tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/thanksgiving-13712/articlesThanksgiving – The Conversation2023-11-20T19:56:02Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2174522023-11-20T19:56:02Z2023-11-20T19:56:02ZThis Thanksgiving − and on any holiday − these steps will help prevent foodborne illness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559841/original/file-20231116-15-tommvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C21%2C7205%2C5368&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A delicious – and safe – holiday spread involves careful foreplanning and preparation.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/holiday-turkey-dinner-royalty-free-image/836012728?phrase=thanksgiving+dinner&searchscope=image%2Cfilm&adppopup=true">Lauri Patterson/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Thanksgiving is a time for gathering with friends and family around the dinner table. No one wants to cause their family or friends to get sick from a foodborne illness on this holiday or any other occasion. </p>
<p>The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 1 in 6 Americans, or 48 million people, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/2011-foodborne-estimates.html">get sick from a foodborne illness</a> each year. According to the CDC, more than 1 million of these people get sick from <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/salmonella/symptoms-causes/syc-20355329">salmonella</a>, which is the primary pathogen associated with poultry. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://news.clemson.edu/our-experts/kimberly-baker/">food safety specialist</a>, I educate food producers, manufacturers and consumers on how to ensure the safety of the food they produce.</p>
<p>This Thanksgiving – and, really, for any gathering – make sure you understand how to prepare your meal to ensure that everyone goes home without a foodborne illness. Understanding the safe food practices to follow at home during preparation, cooking, serving and storing leftovers will keep your holiday meal delicious and safe to eat.</p>
<h2>Pathways to foodborne illness</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/general/index.html">Salmonella is a bacteria</a> that causes a foodborne illness called salmonellosis. Salmonella is also often linked to undercooked poultry and beef, undercooked eggs, raw milk and produce. Symptoms of salmonellosis, which include diarrhea, fever and stomach pain, <a href="https://www.foodsafety.gov/food-poisoning/bacteria-and-viruses">can begin six hours to six days</a> after eating contaminated food. </p>
<p>Food contamination occurs when pathogens, toxins or chemicals make their way into food. <a href="https://www.fda.gov/media/83271/download">Common pathogens</a> that are attributed to foodborne illnesses are salmonella, E. coli, listeria and norovirus. Botulism is a foodborne illness that is caused by a toxin that is produced by a bacterium. A bacterial or viral contaminant can get on the food at any point along the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/production-chain.html">food production chain</a>, from the field, water, equipment, processing, handling, transportation, storage or preparation.</p>
<p>Every person who grows, handles, transports, stores or prepares food along the food production chain plays a very important role in detecting, eliminating or reducing contamination.</p>
<h2>The perennial wisdom of hand-washing</h2>
<p>Any food preparation and handling should always start with hand-washing. </p>
<p>There are five steps to <a href="https://www.foodsafety.gov/blog/wash-your-hands-health">proper hand-washing</a>: </p>
<ul>
<li>Wash hands with running water. </li>
<li>Apply <a href="https://hgic.clemson.edu/snowman-hands-can-prevent-food-borne-illness/">enough soap to create a complete lather</a>.</li>
<li>Scrub hands, including the top, between fingers, around fingernails and wrists for a minimum of 20 seconds.</li>
<li>Rinse hands under running water.</li>
<li>Dry with a paper towel or air dry. </li>
</ul>
<p>Hands should also be washed any time during food preparation that your hands have touched another food or surface that may have pathogens on it. This includes handling raw meat, poultry, seafood or eggs, as well as touching unwashed produce, blowing your nose, touching your cellphone or petting a cat or dog, to name a few.</p>
<p>A study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service, which is the branch of the USDA that makes sure meat, poultry and eggs are safe for consumption, observed that <a href="https://www.foodsafety.gov/blog/millions-americans-dirty-hands-are-spreading-dangerous-bacteria">97% of study participants failed to wash their hands</a> during food preparation when they should have. So while hand-washing might seem like a no-brainer, clearly it’s not. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3PmVJQUCm4E?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">It’s hard to overstate the importance of hand-washing prior to food handling.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Rinsing the poultry beforehand is a no-no</h2>
<p>While preparing your meal, there are a few critical food-handling steps to follow to prevent cross contamination, or the transfer of pathogens from one surface to another. </p>
<p>First, keep raw meat, poultry and seafood away from raw or ready-to-eat foods. For example, do not prepare your raw turkey next to where you are preparing a salad, or do not cut produce on a cutting board that had raw meat on it without washing it thoroughly first. </p>
<p>Many people may not realize that it is unsafe to rinse poultry before cooking. The USDA recommends <a href="https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2016/11/16/wash-or-not-wash">leaving poultry unwashed</a> because it can cause pathogens to easily spread throughout the kitchen from the spray of the water. The only exception is a brined turkey. Brined turkeys are required to be rinsed before cooking, but use extra caution when doing so, and be sure to sanitize all surfaces in and around the sink afterward.</p>
