Thanksgiving

Black Friday

The shopping day after Thanksgiving of dubious value.

Black Friday is the big shopping day after Thanksgiving and is considered the start of the Christmas shopping season. It’s the day retailers offer discounts on all sorts of items, creating a surge of shoppers out for the best deals. These days, while some of the biggest sales are limited to Black Friday, most retailers start offering “Black Friday” sales ahead of time in the days leading up to the day (and then continuing the sales the days following it, extending Black Friday in both directions).

The name Black Friday comes from late 1950s / early 1960s Philadelphia. People would descend on the city the day after Thanksgiving causing vehicle traffic & herds of people shuffling around the city – suburban shoppers coming to town for the day, relatives visiting for Thanksgiving, fans in town for Saturday’s Army–Navy Game with a day to kill, shoplifters, etc. To describe this chaotic mess the Philadelphia police called the day Black Friday.

Over the years, to try and separate the day from a nickname that implied chaos and headaches, attempts were made to rebrand Black Friday. In the 1960s Philadelphia retailers tried to have this day called “Big Friday” but it didn’t catch on. Eventually they accepted the name but with the spin that the “black” referred to their profits. Even this new interpretation came with the myth that retailers operated at a loss all year and relied on Black Friday and holiday shopping to take them out of the red and into the black financially. While this red to black was never true Black Friday is one of the biggest shopping days of the year and can make up 20-40% of a store’s annual sales.

Shop till you drop

Philadelphia and certain other cities have had Black Friday for decades but it took until the 1990s for it to become a nationwide event. Perhaps not surprisingly it has also become an international shopping event with at least 129 countries using Black Friday to generate sales. International Black Fridays are still held around the same time as the American version despite the absence of a Thanksgiving to pin it to.

The same companies who pushed to make Black Friday a day you’re supposed to buy things, also invented Cyber Monday as a day you’re supposed to buy things. Begun in 2005 Cyber Monday is the Monday after Black Friday when people would supposedly go to work and shop online. This wasn’t true at the time but by pushing this idea it actually became true. Cyber Monday is now the biggest online shopping day of the year in America.

Small Business Saturday is the day after Black Friday and was invented by American Express in 2010. Its goal is to encourage people to shop locally in small businesses … and of course spend more money.

Amazon launched Prime Day in 2015 as a sort of Christmas in July Black Friday sale. That said Amazon has a history of increasing their prices before they release their “deals” for Prime Day. Camelcamelcamel is a price history site that helps shoppers decide whether or not Amazon “deals” are worth it.

A perhaps silver lining to these invented days of commerce is GivingTuesday. This is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving when people are encouraged to donate to charities.

Is it worth it?

All of that said, Black Friday is not what it once was. The days of people lining up in the dark before stores opened, the grotesque violence, for doorbuster deals on big ticket items, are largely over. As mentioned many retailers begin offering Black Friday deals in advance of Black Friday. Some other holidays actually offer better discounts than Black Friday – President’s Day, for example, typically offers bigger discounts on appliances and mattresses. Some companies run the scam of raising prices in the days leading up to Black Friday to then offer a “discount” back down to the previous price. Bait-and-switch deals are also used to lure in customers with the possibility of big savings on scarce items, hoping they’ll shop for other things once there.

There isn’t one answer as to whether shopping on Black Friday is worth it. It depends on the sale and whether or not you really need something. Look into the price history of an item to see if it is really being discounted or not. Shop around for the best deals. Only buy what you need – buying more stuff is not the path to happiness.

Added info: while Black Friday may be a day for big sales, the practice of beginning the Christmas shopping season the day after Thanksgiving existed decades before Black Friday. Thanksgiving parades, most notably the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, end with Santa Claus as the finale. Santa’s appearance ushers in, quite literally, the end of Thanksgiving and the beginning of the Christmas season. Further, in 1939 President Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving from the last Thursday in November to the fourth Thursday in November, specifically to give shoppers (and retailers) an extra week of Christmas shopping (an extra week being dependent on the number of Thursdays in a given year’s November).

If you are feeling nostalgic for the simpler holiday shopping of times gone by you can browse old Sears Wishbooks.

And finally, the Philadelphia area not only gave us the name for Black Friday but it also gave us another day, Mischief Night, the night before Halloween when teens cause havoc.

Tofurkey

The vegan turkey option that’s a part of the long history of meat substitutes.

