A New England Thanksgiving
by Ken Mathews




Halloween is the starting point in a series of events that transition us from autumn into the “holiday season”. The week after Halloween is host to Election Day, Veterans Day’s the following week, followed by one “normal” week – and, presto! It’s Thanksgiving.

I think there’s something unique about Thanksgiving here. This is where it began back in 1620. The major menu item from that first Thanksgiving that has survived in the traditional Thanksgiving dinner is, of course, the turkey. Many of us are sure to have one other item from that menu, corn. Fish is fine too, just be sure it’s cod. Both turkeys and corn have changed dramatically since then, but cod is presumably the same. We’ve added a few items to the menu over time. Cranberries are a must. Don’t forget cranberry sauce. The colonists found the wild North American “crane berry” to be a pleasant surprise. It’s much larger than the European variety they were accustomed to. It’s been a part of New England tradition ever since.

I make whole berry cranberry sauce every Thanksgiving. Here’s a tip for you. Make a double batch and fill up 3 or 4 of the pint size mason jars. The first two or three will be full. If you put lids and bands on them while the sauce is still hot, they will seal themselves. There is no need for the time consuming “hot water bath” processing method. The last jar, the one that never seems to be quite full, is for Thanksgiving. The sealed jars are for Christmas or sometime later in the winter, or for giving to friends and relatives (not that they are mutually exclusive).

Potatoes, squash and corn are a must. Potatoes weren’t around for the first Thanksgiving, they arrived in the Colonies the same year, but in Virginia. They entered the New England landscape a few years later. For the sake of New England tradition, be sure your Thanksgiving potatoes are Kennebecks or Katahdins. Oh - yes, the northeast part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, now called Maine, is a sacred part of New England culture! Squash is an absolute must. Do you know the origin of the name? The Narragansett Indians called it asqutasquash, but the colonists shortened that to squash. Although it is presumed squash originated in South America, it made its way to New England long before Columbus was born and was introduced to the colonists by the Indians. Corn was also new to the colonists. The American Indians had cultivated it for centuries. It was usually ground to make corn meal, then used to make corn breads. Corn bread is fantastic with turkey and cooked veggies.

Thanksgiving should be a day to count our blessings and, at least, reflect on our good fortune. Our society has changed in the past half century. When I was a teenager, nothing was open on Thanksgiving Day, not even a gas station or donut shop. Some of the small variety stores were open in the morning for last minute emergency items, but not past noon! It was a family day, for almost everybody. It was a day to stay at home and entertain family or travel to gather at the home of relatives. Somewhere “greed” and “taking” have crept into the picture. Restaurants and big business are the culprits. Ah - a chance to grab a few more consumer dollars! So many people go shopping and/or have their Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant. I guess that goes along with our artificial society. We’ve managed to take the true meaning and value out of most everything in life, especially life itself.

My most memorable Thanksgiving day was the only one I didn’t spend in New England. I was living in New York City that year and had to work the next day. My girlfriend came down to the city the evening before and brought all the “necessities” for Thanksgiving dinner with her. We had a fantastic dinner and took full advantage of being in New York City by going down to 34th Street to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was more spectacular then you could imagine by watching it on television. Lorne Greene (Yes, Mr. “Bonanza”) was the grand marshal, riding on a horse, of course!

Thanksgiving just wouldn’t be complete without that gigantic newspaper, stuffed full of circulars. Those retailers know when and how to get our attention. It’s marketing and competition at its best. They all open early on Friday with hourly specials and fantastic prices. Let’s see – I have to be at store A at 7:00 am, then Store B at 8:00, hoping to get to store C before they run out of their 8:00 specials, then back to Store A at 9:00, etc, etc, etc. It doesn’t work! If you’re not one of the first to get into the store when they open, quickly grab your purchases and rush to the checkouts, just getting out of that store before noon is the best you can hope for. No matter where you go shopping that day, most of your time is spent in checkout lines. Oh, the joy! Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving. By noon every store has run out of almost everything advertised and the frenzied consumers end up waiting in checkout lines to buy items they hadn’t planned on. Isn’t it amazing how stores always seem to find additional merchandise for those one-hour specials they ran out of in the first few minutes. . . a couple of hours after the sale ended! And of course they were advertised as “store stock only – no rain checks”! Oh yes, I just love it when you wait in line at the checkout for almost an hour and, upon finally getting there, being told the special ended half an hour ago! Believe me, you wouldn’t want to be the “associate” that told me that. That’s one I’ll never loose. Did you ever tell a checkout associate with a waiting line of 20-30 customers “I want to see the store manager – here and now”. . .

Last year we did something special on Thanksgiving Day. We traveled a few miles to enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner with our future daughter-in-law’s family, then returned home and stayed there the rest of the day. The day after Thanksgiving we didn’t shop anywhere. We stayed at home all day. Happy Thanksgiving!!

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About the Author;
Introduction and Background I was born in Nashua, NH in 1948 as our country was recovering from World War II. A few days later, my parents took me home to Hollis, NH, where I lived until going off to college in 1967. My mother was a Hollis native, where my grandparents, her mother and father, lived. My Father was born in Brookline, NH, just west of Hollis. His mother, who was a widow long before I was born, lived in Brookline on the family farm. That area of Southern NH, bordered by the Nissitissett, Nashua, Souhegn and Merrimack rivers was the setting where I experienced life for my first 20 years. Hollis and Brookline were both small New England towns where everybody knew everybody, literally. Most of the people were at least third or fourth generation residents. There was no serious crime, no full time police force and for the most part, people didn’t even think about locking their house doors. There was no need.

The people, their culture and values were very conservative. The landscape, with hundreds of acres of woods, orchards and farmland, has numerous ponds and streams. The largest pond, Long Pond, eventually was renamed Silver Lake. The State of New Hampshire took over the north end of the lake in the 1950’s and made it into “Silver Lake State Park”. That was our major tourist attraction. On hot summer afternoons, particularly on weekends, it was always filled to capacity. Those were the days the “townies” stayed away.

It’s now been half a century since my very earliest memories, shaped by the rural life and culture that is rapidly becoming extinct. In my writing, every now and then, there will be traces of this culture and the values of rural Southern New Hampshire and the Merrimack Valley of New Hampshire and Northern Massachusetts.

Ken@boomerjournals.com