<h2>Having a clean work surface is critical</h2>
<p>Another key step to keeping your Thanksgiving meal safe is to effectively <a href="https://extension.colostate.edu/docs/pubs/foodnut/kitchen-sanitize.pdf">clean and sanitize kitchen surfaces and equipment</a> following instructions on your kitchen cleaner. </p>
<p><a href="https://extension.sdstate.edu/make-your-own-kitchen-cleaning-sanitizer">Chlorine bleach</a> is a commonly used sanitizer that can be used in the kitchen, but there are a few things to know before using it. Chlorine bleach works best when mixed with cool – not hot – water and should be made fresh daily before using. To prepare, mix a teaspoon of bleach with one quart of water, and let the solution cover the surface for one minute before wiping, or allow to air dry. </p>
<h2>Cooking the meat to safe temperatures</h2>
<p>Cooking the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-turkey-the-main-dish-on-thanksgiving-193702">Thanksgiving turkey</a> or ham are two more critical steps in preparing a safe holiday meal. </p>
<p>Before cooking turkey, <a href="https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2016/11/18/how-safely-thaw-turkey">make sure it is completely thawed</a> in the refrigerator. For large birds, this may require up to one week of thawing time, so plan ahead. </p>
<p>All poultry must be cooked to a minimum of 165 degrees Fahrenheit. <a href="https://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheet/how-to-cook-turkey/">Cooking instructions</a> and cooking temperatures will vary based on the cooking method that you choose. But no matter the cooking method, make sure to take the temperature of the turkey in the thickest portion of the breast meat and innermost part of the thigh, being sure not to touch bone with the thermometer. Poultry must be cooked to 165 F because this is the <a href="https://www.fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media_file/2021-12/Appendix-A.pdf">temperature that is required to kill salmonella</a> instantly. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560489/original/file-20231120-27-f8dj5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman stands in front of a cooked turkey that's sitting on a kitchen counter as she smiles and demonstrates how to handle poultry." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560489/original/file-20231120-27-f8dj5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560489/original/file-20231120-27-f8dj5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560489/original/file-20231120-27-f8dj5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560489/original/file-20231120-27-f8dj5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560489/original/file-20231120-27-f8dj5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560489/original/file-20231120-27-f8dj5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560489/original/file-20231120-27-f8dj5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Food safety expert Kimberly Baker discusses the finer points of preparing a Thanksgiving turkey.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Clemson University</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Based on the size of your bird and your cooking method, determine the amount of cooking time it will need well ahead of time. If you are cooking it in the oven with other dishes, consider that some extra roasting time may be needed, as the temperature of the oven decreases and extends cooking time every time the oven door is opened. You want to make sure you have enough time to cook the turkey thoroughly and allow approximately 30 minutes of rest time at room temperature before carving.</p>
<p>If you are <a href="https://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheet/holiday-meats-not-just-turkey/">preparing ham</a>, first determine whether it is fully precooked at the time of purchase or if cooking is required. Even if fully cooked, hams still need to be heated to a minimum of 140 F. Those that require cooking need to be cooked to 145 F. Like turkey, roasting time will be based on the size of the ham – plan ahead so you know when to put it in the oven. A thermometer should be used to measure the temperature of the thickest portion of the ham without touching bone.</p>
<h2>Safe handling and storage should not be an afterthought</h2>
<p>Safe handling of the turkey, ham and other side dishes does not end after they are cooked. </p>
<p>If the food is served buffet style and will be kept out at room temperature for an extended period of time, make sure to have a plan to keep hot food hot, which means above 135 F, and cold foods below 40 F, which is equivalent to the maximum safe temperature of a refrigerator. For example, hot foods can be kept hot in a preheated chafing dish, and cold foods can be served in their serving dish that is nestled in a bowl or tray of ice. If you are unable to keep the food hot or cold during service, then make sure they are put away in the refrigerator within two hours after serving. </p>
