Traditions and how we make them

There’s a lovely piece on Nate Silver’s site this week which shares what the American public (at least the food journos at the NYT, FiveThirtyEight readers and their followers on social media) think the “Ultimate Thanksgiving Dinner Menu” should be.

When we think this way about cultural practices it’s all to easy to imagine that there is a specific tradition you can articulate – something definable. But we all know that’s not true. Different families have different versions of the tradition [just as I still use my parent’s friends’ mother’s Christmas Cake recipe but no-one else does].

So for example, it’s worth looking at current regional variations [the map featured on Business Insider is based on regional google search variations]

[Interestingly, we see exactly the same kind of variation for other cultural practices – baby names for example. For some reason (DOH!), although the name Logan has declined from its peak in popularity, according to work done by Prof Alex Bentley and team, in Massachusetts it’s stayed up there.]

This is variation across a population at a specific time but let’s be honest Thanksgiving menus have also varied over time. Duck and goose [rather than turkey] were probably the centrepiece for the first settlers; potatoes and pumpkin pie definitely not on offer.

It’s not until the middle of the 19th Century – at a time when many in the newly independent country were looking to find cultural means to express their shared identity and to anchor their national story somewhere – that the idea of Thanksgiving as a holiday was properly embraced [Lincoln made it law in 1863].In fact, the holiday itself and the core of the current menu [and the story of it] seems to be the product of one woman around that time, Sara Josepha Hale, editor of a popular magazine who repeatedly lobbied presidents and other authorities.  Her “traditional menu” bears all the hallmarks of Victorian cuisine and the New England farmers she came from, doesn’t it?

Just as Charles Dickens* seems to have accidentally created the canonical and template English Christmas (snowy streets, family reunions, Turkey and toasting, carol singers, good will to all men etc) based on his Christmas Carol nostalgic view of how things should be, so Hale seems to have done for Thanksgiving.

Of course, such “traditions” are always open to change as each year there’s opportunity for variation and copying error – maybe some ingredient is not available or some circumstances change. [A good example of this from the world of food and drink is Wildfire Whiskey which is the accidental product of devastating fires].

Other fashions come and go, too [deep-frying turkey seems to be on the wane]. The “tradition” practices around a particular annual event may change (although my father still likes his summer party menu to be EXACTLY the same, year after year!) and be influenced by both the participants and the broader culture in which they live. A decade ago, the UK’s Christmas planning was dominated by one woman cookery writer’s recipes and schedules as Martha Stewart used to dominate across the Atlantic. Other variations come and go as new experts and new influences get followed by those creating and participating in these feasts. Sometimes there are bottlenecks – like Delia Smith, Charles Dickens and Mrs Hale – but the whole thing is moving.

This is the important thing to recognise: traditions – though ever so long-lasting – are constantly in flux. They may provide us with a shared sense of certainty – a fixed point in a shifting world – but they, like us are also in flux. Or, rather, because of us – we make the traditions anew every time. 

*”Prologue to Christmas Carol: I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.
Their faithful Friend and Servant, C.D.

December, 1843.”