Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as
Speaker 2: always so much for tuning in. We are thankful that
Speaker 2: you are here, and we want to give a big,
Speaker 2: big thanks to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 3: Gobble Gobble mother Fleckers.
Speaker 4: I was gonna say that, but I made the sound instead,
Speaker 4: and then you said the things, so it all worked out.
Speaker 5: We got all the flavors of Thanksgiving, so it's your
Speaker 5: favorite turkeys back again. As you're old Brown, I am
Speaker 5: Ben Bollen. We decided toward the end of the year
Speaker 5: that we're going to do a bit of a grab bag.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 2: We do a lot of deep dives on specific things,
Speaker 2: but Thanksgiving, I think for all of us here in
Speaker 2: the US, is something that is so normalized that we
Speaker 2: don't often think about how it came to be or why,
Speaker 2: Like why turkey is one of the big questions.
Speaker 4: Christopher Columbus and the Native Americans had a lovely sit
Speaker 4: down dinner together place Matts and.
Speaker 2: You will see it on their TikTok.
Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly, No, it's true and it's interesting too.
Speaker 4: We see this a lot in ridiculous history how things
Speaker 4: that were essentially advertisements have taken the place of like
Speaker 4: religious holidays or evolved into such. And Thanksgiving is no exception.
Speaker 4: The origins are murky at best. And then what we
Speaker 4: ultimately know as the modern Thanksgiving, which is a very
Speaker 4: very American thing, is largely bolstered by advertising dollars and
Speaker 4: sort of again, companies being first tomorrow to capitalize on
Speaker 4: this stuff and then elevate it to this, you know,
Speaker 4: absolutely meteoric level for their own monetary gains.
Speaker 2: And so with that, and that's an excellent explanation. With that,
Speaker 2: here are some things that we find ridiculous and historical
Speaker 2: about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving in the United States is usually about
Speaker 2: two things. It's going to be about fellowship and food.
Speaker 2: Right Thanksgiving, no matter how you celebrate, it usually involves
Speaker 2: a big, big meal. And in again in the United States,
Speaker 2: that meal for a while now has had turkey as
Speaker 2: the centerpiece. But how did that become the centerpiece? I
Speaker 2: think to answer that we have to look at the
Speaker 2: first Thanksgiving we do.
Speaker 4: And before we do that, I just want to really
Speaker 4: quickly say, there's this internet. There's YouTube chef that I
Speaker 4: really like. With this very hard to fully place accent,
Speaker 4: like is he French?
Speaker 6: Is he Italian?
Speaker 4: Sometimes he says sockre blue, sometimes he says Mama Mia.
Speaker 4: His name is Chef Jean Pierre, and he has a
Speaker 4: really great video on how to make a beef Wellington
Speaker 4: if you're down with stuff like that. But he also
Speaker 4: has a great video on how to make gravy properly,
Speaker 4: and he posits that the whole like Thanksgiving fatigue that
Speaker 4: sets in after that meal is largely because people are
Speaker 4: putting flour in their gravy and not cooking it, and
Speaker 4: then it becomes in your stomach, this like heavy kind
Speaker 4: of paste then gives you the sleepies. So if you
Speaker 4: don't cook your flower that you're putting in your gravy properly,
Speaker 4: it's gonna be raw flower and it's gonna make you
Speaker 4: feel like crappy.
Speaker 2: And the first Thanksgiving they probably already knew how to
Speaker 2: make some form of gravy, right.
Speaker 6: But he's been the drippin's you know, sure.
Speaker 2: Nothing wrong with that gets some giblet action going, yeah,
Speaker 2: But what we do know is that there was a
Speaker 2: real meal shared between the Pilgrim settlers at Plymouth Colony
Speaker 2: in current day, Massachusetts and the Wampanog people's and in
Speaker 2: this meal, there was no turkey being served so far
Speaker 2: as we know, even though turkey was clearly a bird
Speaker 2: in that area at that time. Instead, the Wampa dogg
Speaker 2: bought deer and the Pilgrims provided wild fowl. So technically
Speaker 2: maybe that could have been turkeys, but historians for a
Speaker 2: while now have been convinced fowl probably meant duck or geese,
Speaker 2: because for a feast, especially in the United Kingdom, goose
Speaker 2: was historically considered the holiday flex.
Speaker 4: One million percent, the Christmas goose, the prized holiday goose.
Speaker 4: Whatever the actual meat may have been, we're talking about gainy,
Speaker 4: dark meat kind of birds, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And you know, the weird thing about what we have
Speaker 2: sort of mythologized as the first Thanksgiving in the US
Speaker 2: is that the Pilgrims at the time didn't seem to
Speaker 2: think this was a foundational holiday. You can't find any
Speaker 2: real reference to it except for one letter written by
Speaker 2: a colonist named Edward Winslow and to him, and you
Speaker 2: can see excerpts of this letter to him, the Pilgrims
Speaker 2: were just giving thanks for an autumn harvest. The way
Speaker 2: that they did back in Europe the way that you
Speaker 2: did forever as far as they knew.
Speaker 4: Interesting though, that it wouldn't have been seen as momentous
Speaker 4: given that the uh, you know, the native people of
Speaker 4: this land did participate in it with them, rather than
Speaker 4: going to war with them. So it certainly would have
Speaker 4: represented some semblance of copaseticness, if that's even a word
Speaker 4: between these new colonizers. Let's just be real, and you know,
Speaker 4: the folks that were already there, the predated them.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but to get really dark here, I mean, are
Speaker 7: we sure they weren't just like trying to cough on
Speaker 7: them the whole time? I considering what the Pilgrims were
Speaker 7: trying to do to the Native Americans at this point
Speaker 7: in time, it's just like, let's have them over give
Speaker 7: them smallpox.
Speaker 6: Now find a question that there was some of that. Maybe.
Speaker 4: I mean I'm saying is that is certainly part of
Speaker 4: the dark historical context of a lot of this kind
Speaker 4: of colonization. It's just absolute disregard for these individuals, looking
Speaker 4: at them as nothing but an inconvenience, something to be overtaken.
