Three Thanksgiving stories to keep the celebration going.
Three Thanksgiving stories to keep the celebration going.
I t’s not Thanksgiving in the Schutte house until we’ve read Harry and Wende Devlin’s Cranberry Thanksgiving. First published in 1971, this cheery holiday picture book follows Maggie and her friend Mr. Whiskers as they work to protect Maggie’s cherished family cranberry bread recipe.
This cranberry bread is famous across the whole countryside, and though Maggie’s grandmother has been hounded by bakeries for years over it, she wants to leave its treasured secrets to her granddaughter. Unfortunately, she has a deep distrust of Maggie’s friend, the aptly named Mr. Whiskers, whom she believes is out to steal the recipe from her. As this story unfolds, we learn that Maggie has invited Mr. Whiskers to be her guest at her and her grandmother’s Thanksgiving table, and her grandmother has invited the overly perfumed Mr. Horace.
Hijinks ensue as one of the dinner guests tries to make off with the recipe and the other must bring him to justice. This funny intrigue, along with the cozy pictures and amusing characters, have made the book a must-read in our home for years.
Cranberry bread, with a hint of orange and absolutely no walnuts, is a treat I rarely make but greatly enjoy whipping up when occasions present themselves. And on Thanksgiving, the cranberry sauce is my domain and has included many iterations, tests, and trials over the years. This love of cranberries led me to wish, for a short time, that I could live on the edge of a cranberry bog like Maggie and her grandmother, but after learning that wolf spiders lurk in cranberry bogs, I dropped the idea.
Even though it’s after Thanksgiving, try to find this little book. And if not, you can view it and listen to it here.
We probably wouldn’t even have such a book if Sarah Josepha Hale hadn’t taken up her pen and pestered quite a few presidents with her requests to formalize Thanksgiving Day. Do you remember Zachary Taylor? Millard Fillmore? Franklin Pierce? James Buchanan? Not very many people do, and maybe if they’d paid attention to Sarah Hale’s letters, they’d be more appreciated. As it was, that excellent man, Abraham Lincoln himself, was the president who finally read and agreed with Sarah’s letters. Clearly, abolishing slavery was his greatest feat, but let’s also be grateful he put Thanksgiving on our calendars.
There is a fascinating book on Sarah Hale’s life, written by Melanie Kirkpatrick and reviewed for National Review by our own literary editor, titled Lady Editor: Sarah Josepha Hale and the Making of the Modern American Woman. I’m personally partial to Hale because we share not only a name (and spell it the correct way) but also a love for literature, America, and Thanksgiving. Children can meet Hale through a colorful picture book, written by Laurie Halse Anderson and amusingly illustrated by Matt Faulkner, titled Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving. Hale was a complicated woman, but her Thanksgiving crusade is undeniably worthy of note and deserves special recognition. Anderson and Faulkner do a terrific job with the tone and focus of this book, and it gives young readers a good historical perspective.
Finally, there’s that wonderful contemporary of Sarah Hale, Louisa May Alcott. This all-American writer knew a thing or two about warming the heart with her depictions of family life and festive celebrations, and her short story “An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving” doesn’t disappoint.
Eight country children are left on their own the night before Thanksgiving when their parents must rush to the bedside of an ailing relative. These capable children find themselves still alone for the holiday and are determined to make the Thanksgiving feast themselves. Numerous disasters follow, each more entertaining than the last, culminating in a joyous reunion of parents and children — with a lot of relatives dropping in as a welcome surprise to boot.
All of this is told in Alcott’s breezy, cheerful style and with a bit of a rustic twang thrown in for good measure.
Hopefully, dear reader, you had a delicious — or at least cozy — Thanksgiving, and if you’d like to prolong the celebration, perhaps you’ll give one or all of these three stories a taste.