<p>Thanksgiving leftovers should be stored in the refrigerator for <a href="https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/leftovers-and-food-safety">no more than three to four days</a>. If you have a lot of leftovers that won’t be eaten within this time frame, consider freezing them for a quick meal at a later date, then thaw and eat them within three to four months for best quality. Remember to label and date leftovers so you know what they are and when they were put in the refrigerator or freezer.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217452/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kimberly Baker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Keeping guests safe involves far more than just careful cooking − hand-washing, keeping work surfaces clean, safe handling and proper storage are also key ingredients.Kimberly Baker, Food Systems and Safety Program Team Director and Assistant Extension Specialist, Clemson UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2168692023-11-20T15:12:59Z2023-11-20T15:12:59ZThank gluten’s complex chemistry for your light, fluffy baked goods<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560048/original/file-20231116-27-u7q41v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1996%2C1496&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gluten is in a variety of breads and baked goods − it helps them rise and gives bread its characteristic texture. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/woman-kneading-dough-royalty-free-image/147205762?phrase=gluten&adppopup=true">Adam Gault/OJO Images via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Within the bread, rolls and baked goods on many tables this holiday season is an extraordinary substance – gluten. Gluten’s unique chemistry makes foods airy and stretchy.</p>
<p><a href="https://chemistry.richmond.edu/faculty/knolin/">I’m a chemist</a> who teaches a chemistry of cooking class, and every year I ask my students, “What is gluten?” Common answers are “a sugar” or “a carbohydrate.” But rarely does anyone get it right. </p>
<h2>So, what is gluten?</h2>
<p>Gluten is a <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2019.00101">complex mixture of proteins</a>. It makes up <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jgh.13703">85%-90% of the protein in flour</a>. Proteins are natural biological macromolecules composed of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/amino-acid">chains of amino acids</a> that fold upon themselves to adopt a variety of shapes. </p>
<p>Gluten comes from the endosperm of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcr098">wheat, rye, barley and related plants</a>. The endosperm is a tissue in the plant’s seeds that serves as a storage location for starch and protein. The milling process that creates flour releases the contents of the endosperm, including gluten.</p>
<p>The main proteins in the gluten mixture are <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/gliadin">gliadin</a> and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/glutenin">glutenin</a>. These proteins make up much of <a href="https://modernistcuisine.com/mc/gluten-how-does-it-work/">flour-based food products’ structure</a>. During the kneading or mixing part of making dough, these proteins form an elastic mesh, often referred to as the gluten network.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560047/original/file-20231116-27-zi3eck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A close up of a slice of bread, showing the white gluten network with darker holes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560047/original/file-20231116-27-zi3eck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560047/original/file-20231116-27-zi3eck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560047/original/file-20231116-27-zi3eck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560047/original/file-20231116-27-zi3eck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560047/original/file-20231116-27-zi3eck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560047/original/file-20231116-27-zi3eck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560047/original/file-20231116-27-zi3eck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The texture of your bread will depend on how much you knead and work the dough and how the gluten network forms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/cut-loaf-of-round-shaped-wheat-bread-royalty-free-image/1468126179?phrase=bread">ligora/iStock via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Creating a gluten network</h2>
<p>Forming a gluten network is key for getting dough to rise. The network acts as a balloon that traps gases during the rising, proofing and baking processes. During <a href="https://www.theperfectloaf.com/guides/proofing-bread-dough/">rising and proofing</a>, when the dough is given time to expand, yeast in the dough releases carbon dioxide as it eats and digests the sugars present. <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms8081142">This process is called fermentation</a>. </p>
<p>The baking process produces a number of <a href="https://www.campdenbri.co.uk/blogs/bread-dough-rise-causes.php">different gases</a>, such as carbon dioxide, water in the form of steam, ethanol vapors and nitrogen. The gluten network traps these gases and the dough expands like a balloon. If the gluten network is too strong, the gases will not produce enough pressure to make the dough rise. If it’s too weak, the balloon will burst and the dough will not stay risen. How strong the gluten network ends up being depends on how long you knead and mix the dough. </p>
<p>For the <a href="https://www.seriouseats.com/what-is-gluten-free-bread-dough-pasta">gluten network to form</a>, you need to knead or mix the dough with some water – this aligns the proteins.</p>
<p>The glutenin proteins come in long and short chains that adopt coiled structures. These coils are held together through attractive forces between the loops of the coils known as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/hydrogen-bonding">intramolecular hydrogen bonds</a>. Kneading and mixing break some of the attractive forces and align the glutenin proteins. </p>
<p>Bonds form between the individual glutenin chains through sulfur atoms on some of the amino acids that make up glutenin. When these amino acids – called cysteines – are brought into contact with each other, the sulfur atoms bond to one another, creating a linkage called a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/disulfide-bond">disulfide bond</a>.</p>