Speaker 4: But I can see how revisionist history would tend towards
Speaker 4: this whole idea of this.
Speaker 6: No, it was fine. See see it was fine.
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, a lot of those European
Speaker 2: colonists were terrible at trying to exist in what is
Speaker 2: now called North America, and if native populations had not
Speaker 2: saved them, they would have starved. Shout out Ronoke.
Speaker 4: No indeed, oh gosh, I believe we have a stuff
Speaker 4: that I want you to know episode about Roanoke and
Speaker 4: what was.
Speaker 6: The word that was a crowatan? No?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was carved on a tree and
Speaker 4: this whole like missing colony and all that stuff. Very
Speaker 4: interesting stuff. So do check that out on stuff they
Speaker 4: don't want you to know if you're interested in sort
Speaker 4: of a darker side. We're not going to get mega
Speaker 4: dark in this episode, but there's always some darkness that
Speaker 4: tends to creep in when you're talking about this kind
Speaker 4: of thing.
Speaker 2: And so we know they probably didn't have turkey. They
Speaker 2: definitely had birds. They thought this was a regular celebratory
Speaker 2: harvest meal. The concept of Thanksgiving as a singular day
Speaker 2: celebrated now confusingly on the fourth Thursday of November every year.
Speaker 2: This came from a plural definition days of Thanksgiving and
Speaker 2: Days of Thanksgiving like holidays, were pretty common for New
Speaker 2: England colonists from Europe, and people always had their own
Speaker 2: unofficial Thanksgiving celebrations. For quite a while, few people associated
Speaker 2: them with the Pilgrims out in Plymouth. By the time
Speaker 2: we get the eighteen hundreds, however, turkey becomes a popular
Speaker 2: dish to serve during these celebratory meals, and there are
Speaker 2: a couple easy reasons for this. First, the bird is plentiful,
Speaker 2: like there are a lot of turkeys in the northeast
Speaker 2: of this country now that we're even more back then,
Speaker 2: there were at least ten million turkeys in America on
Speaker 2: the American continent at the time of European contact. And
Speaker 2: then secondly, turkey's on a family farm. You can always
Speaker 2: kill them and eat them if times are tough. They
Speaker 2: don't have the same advantages as hens and live cows.
Speaker 2: Cows can make milk, hens can lay eggs, They are
Speaker 2: therefore useful. Turkeys were generally just raised for their meat.
Speaker 2: And then, of course, the third thing is the size.
Speaker 2: A single turkey is big enough to feed your whole family.
Speaker 2: It's an instant combo meal.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so is a goose. Though, right, not so much
Speaker 6: a duck. You need moreultiple ducks.
Speaker 4: But a goose is pretty large, so I could see
Speaker 4: this analogical. Yeah, between the turkey and the goose. Goose
Speaker 4: is a fattier bird though, And it's also I think
Speaker 4: a little even more gamey than a turkey. Turkey is
Speaker 4: going to give you a mix of the white meat
Speaker 4: in the dark meating. It really is kind of like
Speaker 4: a perfect holiday bird in terms of like one ring
Speaker 4: to rule them all.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, and turkeys still aren't synonymous with Thanksgiving. They're
Speaker 2: not yet mythologized, right, It's just now it's a free
Speaker 2: for all meal for a.
Speaker 4: While, Dickens maybe that led to that sort of a
Speaker 4: zeitgeistiness of it all.
Speaker 2: That's one theory that Dickens wrote a Christmas carol in
Speaker 2: eighteen forty three, and this bolsters the idea of turkey
Speaker 2: as a holiday meal. Similar. It's similar advertising to how
Speaker 2: Coca Cola is responsible for the modern Western image of
Speaker 2: Santa Claus.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, boy are they ever? And another writer somewhat
Speaker 4: contemporary with Dickens, Sarah Josepha Hale, may have also played
Speaker 4: an important part in a novel that she wrote in
Speaker 4: eighteen twenty seven called Northwood, where there is an entire
Speaker 4: chapter talking about New England Thanksgiving, where in a roasted
Speaker 4: turkey quote was placed at the head of the table.
Speaker 4: So this is all also very kind of proto Norman Rockwell,
Speaker 4: kind of like, you know, the family gathered around carving
Speaker 4: the bird, you know, living in the sort of idyllic
Speaker 4: form of like American you know, utopia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And the idea is in her novel, the
Speaker 2: idea is that this is an aspirational thing. That's all right,
Speaker 2: this is what you do if you are doing well.
Speaker 2: We mentioned Sarah Josepha Hale earlier because she began campaigning
Speaker 2: to make Thanksgiving a national holiday in the US. She said,
Speaker 2: this is going to bring the country read together, and
Speaker 2: I think the country's in a divisive time. History would
Speaker 2: prove her correct because of the Civil War. In eighteen
Speaker 2: sixty three, Abraham Lincoln, famous trash talker and amateur wrestler,
Speaker 2: is also president and he says, he says, Okay, Thanksgiving,
Speaker 2: it's going to be a thing now. We're all going
Speaker 2: to celebrate it because we are Americans. And if you
Speaker 2: want to hear more about Sarah Hale's journey to make
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving a national holiday. Check out our earlier episode from
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one. Oh excuse me, it's a two.
Speaker 4: Part series that's right on how Thanksgiving became a national holiday.
Speaker 4: So that did happen, of course, as we all know.
Speaker 4: So let's backcheck a little bit. In eighteen forty one,
Speaker 4: there was a collection of writings from various pilgrims that
Speaker 4: did refer to that meal and the Winslow letter that
Speaker 4: we mentioned earlier, he described it as the first Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he didn't specifically mention turkey. His fellow colonist,
Speaker 2: William Bradford, does refer to turkeys in Plymouth, and he says,
Speaker 2: he literally says, we had quote a great store of
Speaker 2: wild turkeys in his journal, which has eventually reprinted in
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty six. And so as this, as this correspondence
Speaker 2: from these pilgrims gets reprinted and enters the zeitgeist, people
Speaker 2: start linking the idea of Pilgrims and turkeys and Thanksgiving
Speaker 2: in pop culture, and so it becomes a story Americans
Speaker 2: tell themselves. It also doesn't hurt that turkey is pretty
Speaker 2: affordable at this time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And like we said, it packs a punch gastrologically speaking,
Speaker 4: is that a word gastronomically? Well, yeah, got potato potato,
Speaker 4: And it also probably didn't hurt. You know, once the
Speaker 4: first child's handprint was turned into a turkey, all bets.
