Tag Archive for: Thanksgiving

Turkeys and Santa

The Magic of Turkeys and Santa

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Merry Podcast
Merry Podcast of MyMerryChristmas.com
The Magic of Turkeys and Santa
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In this episode we celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas together with a mix of old and new. Thanksgiving — that All-American holiday of festive foods married with historical debates — get a look through the lens of pandemic past.

We explore the Thanksgiving of 1918 and how it was the same and how it was different. This conversation comes as a backdrop to modern-day calls to abolish Thanksgiving by The New York Times and The Atlantic. While we agree some liberties have been taken with the history of Thanksgiving we have to take a real-world look at what Puritans and Native Americans really have to do with the Thanksgiving we really celebrate.

But highlighting this episode even more is the fact that Thanksgiving, as always, sets the Christmas stage and helps build the delicious anticipation we all get in Santa Claus.

Our merry little Thanksgiving Gobble Contest has yielded some festive results that we shared include the laughter of my 5 year old grandson who grabbed the microphone to tell me a Christmas tale that happened in my home just last Christmas. Mind you, I’ve never heard this story before — and it is, as all Santa stories are — a legendary thing.

And that led to the debut of our first edition of our reading of A Visit from St. Nicholas – the Merry Forums sponsored event we call the Twas the Night Before Christmas Read-a-thon.

This is an activity we have talked about for years that we have finally made a reality. And it is a little production sure to produce a smile and loads of Christmas spirit.

We also share some more new music. A new song from Robyn Scott titled I Saw Santa Last Night brings a party feel to this episode.

Song Details:

Title:  I Saw Santa Last Night

Artist:  Robyn Scott

Writers:  Robyn Scott & Brian Dolph

Length:  2:54

BPM:  100

ISRC:  CA8ZW1900001

I Saw Santa Last Night – Links:
Victorian Christmas Part III

The Victorian Christmas, Part III

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The Victorian Christmas, Part III
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The Victorian Christmas is defined by many diverse things over a 60-year period of the 19th century. In this episode of the Merry Little Podcast we explore the struggle the media had in defining the very face of Christmas during the Victorian Era – Santa Claus.

Moore’s poem, A Visit from St. Nicholas, made very clear who Santa was and what he looked like. But from the start of the century to the end, Santa evolved into two really different looking men — thanks to the media, to product producers and merchants who all laid claim to him.

This episode explains why and how that happened.

We also delve into Christmas for the American slave, the song O Little Town of Bethlehem, and we share the names of great Christmas influencers of the century that we don’t hear much about any more – namely the writers Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

This episode also touches on the emerging 19th century trend in recognizing Thanksgiving as an official holiday. Although Thanksgiving had enjoyed better than 200 years of celebration in the United States it really came together with Christmas in the mid-19th century as part of one very meaningful season for Victorian celebrants. Thanksgiving, too, brought its share of superstars to the 19th century Christmas table.

This episode happily features the brilliant work of Toms Mucenieks with his song titled Jingle Bells: Sad Christmas. See his links at:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc2HRnNnK8o
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/toms.mucenieks/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/toms.mucenieks2
Twitter: https://twitter.com/toms_mucenieks

Episode sponsor – Christmas Hall of Fame:
Christmas Hall of Fame

Thanksgiving

Why Christmas Begins with Thanksgiving

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Why Christmas Begins with Thanksgiving
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If there is one thing more predictable than Christmas itself it is the complaining about Christmas. Here we sit two weeks before Thanksgiving and the world is complaining about hearing Christmas music on the radio, seeing Christmas stuff in the stores and seemingly ignoring the great American tradition of Thanksgiving to rush right into Christmas.

Those making those complaints really don’t know much about the history of either Thanksgiving or Christmas. You see, they just go together — and they have since this beginning.

In this episode we explore the wildly popular and insanely celebrated Thanksgiving traditions of old America — from when the Pilgrims hit the shores at Plymouth Rock until Thanksgiving really did, finally, become a holiday in 1870. It was more than a tradition — it was a way of life.

This special episode shares Thanksgiving through the eyes of the 17th, 18th and 19th century media. It explains how it worked then, why certain foods were so cherished and why the day of Thanksgiving itself was actually Christmas to New Englanders.

This is the history of Thanksgiving the historians won’t tell you. It is unfiltered. It has no agenda behind it. It carries nothing but love for the tradition of the day as it was held in such high regard by our ancestors.

We also see how Thanksgiving, while started in New England, was also extremely popular in the other areas of what would become the United States. Long before there was a United States, in fact, Thanksgiving was celebrated from sea to shining sea.

Don’t miss this merry episode and the materials that go with it — such as this great 19th century story that showcases Thanksgiving and love.

You could walk away from this podcast with an entirely new view of Thanksgiving altogether.

Thanksgiving

Ironies of Thanksgiving and Christmas

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Ironies of Thanksgiving and Christmas
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Puritan ThanksgivingThanksgiving and Christmas are not what they seem to be. One holiday was declared with an eye squarely towards the heavens and acknowledging the hand of God. The other holiday is a mostly secular affair marked with wild celebrations, gluttonous feasts and nearly every kind of excess.

One holiday is called Christmas and the other is known as Thanksgiving.

One is noted with arguments of separation of Church and State. The other breaks every rule of separation of Church and State.

In this brief episode we explore the real origins of Thanksgiving and why Christmas drove its creation.

We also share the untold story of Squanto, who was nearly sold into slavery years before our Pilgrims arrived — and period that led to him gaining command of the English language and paving a path for future interaction with those famed starving Puritans of Thanksgiving lore. His story — and the pious gratitude of the new American settlers blazed a path for what would one day come to be called the Christmas season — a time bookended by a sacred holiday to begin with followed by a secular day to complete it.

Thanksgiving and Christmas today quite nearly meld into one long holiday — and time seems to be blurring why it all began in the first place.