<p>As more and more cysteines form disulfide bonds with cysteines on neighboring proteins, the network grows. So, the more proteins present and the longer the kneading process, the stronger the gluten network. Bread flour has <a href="https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/high-gluten-flour#what-it-is">higher protein concentrations</a> – 12%-14% – than other flours, so bread flour leads to a stronger gluten network and more rise.</p>
<p>The gliadin proteins are smaller and more compact than glutenin proteins. During the kneading process, gliadin disperses throughout the glutenin polymers. While glutenin provides elasticity and strength to dough, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12551-017-0367-2">gliadin proteins</a> make the dough viscous, or fluidlike, and dense.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qWB14oUtBhQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Gluten is made up of two proteins: glutenin and gliadin.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Strengthening and shortening</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.cargill.com/salt-in-perspective/salt-in-bread-dough">Adding salt</a> neutralizes any charges that may be present on the proteins. This minimizes any repulsion between the proteins and brings them closer together. This process forces water out from between the proteins, which both brings the proteins closer together and stabilizes the network. So, adding salt will create a stronger network that increases the amount of stretching and pulling the dough can withstand. </p>
<p>Fats like butter or margarine will <a href="https://www.ifst.org/lovefoodlovescience/resources/fats-and-oils-shortening">weaken, or “shorten,”</a> the gluten network. Typically, recipes ask you to mix the fats with the flour before adding water or milk. This is so the fats coat the flour. And because fats are hydrophobic, or water-repellent, this process prevents the water that helps the gluten network form from reaching the proteins. This results in a softer, more tender baked good. </p>
<p>Without the formation of the gluten network, baked goods would not rise into the light and fluffy delicious dishes we love.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216869/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristine Nolin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ever wonder why bakers spend so long kneading their dough? They’re trying to form a gluten network, which helps the bread rise.Kristine Nolin, Associate Professor of Chemistry, University of RichmondLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2135172023-11-20T13:18:15Z2023-11-20T13:18:15ZThanksgiving stories gloss over the history of US settlement on Native lands<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560223/original/file-20231118-17-87anep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C361%2C2389%2C2070&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Native Americans depicted at the first Thanksgiving feast, in a 1960 film about the Pilgrims’ first year in America.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/MoviesEducationalFilms/6e19fb0444d146fdb6f09520e734f7a7/photo?Query=thanksgiving%20dinner%20native%20americans&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=546&currentItemNo=9&vs=true&vs=true">AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Too often, K-12 social studies classes in the U.S. <a href="https://theconversation.com/where-are-the-voices-of-indigenous-peoples-in-the-thanksgiving-story-51089">teach a mostly glossed-over story of U.S. settlement</a>. Textbooks tell the stories of adventurous European explorers founding colonies in the “New World,” and stories of the “first Thanksgiving” frequently portray happy colonists and Native Americans feasting together. Accounts of the colonies’ battle for independence frame it as a righteous victory. Native American removal might be mentioned as a sad footnote, but the triumph of the pioneer spirit takes center stage. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://english.utk.edu/people/lisa-king/">scholar of Native American and Indigenous rhetorics</a>, I argue that this superficial story hides the realities of what many historians and activists call “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/2201473X.2011.10648799?needAccess=true">settler colonialism</a>.” Historian <a href="https://www.swinburne.edu.au/research/our-research/access-our-research/find-a-researcher-or-supervisor/researcher-profile/?id=lveracini">Lorenzo Veracini</a> asserts that colonial activity isn’t just about a nation sending out explorers and bringing back resources, or what scholars refer to as “classical colonialism.” It’s also about what happens when a new people moves in and attempts to establish itself as the “superior” community whose culture, language and rights to resources and land supersede those of the Indigenous people who already live there. </p>
<p>When U.S. history, culture and politics are understood through the lens of settler colonialism, it’s easier to understand how, as <a href="https://www.vu.edu.au/library/about-the-library/special-collections-archives/patrick-wolfe-collection">historian Patrick Wolfe</a> wrote, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240">settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure, not an event</a>.” </p>
<h2>US policies and why they matter</h2>
<p>While settler colonial policies can include genocide, they take many forms. </p>
<p><a href="https://youtu.be/if-BOZgWZPE?si=Hp8OH6fRYz85pVqG">Deceptive and broken treaties</a> forced Native American nations to give up vast portions of their homelands. For example, in eastern Tennessee, the Treaty of Holston, signed in 1791, was made in theory to help establish clear boundaries between Cherokee and settler communities. </p>