Speaker 6: Were off and it was just, you know, off like
Speaker 6: a like a rocket.
Speaker 2: It was off like a rocket. And there's a snowball
Speaker 2: effect because, just like chickens, modern livestock practices have made
Speaker 2: turkeys larger and more affordable than ever, So they are
Speaker 2: going to probably be a part of at least American
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving for decades to come. But there's more to this
Speaker 2: story than that. Another part of the Thanksgiving experience where
Speaker 2: mythos in the United States is the famous Macy's Thanksgiving
Speaker 2: Day parade. Do you guys watch that when it comes out?
Speaker 6: I love a parade that's a.
Speaker 4: Thanksgiving well that likes another Max Easter egg in the
Speaker 4: outline a little bit later.
Speaker 6: Who you're off man? Who wants to wake up early
Speaker 6: for a dang parade? You know, on a holiday? It
Speaker 6: seems absurd.
Speaker 4: It is nice that you can watch it in person,
Speaker 4: but God, who are these people that brave these lines
Speaker 4: and stand on the barricade just to see the Bart
Speaker 4: Simpson you know, float across the Fifth Avenue.
Speaker 6: It's a weird one.
Speaker 4: It is interesting, you know, Brian Gumbole the commentary, all
Speaker 4: of that stuff. It has become a tradition, and traditions
Speaker 4: are just based on time. They're just based on doing
Speaker 4: a thing over and over again for a long time
Speaker 4: and again. It requires being kind of like in on
Speaker 4: the ground floor, which is what the Macy's Corporation was.
Speaker 4: They weren't the first parade. We'll describe a sort of
Speaker 4: dinkier parade that took place, but they're the big one
Speaker 4: and they did so well with their first one that
Speaker 4: they say we're going to do this from now until
Speaker 4: the end of time.
Speaker 3: Oh oh, okay, can I tell a story? Can I
Speaker 3: tell Sart's parade story?
Speaker 7: And so in the relationship between Alex and I, he's
Speaker 7: generally the one telling embarrassing stories about me.
Speaker 2: So that's Alex Williams, who composed this slapping soundtrack.
Speaker 3: And is my older brother.
Speaker 7: So when we were kids, like both still in elementary school,
Speaker 7: there was this fourth July parade that would go through
Speaker 7: and don't want the majorish road that we have up here,
Speaker 7: And one year Alex thought would be really fun and
Speaker 7: cool to volunteer to be one of the guys who
Speaker 7: follows behind the horses, cleaning up their crap as they go.
Speaker 6: Whoa, that's yeah.
Speaker 3: He thought he thought that was fun. Yeah.
Speaker 7: I think he was probably third or fourth grade, like
Speaker 7: we were both pretty young. He only did it one year,
Speaker 7: was to say, yeah, so ridiculously early, and it was
Speaker 7: volunteer only.
Speaker 3: Like, I don't think he got paid to do any
Speaker 3: of it. He just walked like miles and cleaned up
Speaker 3: horse crush.
Speaker 2: Thank you for your service, Alex. Also, before we get
Speaker 2: too far away, I do want to put in it,
Speaker 2: just to close the loop. Put in my two cents
Speaker 2: about the Macy's Day thing. I also would never go
Speaker 2: in person, but I have historically woken up to watch
Speaker 2: it on television because it was a formative family experience
Speaker 2: or my close members of my family have passed on
Speaker 2: some quite recently. But there's a comfort to it, and
Speaker 2: usually I'm up cooking at that point anyway. So shout
Speaker 2: out to you folks who feel a relationship to your
Speaker 2: family by watching the parade.
Speaker 4: I feel you on that totally, and I have, you know,
Speaker 4: since some members of my family have also passed on
Speaker 4: become the person that does that and does all the cooking,
Speaker 4: and so there is something too like, yeah, if you're
Speaker 4: gonna make a big Thanksgiving meal for a big family,
Speaker 4: a bunch of people, you gotta start early. I mean,
Speaker 4: it takes a long time for that turkey to cook
Speaker 4: and rest properly and all of that. So what a
Speaker 4: pleasant thing to have on in the background, you know,
Speaker 4: as a sort of televisual comfort food of its own.
Speaker 2: And let's go to Christopher Klein who has a great
Speaker 2: article explaining the evolution of the Macy's Day parade for
Speaker 2: history dot Com. We'll paraphrase a little bit here, but
Speaker 2: he dates it back to the Roaring twenties. Nobody knew
Speaker 2: the Great Depression was coming unless you listen to stuff
Speaker 2: they don't want you to know. Kidding, kidding. So Macy's
Speaker 2: at the time is an iconic department store at New
Speaker 2: York City, and they say, Okay, we're going to acquire
Speaker 2: our competitors, because this time in American history is all
Speaker 2: about monopolies. We're going to open regional locations, but our
Speaker 2: flagship store is going to stay in Manhattan. They did
Speaker 2: such great business that nineteen twenty four. We talked about
Speaker 2: this in a previous episode. They expanded to cover an
Speaker 2: entire city block, and they were calling themselves the world's
Speaker 2: largest store, and so they wanted to Yeah, they wanted
Speaker 2: to show off their humility, I guess.
Speaker 6: But again like to the whole like first to market
Speaker 6: our ground floor thing. They just had.
Speaker 4: They didn't even have to get specific about it, just
Speaker 4: the world's largest store, big store, big origin of the
Speaker 4: big box store. So in order to do that, you know,
Speaker 4: they had to really put their money where their mouth is,
Speaker 4: and they did that in the form of their flagship
Speaker 4: store on had Or in Herald Square in Manhattan. It
Speaker 4: did really, really, really good business, became this iconic location
Speaker 4: still is today. It expanded in nineteen twenty four, became
Speaker 4: Remember we talked about that. I think we talked about
Speaker 4: that recently in Spike stores where there was like an
Speaker 4: awning of some kind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for getting titled.