Tofurkey is a plant-based meat replacement loaf. It’s typically soy and/or wheat based with a stuffing core seasoned with herbs & spices. Its name is a portmanteau of “tofu” and “turkey” and was designed as a turkey substitute for Thanksgiving. When spelled “Tofurky” with no “E” it’s the brand name version created by Seth Tibbot.

Turtle Island Foods is a vegetarian food company started by Tibbot in 1980 in Forest Grove, Oregon. By 1995 Tibbot (who had been living in a 3 story treehouse of his own making) teamed up with vegetarian caterers Hans & Rhonda Wrobel to create a vegan alternative to the Thanksgiving turkey, and the tofurky was born. That first Thanksgiving they produced 500 tofurkys but by 2023 an estimated 5 million had been sold.

meat replacement ideas over the years — Meat replacement options have been around for thousands of years.

Substitute

The tofurkey is a part of the long history of meat replacement foods. Tofu (made from soy beans) has been eaten in China for at least 2,000 years. As Buddhism spread around Asia, preaching non-violence, it gradually converted more and more people to meat substitutes as killing animals and eating meat was strongly discouraged (that said it is unlikely the Buddha was a strict vegetarian). Wheat gluten based food (seitan, “wheat meat”, etc) was also invented in China, around the 6th century CE.

Seventh-day Adventist (a religion started in 1863 from the failed Second Coming predictions of William Miller) encourages a healthy vegetarian diet. Headquartered in Battle Creek, Michigan they opened their Sanitarium in 1903 which was a “premier wellness destination” and became famous under the direction of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. A strong proponent of vegetarianism, Kellogg (who created the Kellogg Company with his brother William Kellogg in 1906) promoted around 100 food items aimed at living a healthy meat-free lifestyle. Kellogg’s Corn Flakes still exist today but one of his other big hits was Protose, a very successful fake meat that (at least texturally) resembled veal or chicken.

While vegetarianism has waxed & waned over the years the world is currently in a boom of plant-based meat replacement options. Beyond Burgers, Gardenburgers, Impossible Foods, MorningStar Farms, No Evil Foods, Quorn, and scores of others have all given people meat alternatives, and the tofurkey is a seasonal part of it all.

Seth Tibbot talks about inventing the tofurky.

Pilgrims, Puritans, and Persecution

The Pilgrims and the Puritans shaped early America, not always for the better.

After Henry VIII renounced the Catholic Church in 1534 it set England on a path towards total separation from Rome. The religious direction of the country swung back and forth between Catholicism and Protestantism until Elizabeth I finalized the direction of the country making England a protestant country through the Church of England.

Religious dissent was not tolerated in Elizabeth’s England. During her reign the government ratcheted up the pressure for religious compliance. People were fined if they did not attend Church of England masses, Catholics practicing in secret risked possible execution if caught, etc. However, once the precedent of rejecting established beliefs had been set, others followed suit.

Pilgrims

During this unstable religious period some people began to create new faith ideas. In Nottinghamshire people started separatist congregations, turning away from the Church of England. To escape English persecution these separatists moved to the Netherlands in the early 17th century. While Holland was more religiously tolerant, it was foreign and had limited economic opportunities since the English separatists were classified as unskilled laborers. They wanted a place to call their own with a new start. In 1620 they left the Netherlands for Southampton where they boarded the Mayflower and the Speedwell sailing to North America. These congregational separatists would become known as the Pilgrims.

Theologically the Pilgrims completely separated themselves from the Church of England. They were largely Calvinists. They believed in a direct personal relationship with God, they rejected a hierarchical church leadership, they rejected most of the sacraments, and they believed in the predestination of souls (that God had already decided who goes to Heaven or Hell).

After 66 days at sea the Pilgrims arrived in Provincetown Harbor, at the tip of Cape Cod. A month later they moved across the harbor to Plymouth founding the Plymouth Colony. Incidentally it wasn’t until 121 years later in 1741 that a boulder was identified as “Plymouth Rock”, the alleged landing spot of the Pilgrims. In 1621 the Pilgrims worked with the Wampanoag to celebrate the first Thanksgiving, the thing they are perhaps most famous for (and an idea they probably borrowed from the Dutch).

Puritans

So who were the Puritans? In a nutshell they were better financed and a lot less tolerant than the Pilgrims. The Puritans arrived in Massachusetts in 1630, 10 years after the Pilgrims, on 17 ships, with a lot more money and a lot more people. By 1640 the Puritans were around 20,000 in number while the Pilgrims of Plymouth were about 2,600.