<p>The U.S. government would receive land, and the Cherokee would receive annual payments, goods and the promise of the government’s protection in return. Instead, settlers moved onto Cherokee land and the U.S. government did not intervene. By 1798, the First Treaty of Tellico forced the Cherokee to give up the land the settlers had illegally taken, plus some. Year by year, the Cherokee and other tribes were pushed out.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/if-BOZgWZPE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">How the U.S. acquired Native land.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/indian.html#:%7E:text=The%20Indian%20Removal%20Act%20was,many%20resisted%20the%20relocation%20policy.">Forced outright removal</a> beyond treaties further deprived Native American nations of their land and attempted to erase them. Instead of supporting any kind of coexistence, legislation such as the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/indian-treaties">1830 Indian Removal Act</a> called for the complete removal of all tribes east of the Mississippi River. </p>
<p>Though the Cherokee and others fought such legislation in the courtroom, the result was the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/trte/learn/historyculture/what-happened-on-the-trail-of-tears.htm#:%7E:text=Between%201830%20and%201850%2C%20about,Many%20were%20treated%20brutally.">displacement of 100,000 Native people</a> from the eastern U.S. between 1830-1850 and the deaths of thousands of Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee and Seminole people on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-long-history-of-separating-families-in-the-us-and-how-the-trauma-lingers-98616">Trail of Tears</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/02/09/583987261/so-what-exactly-is-blood-quantum">Blood quantum systems of identification</a> attempted to make Native American people “disappear” by assigning Native American identity through counting the fractional amount of “Indian blood” and encouraging intermarriage with non-Native people. Once a certain degree of intermarriage was reached, a person was no longer considered Native and was not eligible for tribal enrollment.</p>
<p>As scholar and citizen of the Chickasaw Nation <a href="http://www.elizabethrule.com">Elizabeth Rule</a> notes, many Native nations today have adopted the use of blood quantum as a form of identification, which remains a controversial issue inside and outside Native communities. At the same time, she observes, it is the sovereign right of those nations to make these choices. However, the problem of erasure through this system remains, as blood quantum requirements can deny citizenship to clear lineal descendants and complicate discussions about <a href="https://www.hcn.org/articles/indigenous-affairs-communities-7-questions-about-freedmen-answered">Freedmen</a>.</p>
<p>Alongside these policies, <a href="https://www.bia.gov/service/federal-indian-boarding-school-initiative">education was used as a tool</a> to eradicate Native American languages and cultures by removing Native children from their families and forbidding them to speak their languages or practice their cultures. As the founder of the first boarding school, <a href="https://carlisleindianschoolproject.com/">Carlisle Indian Industrial School</a>, Richard Henry Pratt is well known for arguing to “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” Abuse of students was not uncommon. Many boarding school survivors experienced the trauma of losing connections to their families and cultures, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/native-american-boarding-schools-victims-3f927e5054b6790cef1c6012d8616ad6">a pain that is still felt today</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560224/original/file-20231118-31-6mz01y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman protestor, standing with others, holding a sign that says 'This is Native America.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560224/original/file-20231118-31-6mz01y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560224/original/file-20231118-31-6mz01y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560224/original/file-20231118-31-6mz01y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560224/original/file-20231118-31-6mz01y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560224/original/file-20231118-31-6mz01y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560224/original/file-20231118-31-6mz01y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560224/original/file-20231118-31-6mz01y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Native Americans and their allies hold a demonstration for Indigenous Peoples Day in 2015, in Seattle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if-BOZgWZPE">AP Photo/Elaine Thompson</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Twentieth-century U.S. policies of <a href="https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/11/01/uprooted-the-1950s-plan-to-erase-indian-country">relocation and political termination</a> further attempted to absolve the federal government of its treaty responsibilities to Native nations. If the U.S. government could “terminate” tribal nations by disbanding them as nations, then all obligations to tribes would legally disappear and all remaining tribal land would revert to government ownership. </p>
<p>After the passing of House Concurrent Resolution 108 in 1953, more than 100 tribes and 13,000 Native people <a href="https://americanarchive.org/exhibits/native-narratives/termination-relocation-restoration">experienced termination</a>, and more than 1 million acres of land were lost. Further federal policies such as the Indian Relocation Act of 1956 encouraged tribal members to permanently leave reservations and relocate to cities to find work and thus assimilate into U.S. society. </p>