Speaker 4: I think it used to be like a it was
Speaker 4: a sunglass. It was different, little weird things.
Speaker 7: At one point actually where that episode helped me think
Speaker 7: of this tangent point.
Speaker 6: Well, it's great, it's a great story.
Speaker 4: They expanded to cover an entire city block that stretched
Speaker 4: from Broadway all the way to Seventh Avenue along thirty
Speaker 4: fourth Street. And again they got to do things big
Speaker 4: if they're going to be seen as the world's largest store,
Speaker 4: to showcase it's one million square feet of retail space
Speaker 4: and to get enough bodies in there to justify its existence,
Speaker 4: uh and move some merch.
Speaker 6: They had to take it above and beyond.
Speaker 4: They had to kind of next level in the form
Speaker 4: of a parade, because who doesn't leve a parade besides
Speaker 4: people that have to clean up horsecrap.
Speaker 2: And so they plan this kind of pr public relations, propaganda,
Speaker 2: hearts and minds campaign, and a parade is included in that.
Speaker 2: But their first parade actually occurs not on Thanksgiving but
Speaker 2: during Christmas, and they call it their Christmas Parade, and
Speaker 2: they hope this will get people shopping at Macy's for
Speaker 2: the holidays. If you want to look at the first
Speaker 2: store sponsored Thanksgiving parade, you have to actually go to
Speaker 2: a totally different corporate outfit over in Philly, the Gimbal
Speaker 2: Brothers department store stages a Thanksgiving procession in nineteen twenty.
Speaker 2: You know, if you didn't know about the modern day
Speaker 2: Macy's day Thanksgiving parade. You'd be impressed with this. Fifteen cars,
Speaker 2: fifty people. You got a Santa Claus plays a fireman
Speaker 2: dressed as Santa Claus, and they're doing the same thing.
Speaker 2: They're trying to get the public to notice Gimbal Brothers
Speaker 2: department store and shop there. And of course there's a
Speaker 2: lot of parallel thinking because this is a great idea. J. L.
Speaker 2: Hudson's department store. Over in Detroit they do something similar,
Speaker 2: just like four years later, in nineteen twenty four, but
Speaker 2: in New York. The only Thanksgiving parade that had ever
Speaker 2: happened before was this weird, more grassroots level thing where
Speaker 2: children painted their faces. We talked about this in the
Speaker 2: previous episode and doned tattered clothing and they said, we
Speaker 2: are ragamuffins.
Speaker 6: Can we have.
Speaker 2: Anything for Thanksgiving? They went door to door asking for
Speaker 2: apples and candy and pennies back when pennies were worth something.
Speaker 4: So this was sort of part of that whole precursor
Speaker 4: to Halloween thing kind of.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that whole thing.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's actually the other episode that motivated this section
Speaker 7: as well. I drew on two different episodes to motivate
Speaker 7: me to think of this topic.
Speaker 2: And once we get through the parade spoiler, we are
Speaker 2: going to get to football, which is part of the
Speaker 2: covenant we made with you for this episode, Max.
Speaker 7: I really think we should title this episode Thanksgiving twenty
Speaker 7: twenty three, the episode Max makes Nolan Ben talk about football.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wait, I write the titles though I mean good luck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I input them.
Speaker 2: I can change them, Yes, the same access.
Speaker 3: Let's do it.
Speaker 6: Let's call it forth our threat throwing some lobbin some
Speaker 6: threats afternoon. So let's set the scene right, Yeah. So
Speaker 6: it's it's November twenty seventh, nineteen twenty four. It's around
Speaker 6: nine in the morning, it's a nice day, the sun's out,
Speaker 6: and Macy's says, we're going to give a particular Thanksgiving
Speaker 6: treat to all the ragamuffins of New York City.
Speaker 4: That's right in the form of a procession, you know.
Speaker 4: So we've got police escorts that lead this parade from
Speaker 4: the intersection of one hundred and forty fifth Street and
Speaker 4: Covenant Avenue. The Macy's Christmas Parade, as it was then known,
Speaker 4: actually took place during the time of a lot of
Speaker 4: church services, but it gave folks in attendance plenty of
Speaker 4: time to get home for the big game.
Speaker 6: The football I suppose game. Yeah, Okay, Max's noughty.
Speaker 2: And this thing is interesting because people are kind of
Speaker 2: looking at it as a diversion right between church services
Speaker 2: and between those big sports games. Macy's has promised people
Speaker 2: that if they attend the parade, they will see a
Speaker 2: quote Marathod of Mirth, and they did a lot of
Speaker 2: pr for this. They took out full page newspaper advertisements.
Speaker 2: The parade route itself was about six miles long, so
Speaker 2: much shorter than the twenty six mile length of other parades,
Speaker 2: and it was a pretty long hike if you're in
Speaker 2: the parage, because you're marching from Harlem to Herald Square.
Speaker 2: There were a bunch of people who were standing out
Speaker 2: to watch this, and if you were just a spectator,
Speaker 2: it wasn't going to eat up your entire morning, because
Speaker 2: if you stand in one stationary spot and watch the
Speaker 2: entirety of the parade, it only it's only about two
Speaker 2: city blocks long, so you can go see that and
Speaker 2: then boom you're out. You're ready for the game.
Speaker 4: That's right, and you know, New York is a reasonably
Speaker 4: decent place to stay. Something like this without it being
Speaker 4: incredibly disruptive because so many people take public transit.
Speaker 6: Anyway, it's a real walking city. You know.
Speaker 4: The city is laid out and relatively well planned city blocks,
Speaker 4: so you know it works. I mean, New York's a
Speaker 4: nightmare to drive in on a good day. So it's
Speaker 4: like it's you know, it's not the same as like
Speaker 4: a maybe more of a car centric city like Atlanta,
Speaker 4: having like a bicycle marathon or something where it literally
Speaker 4: shuts down traffic in places that you'd used to be
Speaker 4: able to pass through.
Speaker 6: So it you know, it kind of makes sense.