Unlike the Pilgrims, the Puritans did not see themselves as separatists. In fact, they felt the Church of England didn’t go far enough to separate itself from Catholicism and worked to “purify” the faith (hence the name “Puritans”).

Persecution

For a story of people seeking religious freedom, it’s perhaps surprising how much intolerance was baked into America from the beginning. In a case of the persecuted becoming the persecutor, many of the protestant settlers were intolerant of others just as England had been towards them. In establishing their colonies the settlers used their religious beliefs as a justification to discriminate against the Native Americans as well as other types of Christians.

The Pilgrims tended to be more tolerant than the Puritans, but even the Pilgrims would expel religious dissenters and killed Native Americans. In 1637 the Puritans massacred between 400-700 Pequot people along the Mystic River in Connecticut. Quakers were hung in Boston in 1659 and 1661 for returning to the city after having been cast out for their differing religious beliefs by the Puritans. By the end of the 17th century Puritan intolerance & suspicions led to the Salem witch trials, executing 19 people. Even after the American Revolution, depending on what state you were in, Catholics were banned from holding public office, Jews did not have full civil rights, etc. Puritanical protestants used their beliefs to justify their bigotry.

That said not every American colonist was intolerant. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams all advocated for religious freedom and established the separation of church and state. Adopted in 1791, the First Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees the freedom to exercise religion, but even today the struggle for tolerance and the secularization of government continues. The Pilgrims and the Puritans continue to be mythologized, creating the idea of an America that never existed.

A short crash-course of the Pilgrims coming to North America.

QI discusses the Puritans long history of intolerance.

the First Thanksgiving Menu

Lacking key ingredients, the menu at the first Thanksgiving of 1621 was a bit different than the traditional turkey dinner of today.

In the fall of 1621 the English Pilgrims and the Wampanoag came together in Massachusetts for, what has subsequently become a much mythologized, 3 day harvest festival. The pilgrims had a lot to be thankful for — that they were still alive following the deaths of half their fellow pilgrims the previous winter, that they had their supplies fortified by the Wampanoag, and that they had completed a successful summer growing season. What they ate as they gave thanks is debatable.

Definitely on the Menu

One food that was definitely served was venison. Massasoit, the leader of the Wampanoag, had 5 deer brought to the event. Another meat on the menu was “wild fowl”, but exactly what kind of birds these were is unknown. It’s possible that there was turkey at the first Thanksgiving but more likely it was goose or duck (or a combination). Other regional bird options at the time would have been swan and passenger pigeon.

Also definitely present was corn. The Wampanoag, who used the Three Sisters method of farming, had taught the pilgrims how to grow corn. As the pilgrims had grown a successful crop of Flint corn (aka “Indian corn”) it was cooked into a porridge, a bread, and/or with beans.

Maybe on the Menu

Given that the Plymouth Colony was by the water it’s very likely that seafood was also served. Eels, clams, muscles, cod, bass, and/or lobsters were very likely a part of the meal. It’s worth noting though that, unlike today, lobster was considered a food of last resort.

There were certainly vegetables & fruits on the menu but which ones were never specified (other than corn). Chestnuts, walnuts, beans, onions, carrots, cabbage, pumpkins, and various squashes were all grown in the area. Blueberries, plums, grapes, and raspberries were also grown in the area and could have been present. While cranberries might have been served cranberry sauce definitely was not since the colonists lacked the necessary sugar (and that cranberry sauce didn’t exist for another 50 years).

Not on the Menu

Even though pumpkins may have been present, pumpkin pie definitely was not. The pilgrims had neither the butter nor the flour necessary to make pumpkin pie – they didn’t even have an oven in 1621. Something pumpkin pie-esque that may have been prepared is a spiced pumpkin soup/custard cooked directly inside a pumpkin which was roasted on hot ashes.

There was no stuffing because, again, the colonists lacked the necessary flour. There were also no potatoes (mashed or otherwise). Potatoes came from South America and, while they had made their way to Europe by the late 16th century via the Spanish, they had yet to make their way to New England. There also weren’t any forks on the table since they too hadn’t made their way to North America yet (but on the upside nobody present had an overbite).

A historical reenactment of how to cook some of the foods present at the first Thanksgiving.