<p>Overall, these policies were not fully carried out, and many tribal nations advocated for their status to be restored. Yet real damage was done to the tribal nations that endured termination, and relocated tribal members faced discrimination and disconnection. </p>
<h2>Reducing harm</h2>
<p>It isn’t possible to simply undo all of these policies and their impact. Yet scholars <a href="https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/18630">Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang</a> acknowledge that challenging those policies and reducing their influence, known as settler harm reduction, is a first step toward change. But for change to happen, those who benefit from the settler colonial system – whether original settlers or anyone today who gains advantage from these policies – need to work with Native American nations and communities toward finding active ways to do better. </p>
<p>The starting point is identifying the stories that still circulate in the U.S. about Native Americans and finding ways to <a href="https://rnt.firstnations.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/MessageGuide-Allies-screen.pdf">change settler colonial assumptions</a> that still reinforce Native American erasure. With Thanksgiving right around the corner, I believe teaching the <a href="https://www.mayflower400uk.org/education/who-were-the-pilgrims/2019/july/the-story-of-thanksgiving-and-the-national-day-of-mourning/">Thanksgiving story</a> alongside the Wampanoag peoples of today is an easy place to start. The past cannot be undone, but it doesn’t have to dictate the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213517/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Michelle King does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of Native American and Indigenous rhetorics writes about the harm done to Native American nations through colonization and what can be done to reduce it.Lisa Michelle King, Associate Professor of English, University of TennesseeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2176222023-11-17T13:29:07Z2023-11-17T13:29:07ZThanksgiving sides are delicious and can be nutritious − here’s the biochemistry of how to maximize the benefits<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560008/original/file-20231116-25-qa3919.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=371%2C19%2C1212%2C1371&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Side dishes made with colorful vegetables are a holiday staple for many. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/thanksgiving-table-with-turkey-and-sides-royalty-free-image/1036967058?phrase=thanksgiving+vegetables&adppopup=true">VeselovaElena/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>While people usually think first about the turkey or the ham during holiday meals, the sides are what help balance your plate. Colorful vegetables like green beans, collard greens, roasted carrots and mashed sweet potatoes are loaded with important micronutrients. But how you prepare them will help determine whether you get the most nutritional value out of each bite this holiday season.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://blog.richmond.edu/pollocklab/">a biochemist</a>, I know that food is made up of many chemical substances that are crucial for human growth and function. These chemical substances are called nutrients and can be divided into macronutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats and proteins, and micronutrients, such as vitamins and minerals.</p>
<p>Vegetables are <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/micronutrient-malnutrition/micronutrients/index.html">full of micronutrients</a> that human bodies need for metabolism – or converting food into energy – as well as to form and maintain cells and tissues. These micronutrients can be classified into three types: minerals, water-soluble vitamins and fat-soluble vitamins.</p>
<h2>Minerals</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559444/original/file-20231114-25-uczoq8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Alt text" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559444/original/file-20231114-25-uczoq8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559444/original/file-20231114-25-uczoq8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=135&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559444/original/file-20231114-25-uczoq8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=135&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559444/original/file-20231114-25-uczoq8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=135&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559444/original/file-20231114-25-uczoq8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=169&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559444/original/file-20231114-25-uczoq8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=169&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559444/original/file-20231114-25-uczoq8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=169&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The dietary minerals found in vegetables.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julie Pollock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The greens – collard greens, kale, spinach, green beans – on your table are rich sources of the elements <a href="https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-Consumer/">magnesium</a> and <a href="https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Calcium-Consumer/">calcium</a>. Your body needs these two major minerals for muscle movement and bone health. </p>