Speaker 2: They did some things that the modern day parades just
Speaker 2: don't do anymore. I mean, yeah, they had themes that
Speaker 2: speak to children. They had a lot of Mother Goose characters,
Speaker 2: you know, the old woman who lived in a shoe
Speaker 2: and so on. They also had employees of Macy's dressed
Speaker 2: as cowboys and knights and clowns. But here's what they
Speaker 2: don't do in the modern parade anymore. Macy's got animals
Speaker 2: on loan from the Central Park Zoo. They had real
Speaker 2: bears and camels and elephants, and this became a circus.
Speaker 2: There were bands that would play as the march continued,
Speaker 2: and at the very end of the parade, because this
Speaker 2: is like a Christmas parade for them, at this point,
Speaker 2: there's our number one guy, our protagonist, our main character,
Speaker 2: Santa Claus, and he's sitting in a sleigh with reindeer
Speaker 2: on top of a mountain of ice. So this is
Speaker 2: pretty epic if you're a child. I think this would
Speaker 2: be way cooler if you're a kid than seeing the
Speaker 2: sports game.
Speaker 6: What do you guys think for kids?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know, if you have like a
Speaker 4: dad or grandpa or whatever that's in the football and
Speaker 4: you might get into it at an early age. But
Speaker 4: even then, I would argue that dancing bears and elephants
Speaker 4: and camels and monkeys are more entertaining than you know,
Speaker 4: helmet clad footballers.
Speaker 2: And so we fast forward. It's about noon. Oh let's
Speaker 2: uh Max, can we do an inappropriate almost Anio Morricone vibe?
Speaker 6: Perfect? Hi knew?
Speaker 2: The parade finally arrives at the end of its run.
Speaker 2: It's in front of Macy's Herald Square store. There are
Speaker 2: ten thousand people cheering Santa Claus. As he gets out
Speaker 2: of his sleigh. He gets crowned. For some reason. The
Speaker 2: King of the Kiddies, kiddies, and he climbs the ladder. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a little weird. And he sits on a old
Speaker 2: throne that is on top of the marquee above the
Speaker 2: store's new entrance on thirty fourth.
Speaker 4: Street, that's right near Seventh Avenue, and he plays it
Speaker 4: he plays it trump.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he was.
Speaker 2: He was doing a lot of gigs of like pick
Speaker 2: up studio gigs at the.
Speaker 4: Time, exactly sitting in at the Blue Note or whatever.
Speaker 4: I don't know, Birdland, I don't know if those existed
Speaker 4: at that time, but yeah.
Speaker 6: This was the signal to unveil. I was referred to
Speaker 6: as the fair Frolics of wonder Town.
Speaker 4: Catching Indeed, it literally that's in there in parentheses in
Speaker 4: the title. It's it's, it's it's the silent part that
Speaker 4: we just said out loud. And this was you know,
Speaker 4: we know about this too.
Speaker 6: This is very.
Speaker 4: Popular on on Fifth Avenue and in department stores in
Speaker 4: New York. Uh, the massive window display is becoming New
Speaker 4: York tradition, you know, a very retail centric New York tradition.
Speaker 6: Again, we said it at the top.
Speaker 4: A lot of these traditions are retail ecentric, whether it
Speaker 4: be you know, the Turkey interests of the world or
Speaker 4: you know, the department stores.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the parade doesn't get a lot of attention
Speaker 2: in the press outside of those advertisements that Macy's pays for.
Speaker 2: I think they only get two sentences in the New
Speaker 2: York Herald the next day. But the good people of
Speaker 2: Macy's and their corporate board, they have a banner year
Speaker 2: of profit with this. The kids are going nuts, which
Speaker 2: means their parents go nuts, and they rush to this
Speaker 2: huge window to see to see the setup, the fair
Speaker 2: frolics of Wondertown, which includes stuff you can buy in
Speaker 2: the store. Genius. Do we want to talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about the guy who designed that one?
Speaker 6: I think it's neat.
Speaker 4: I was just googling him because I wasn't familiar with
Speaker 4: this guy, Tony sarg who was a German American puppeteer
Speaker 4: and illustrator and just kind of you know, like almost
Speaker 4: like a what do they call those people at Disney
Speaker 4: Imagine Imagine her, you know what I mean? And that
Speaker 4: is sort of what this is. We're talking marionettes of
Speaker 4: Mother Goose and all of those sort of nursery rhyme
Speaker 4: type themes and Christmas elves and all of the like
Speaker 4: you know, on these mechanized kind of conveyor belt situations
Speaker 4: that have only got more modernized and elaborate over the years.
Speaker 4: But man, it would have been Can you imagine seeing
Speaker 4: something like that as a kid. It absolutely is magic,
Speaker 4: but it's magic in service of.
Speaker 2: Like and this idea. Even though, again as I said earlier,
Speaker 2: even though the New York Herald and other like journalistic
Speaker 2: sources aren't reporting on this parade very much at all,
Speaker 2: Macy's realizes this is amazing for their bottom line, and
Speaker 2: so later they announced another big newspaper advertisement. The very
Speaker 2: next day, they say, good people of New York, we
Speaker 2: are going to have a parade again the next Thanksgiving.
Speaker 6: We dare not team.
Speaker 2: It's excess would be.
Speaker 6: So great, great, great, great great, And it.
Speaker 2: Becomes a tradition. At first, it's the Christmas Parade, and
Speaker 2: everybody loves it, except, as one researcher notes, the zoo
Speaker 2: animals and.
Speaker 4: The people cleaning up the pooh of the zoo animals,
Speaker 4: and just you know, people who maybe don't like crowds,
Speaker 4: you know, people who would find something like this disruptive.
Speaker 4: Basically a bunch of scrooges if you ask me, you know,
Speaker 4: Max is pointing to himself.
Speaker 6: Max is our resident scrooge. But we love him dearly.
Speaker 4: But yeah, And the only way to keep doing a
Speaker 4: thing like this is to escalate it.
Speaker 6: Year over year.
