The Lamson Library and Learning Commons will close for the Thanksgiving Day holiday at 5 pm on Wednesday, November 25th. The building will re-open at 6 pm on Sunday November 30th.
Here are the answers to last week’s TRUE/FALSE Thanksgiving Day quiz.
- The Pilgrims introduced the Thanksgiving Day tradition in the United States.
- The poem Over the River and Through the Wood, by Lydia Marie Child, captured the tradition of people gathering for the Thanksgiving holiday.
- Sarah Josepha Hale is credited for the creation of the modern Thanksgiving holiday.
- At the first Thanksgiving, Pilgrims served pumpkins, turkey, corn and squash.
- President Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863.
FALSE. Indian tribes in the Americas had celebrated the harvest for centuries. Also, states like Virginia and Texas have also made plausible claims for hosting the first Thanksgiving celebration in the New World bringing into the doubt that it was introduced by the Pilgrims.
FALSE(well, technically!). “Over the River and through the Wood” was originally entitled “The New England Boys’ Song: About Thanksgiving Day” and there were 12 verses. The original poem also included “grandfather’s” house, not “grandmother’s house.
TRUE. New Hampshire native Sarah Josepha Hale, waged a 50 year campaign through her role as the editor of “Godley’s Lady’s Book” to “ensure that the last Thursday in November shall be the Day of National Thanksgiving for the American people.”
FALSE. The Pilgrims may have eaten such foods, but given that they were indigenous exclusively to the Americas, it is most likely that these harvest treasures were provided to the Pilgrims by local Indian tribes.
FALSE. Individual states celebrated Thanksgiving for decades before Congress made the holiday legal in 1941. President Roosevelt changed the date from the last Thursday to the 4th Thursday to accommodate a request from the National Association of Merchants who wanted more shopping days before Christmas. Thus, Black Friday was born!
Sources consulted: Thanksgiving: the true story by Penny Coleman and Lies my teacher told me: everything your American history textbook got wrong by James W. Loewen.
One Comment
Do I get some sort of prize (or at least a mention) for being the only person commenting publicly on the Thanksgiving Quiz who found question 3 to be the only True statement? (OK; I skipped question 2.) People can review the public answers by clicking on the previous main post titled “Thanksgiving Quiz”.