game played with an inflated skin of a pig with eleven members to a "team") the men are watching is obviously not happening right in front of them. What does this have to do with Thanksgiving... you ask? Well, nothing really. This is just generally what men do during Thanksgiving. Men like to think and say that they stay out of the kitchen on this highly food-centered holiday because, "It's not manly" or they "want to watch football". The real reason men generally stay out of the kitchen is because they are terrified to make a mistake when it comes to making the food. Women have very high standards when it comes to making holiday meals and adding a man into the equation of cooking often ruins the desired effect. Therefore, men are in fact banished to another room where a complimentary football game is played to entertain the men for the proper amount of time (about four hours) it takes to cook the Thanksgiving dinner.
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History is imagined and represented differently in the Thanksgiving ritual. Young children are taught the tale of the first Thanksgiving feast at a very early age. To aid in the learning process, the children will often re-enact the "first thanksgiving" by separating into two groups: the "pilgrims" and the "Indians" or "Native Americans". The "pilgrims" wear black hats or white bonnets and white collars while the "Indians" wear feather headbands and colorful vests. Most of the "clothes" are made out of paper bags and are put in the recycling after the reenactment is done.
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The story goes something like this: A group of people called "The Pilgrims" came over to the United States on a ship. When they arrived, they encountered harsh, cold winters. Many of "The Pilgrims" died after the first winter. The "Indians", a group of people that already lived in the United States, helped "The Pilgrims" learn how to grow and harvest food and catch animals in their land. To celebrate the first harvest, "The Pilgrims" and "The Indians" came together for a huge celebration and ate and ate for three days straight and prayed to gods in the sky to thank them for the bountiful harvest- essentially "giving thanks" for their lives.
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Of all the rituals of Thanksgiving, the "Presidential Pardoning of the Turkey" is perhaps one of the most bizarre. In this ritual, the leader of our country, who we call the President, brings a turkey onstage, waves his hand, and grants the turkey a long life. The turkey is then sent to live out the rest of it's (very, very short) life on a farm (a place where people raise animals for pets or for food).
Sources:
1. http://www.savvyhousekeeping.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/thanksgiving-dinner.jpg
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