Speaker 4: It gets bigger, more, you know, grandiose, and the window
Speaker 4: you know, dressings get more and more insane and elaborate,
Speaker 4: you know, and cut to now where the Macy's Thanksgiving
Speaker 4: Day parade is almost it's just synonymous with the holiday.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: It is an as American as Thanksgiving techi an apple pie.
Speaker 2: And apples are from Kazakhstan American, so there's a question
Speaker 2: I set apple pie now y yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: And there's a reason that there are balloons in the
Speaker 2: parade instead of animals balloons.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Apparently these animals who had to get abducted basically and
Speaker 2: taken on this non consensual six mile jaunt, they were
Speaker 2: frightening some of the children. So eventually they were replaced
Speaker 2: by big, big character balloons, and these became the marquee
Speaker 2: attractions of the parade in later years. I think the
Speaker 2: first one that really set the tone for everybody was
Speaker 2: Felix the Cat designed by the same guy who made
Speaker 2: that famous store window display for Macy's.
Speaker 4: And that was This is news to me. I was
Speaker 4: not familiar with Sarg. I did not realize there was
Speaker 4: a singular vision behind you know what ultimately hasn't really
Speaker 4: changed much around this, the window set ups and the
Speaker 4: and the balloon animals, the giants, you know, larger than
Speaker 4: life balloon animals. This guy, Sar really was like the
Speaker 4: imagineer of the the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Speaker 6: And it's funny. In my mind sometimes I think.
Speaker 4: Of it as the Macy's Day Thanksgiving Parade, and that's
Speaker 4: funny because it's like it's wrong, but it really is.
Speaker 4: It's much more about It's Macy's Day, y'all, come shop
Speaker 4: at Macy's. The thanksgivingness of it is irrelevant. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's not irrelevant. It's just sort of an afterthought, you know.
Speaker 3: Side note.
Speaker 6: I got the white pants from Macy's.
Speaker 4: Yeah you did, now those gallows hold it up, buddy,
Speaker 4: you stained them up?
Speaker 3: No, no, And there's there's a surprise addendum to them.
Speaker 6: So okay, okay, to the past.
Speaker 3: Yea, yeah, you'll see it. You'll see it soon, all right.
Speaker 2: I almost worry white my white pants for you. Max.
Speaker 2: That sounds weird out of context, but uh, but they're
Speaker 2: an investment and they're a dangerous game. So if you
Speaker 2: go to the Macy's parade now it is the Thanksgiving
Speaker 2: Day parade. There are balloons, there are bands, there are
Speaker 2: celebrity commentators, cheerleaders show up, and Santa Claus is still
Speaker 2: the main act. And the idea is, if you're a kid,
Speaker 2: that his arrival in Harold Square also heralds the beginning
Speaker 2: of the Christmas season in New York. And before we
Speaker 2: go from today's episode, which we hope finds you well
Speaker 2: and mid family, friend and food and fellowship, we have
Speaker 2: a part of a bargain we need to hold up,
Speaker 2: and that is to talk about Thanksgiving and football. We
Speaker 2: don't mean football the way the rest of the world
Speaker 2: means football. We mean American football very much, not soccer.
Speaker 2: It is the most ad riddled professional sport on the planet.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Max described it as America's favorite life shortening ad delivery method,
Speaker 4: which is spearheaded by the National Football League or the NFL.
Speaker 4: He also refers to it as a joyless cash ground.
Speaker 4: How do you really feel, Max?
Speaker 7: The funny things I watched so much football, But I
Speaker 7: am not delusion to the fact that. I mean, there's
Speaker 7: a reason why soccer or real football is not big
Speaker 7: in this country. It's because it's really bad at putting
Speaker 7: ads in. And the NFL is huge. Granted, NFL not
Speaker 7: as bad as college football. College football is embarrassing American football,
Speaker 7: especially on Fox. College football on Fox is horrible. I
Speaker 7: just watched Penn State Michigan this past weekend.
Speaker 3: Awful.
Speaker 2: Well, what are they going to do? Pay their athletes?
Speaker 2: College football?
Speaker 6: Come on, it's just own conversation.
Speaker 4: Sure, but is it the reason that that football, American
Speaker 4: football is uniquely suited for this is because it sort
Speaker 4: of exists in these little spurts, little fits and starts,
Speaker 4: and then there's commentary, commentary, commentary, and then go and
Speaker 4: then it's like thirty seconds, you know, and then not
Speaker 4: another opportunity for an AD or an ad placement or
Speaker 4: just like an endorsement of some kind.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's the point is making with like that
Speaker 2: the ad riddled thing. It's it's a known problem, and
Speaker 2: it is in a way because of that commodification. You
Speaker 2: could argue it's the more dangerous Thanksgiving Day parade Max,
Speaker 2: your question was why do the Cowboys, the Dallas Cowboys,
Speaker 2: and the Detroit Lions always play on Thanksgiving? This is
Speaker 2: something that I was not aware of now, of course,
Speaker 2: not being a sportsman of this stripe myself. I don't
Speaker 2: know very much about American football or these traditions, but
Speaker 2: it dates back to the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 6: Max with the fact says, if you would.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so that the Lions, they actually began the tradition
Speaker 7: in nineteen thirty four because their owner, George A. Richards,
Speaker 7: was just like, we need more fans. I mean, so
Speaker 7: behind the scenes, the Lions are like the butt of
Speaker 7: the joke franchise in Detroit historically, because you know, the
Speaker 7: Tigers are huge, the Red Wings are huge, Pistons are pretty.
Speaker 2: Popular, kind of like the Atlanta Falcons.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or for years it was the Hawks, was that.
Speaker 7: One, But the Lions are the blue guys, right right,
Speaker 7: And so his idea was it's like, how do I
Speaker 7: get more people here? And he's like, let's do the
Speaker 7: game on Thanksgiving. But he was a part owner in
Speaker 7: an NBC affiliate, so he was like, hey, NBC, you
Speaker 7: want something. It would have been radio, right, Yeah, at
Speaker 7: this point, Yeah, like, why don't you just play this
Speaker 7: game because you have nothing else to run right now,
Speaker 7: you just played this Lions game everywhere. And the funny
Speaker 7: thing is he did so early on that no one else.
Speaker 7: It's just like, you know, this is one of these
Speaker 7: things now that if you went to the NFL right
Speaker 7: now and try to do it, like, hey, the Atlanta
Speaker 7: Falcons not play on Thanksgiving?
Speaker 3: They just laughing out of the building, right, No they don't.
Speaker 2: No, they don't have enough money to make that happen,
Speaker 2: they would say.
Speaker 7: Right, and look, you know the NFL like barely survived
Speaker 7: World War two and stuff, so there is like, sure,
Speaker 7: let's do this.
Speaker 2: So now the Detroit Lions are staples of Thanksgiving, right
Speaker 2: and as you said, Max, the Cowboys themselves are a
Speaker 2: regular on this holiday. But the Cowboys tradition, according to
Speaker 2: the research, began much later in nineteen sixty six. Could
Speaker 2: you tell us a little bit more about that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So it's like, you know, the Cowboys are just
Speaker 7: looking at the Lions for making a ton of money,
Speaker 7: and they're like, oh, we gotta make a ton of money.
Speaker 7: That's kind of the cowboys approach is to just do
Speaker 7: what everybody else's done. So their general manager, whose name
Speaker 7: is no Joke text shram.
Speaker 2: Love it ten ten no notes.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he himself too, is like, okay, well, the year
Speaker 7: is nineteen sixty six, there's only one game going on Thanksgiving.
Speaker 3: He goes, why can't we have to So they just
Speaker 3: do it, and they do it at the Connon Bowl.
Speaker 7: And the thing about Texas is Texas, like, especially in
Speaker 7: the Dallas area, They've always had massive stadiums and being
Speaker 7: Texas Dallastaire, there's a ton of people, so they can
Speaker 7: sell out these games all the time.
Speaker 3: So everyone looks at They're like, oh, this is a
Speaker 3: great idea.
Speaker 7: And so since then they just said Cowboys, you can play,
Speaker 7: except for nineteen seventy five nineteen seventy seven when the
Speaker 7: Saint Louis Cardinals were awarded this game.
Speaker 3: The Saint Louis.
Speaker 7: Chargins would of course become the Arizona Cardinals, and Saint
Speaker 7: Louis we get the Saint Louis Rams, who would become
Speaker 7: the La Rams. And if I'm twisting the knife on
Speaker 7: any Saint Louis fans, well sorry, I don't care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you look real torn up there, Max.
Speaker 6: Max with the facts that sneaking in the phone, and
Speaker 6: he's fallen knowledge.
Speaker 3: It's just for you right now here with the fact.
Speaker 4: And uh, we kind of tricked you into not making
Speaker 4: us talk about football that much.
Speaker 3: So oh crap, we got you.
Speaker 2: I got you back, man. There is in fact a
Speaker 2: third game, as you point out, yay prime time matchup
Speaker 2: included in two thousand and six. This adds more holiday
Speaker 2: exposure for the league, and it has bumped up the
Speaker 2: appearances for the rest of the NFL on Thanksgiving. So
Speaker 2: now the Cowboys and the Lions don't necessarily always rule
Speaker 2: the roost, right.
Speaker 6: If you say so, I'm kidding. I've got no problem.
Speaker 6: It's history, man.
Speaker 4: And actually, I think football is sort of fun to
Speaker 4: watch if you're with people that are really into it,
Speaker 4: you know, like I've watched a Super Bowl from time
Speaker 4: to time, and if you if you if you're around
Speaker 4: people that get excited about it, it's hard not to
Speaker 4: get excited.
Speaker 2: I love an electric energy, you know.
Speaker 7: And here's that's actually kind of the key thing about
Speaker 7: watching football is if you're just sitting there by yourself
Speaker 7: watching one football game, you notice how many commercials are
Speaker 7: and how well we hear a group of people, especially
Speaker 7: the Super Bowl, like you're talking, having a conversation like okay, okay,
Speaker 7: here comes to play. You're setting up. You can see it.
Speaker 7: It's like, you know, it's like somebody like at the Olympics,
Speaker 7: like jumping off the diving board and flip you Okay,
Speaker 7: here they go.
Speaker 3: Oh it's done. Association.
Speaker 4: It's it's uniquely suited for spamming you with ads, but
Speaker 4: it's also uniquely suited for watching with a group where
Speaker 4: you can actually not have to have it be the
Speaker 4: center of everything, and it's not a big deal if
Speaker 4: somebody talks.
Speaker 2: Reality television, you know, actually that's that's a scarily good comparison.
Speaker 2: And before we move on to wrap this up with
Speaker 2: a couple of tangents and trivia, we have a very
Speaker 2: important announcement. Super producer Max Williams hates Sean McVay. Just
Speaker 2: repeat that again. He hates Sean McVay so much, real quick,
Speaker 2: We've got to quote, I hate Sean McVay so much.
Speaker 2: But we're not gonna end it on a downer. We
Speaker 2: gotta talk about something, right, are good friend Richard?
Speaker 6: Look at his face? Uh uh?
Speaker 7: I was I wasted my fifth round fantasy pick because
Speaker 7: he said Cam Akers was going to be the back.
Speaker 7: And cam Akers ran all over the Broncos last Thanksgiving
Speaker 7: and it was great.
Speaker 3: It was awesome.
Speaker 7: And so I use my fifth round pick and cam
Speaker 7: Akers this year and barely played week one, got bench
Speaker 7: week two.
Speaker 3: Trade after week two.
Speaker 7: I'm like, are you kidding Sean McVay, and he puts
Speaker 7: in Kiren Williams who is like five foot nothing and
Speaker 7: runs a four nothing and got hurt Max.
Speaker 2: So Sean McVay, this is your just retire, just retire
Speaker 2: to make things right. And this one tangent we wanted
Speaker 2: to get to before we close out today. First, Thanksgiving
Speaker 2: is not just a US holiday. A lot of people
Speaker 2: are thankful all around the world. And secondly, weirdly enough,
Speaker 2: you know what, people are finally embracing openly canned cranberry sauce.
Speaker 2: People used to hate it. People used to say you
Speaker 2: had to make it on your own, or you had
Speaker 2: to make it by hand. But now I think, kind
Speaker 2: of like how the Boloney sandwich encountered a renaissance in
Speaker 2: short cuisine. Now people even like our pal Richard Blaze,
Speaker 2: people love canned cranberry sauce.
Speaker 4: Shabby chic cooking kind of right, like it's the thing.
Speaker 4: I'm a little neutral on the subject. I'm just not
Speaker 4: a huge fan of it. But I do like a
Speaker 4: good chutney, which is kind of like a homemade cranberry sauce,
Speaker 4: so I can see its value. It's more of a
Speaker 4: condiment than anything. You use it to add a little
Speaker 4: sweet to your savory. I'm cool with that. I just
Speaker 4: you know, I don't like the way it slides out
Speaker 4: of the can. I don't trust it. It's like a
Speaker 4: good jill latinous creature. Don't care for them.
Speaker 2: Well, collectively, it turns out, according to Nina Friend at
Speaker 2: Food and Wine, Americans as a whole consume five million
Speaker 2: gallons of cranberry sauce each and every year during the holidays.
Speaker 2: Seventy six percent of American households by cranberry buy this
Speaker 2: can cranberry stuff.
Speaker 4: Well, it's sort of the same as not may not
Speaker 4: the same, but like similar to the argument around dressing
Speaker 4: or stuffing, A lot of people just swear by the stofers,
Speaker 4: you know, or stovetop dressing, and I honestly will make both.
Speaker 4: I'll make the kind of store bock kind and then
Speaker 4: make like a really nice oyster dressing or like something
Speaker 4: with like, you know, walnuts or something a little more fancy.
Speaker 4: But I do agree there is something to be said
Speaker 4: about just the good old, run of the mill stovetop dressing.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's nostallgia ultimately, isn't it. Because smell
Speaker 2: and taste give us such a strong sense of time
Speaker 2: and place, right, That's what Proosh is writing about. And
Speaker 2: I totally understand that too. Like I look, we're not
Speaker 2: here to yuck your yums, folks. If you have a
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving tradition that matters to you and your family, don't
Speaker 2: let people papoo it. You know, have a great time
Speaker 2: with your cranberry sauce, whether it comes in a can
Speaker 2: or whether you're out arduously squashing those berries yourself.
Speaker 6: Oh for sure.
Speaker 2: Man, Do you want to start with our northern neighbors?
Speaker 6: I wonder if it involves cheese, curds and gravy. I
Speaker 6: don't know.
Speaker 4: Let's see, Yeah, Canada, they have their own kind of
Speaker 4: unique version of Thanksgiving that happens in mid October, and
Speaker 4: this came from a decree from then Governor General.
Speaker 6: Is a Canadian thing. I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 4: In nineteen fifty seven Vincent Massey who declared the second
Speaker 4: Monday in October a day of general thanksgiving to Almighty
Speaker 4: God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed, blessed.
Speaker 2: And the Predecessor for this Like the reason he declared
Speaker 2: this day goes all the way back to fifteen seventy eight.
Speaker 2: The Canadian Thanksgiving, or the first one, is apparently older
Speaker 2: than the US Thanksgiving. They're also not the only country.
Speaker 2: Liberia has had a regular Thanksgiving. It's the They officially
Speaker 2: celebrate it as the markation of the moment when enslaved
Speaker 2: people traveled from the United States to found the country
Speaker 2: of Liberia in eighteen twenty two. It is on the
Speaker 2: first Thursday of November instead of the worth And I
Speaker 2: think anybody who's listened to this show for a while
Speaker 2: knows that we are all thoroughly confused and flub mixed
Speaker 2: by that kind of clindrical system.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't care for it. Just pick a date,
Speaker 6: pick a date.
Speaker 4: Well, let's not forget that even in the reports of
Speaker 4: the quote unquote first Thanksgiving that apparently passed without much
Speaker 4: notice at the time. You know, with the Pilgrims, they
Speaker 4: were just doing a thing that they already did that
Speaker 4: was like just on, you know, honoring a a bountiful harvest.
Speaker 4: So like the Canadian version of Thanksgiving isn't like in
Speaker 4: any way related to American Thanksgiving. He has described it
Speaker 4: as a day of general thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a word.
Speaker 4: It's in like hymns and stuff, you know, So we
Speaker 4: get very America centric when it comes to the idea
Speaker 4: of Thanksgiving, But it takes place during the changing of
Speaker 4: the seasons, and it's this idea of let's take stock
Speaker 4: of the year that has passed. It's at the end
Speaker 4: of the year. It may make sense. It's just that
Speaker 4: parallel thinking that you mentioned.
Speaker 6: Ben.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we see similar festivals in South India and Ghana, Germany, Switzerland, Austria,
Speaker 2: the Netherlands, Japan, the list goes on. Because despite all
Speaker 2: of humanity's differences, one thing we can all hopefully agree
Speaker 2: upon is simply this. It's important to take some time
Speaker 2: whenever you can and be thankful for the things you love.
Speaker 4: Well, I for one, am thankful for you, Ben and
Speaker 4: you super producer and research associated extraordinaire Max Williams, and
Speaker 4: for this podcast that we get to do together. I
Speaker 4: think it's pretty awesome that this is literally how we
Speaker 4: make a living.
Speaker 2: And thanks to our mad man behind the keys, mister
Speaker 2: Alex Williams, who, in addition to picking up horse Maneuver,
Speaker 2: also picked up a gig making this awesome soundtrack for us.
Speaker 2: Thanks to Chris Vrasiotis Eves Jeffcoat, and thanks of to
Speaker 2: that one turkey, that one turkey who gets pardoned every
Speaker 2: year in the United States, the.
Speaker 6: One that got it.
Speaker 4: It just occurs to me, though, that we kind of
Speaker 4: do Thanksgiving at the end of every episode. That's the
Speaker 4: thing that we've established from the start. So I think
Speaker 4: we're all pretty thankful in general for all the people
Speaker 4: that make the show possible and the.
Speaker 6: People in our lives. We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 4: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 4: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.