<p>Magnesium is essential for many of the enzymes that play important roles in DNA synthesis and repair, as well as protein production and metabolic function. The cellular processes, especially <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/dna-synthesis">accurate DNA synthesis</a>, are important in protecting your body from developing diseases such as cancer. Calcium helps regulate <a href="https://www.news-medical.net/health/pH-in-the-Human-Body.aspx">the pH in your body</a>, influences your metabolism and strengthens your nerve impulses. Nerve impulses are important for your senses and your memory. </p>
<p>Greens are also <a href="https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Iron-Consumer/">a source of iron</a> – you were right, Popeye! – which is particularly important for the oxygen-binding proteins hemoglobin and myoglobin that transfer and store oxygen in your body, respectively. In addition, human bodies require iron for processes that help generate energy, protect against oxidative damage and make hormones.</p>
<p>Orange vegetables – carrots, pumpkin, sweet potatoes and squash – contain some levels of calcium and iron as well as <a href="https://doi.org/10.3945/an.112.003533">high levels of potassium</a>. Potassium is important for muscle movement, nerve impulses and maintaining low blood pressure. Although not a colorful vegetable, white potatoes also contain very <a href="https://doi.org/10.3945/an.112.003533">high levels of potassium</a>. </p>
<h2>Water-soluble vitamins</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559445/original/file-20231114-15-is56e7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two diagrams showing Vitamin B6, a hexagon with three branches with 'OH' attached, and vitamin C, a hexagon with two Os and four branches with OH coming off." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559445/original/file-20231114-15-is56e7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559445/original/file-20231114-15-is56e7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559445/original/file-20231114-15-is56e7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559445/original/file-20231114-15-is56e7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559445/original/file-20231114-15-is56e7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559445/original/file-20231114-15-is56e7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559445/original/file-20231114-15-is56e7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The structures of water-soluble vitamins found in vegetables.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julie Pollock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most green and orange vegetables contain <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.nu.14.070194.002103">high levels of vitamin C</a>. Vitamin C is an important water-soluble vitamin because it acts as an antioxidant. <a href="https://theconversation.com/13-ways-to-get-more-antioxidants-and-why-you-need-to-70035">Antioxidants protect your cells</a> against certain types of damage caused by very reactive molecules known as free radicals. </p>
<p>In addition, vitamin C can enhance immune response and is essential for the <a href="https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/collagen">synthesis of collagen</a> – the major protein in your skin. Although taking large levels of vitamin C will not <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279544/">keep you from ever getting sick</a>, a healthy amount can help your skin stay soft, help you avoid diseases like scurvy and potentially shorten the length of a cold.</p>
<p>The white potatoes on the table have high levels of <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13093229">vitamin B6</a>, which is a component of enzymes essential for carbohydrate, fat and protein metabolism. It also helps create healthy blood cells and is important in the production of neurotransmitters such as <a href="https://brain.harvard.edu/hbi_news/exploring-how-serotonin-and-dopamine-interact/">serotonin and dopamine</a>, which both regulate pleasure and happiness.</p>
<h2>Fat-soluble vitamins</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two diagrams, the left showing the chemical structure of Vitamin K, the right showing the chemical structure of Vitamin A" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559446/original/file-20231114-29-d1rqea.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559446/original/file-20231114-29-d1rqea.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=151&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559446/original/file-20231114-29-d1rqea.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=151&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559446/original/file-20231114-29-d1rqea.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=151&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559446/original/file-20231114-29-d1rqea.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=190&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559446/original/file-20231114-29-d1rqea.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=190&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559446/original/file-20231114-29-d1rqea.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=190&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The structures of fat-soluble vitamins found in vegetables.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julie Pollock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of the most important vitamins you get from the green vegetables, especially leafy ones like kale, spinach, collards and Brussels sprouts, is <a href="https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminK-Consumer/">vitamin K</a>. Vitamin K is an essential component of enzymes that make proteins in bone and proteins that help clot blood after injuries. </p>
<p><a href="https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminA-Consumer/">Vitamin A</a> is another important fat-soluble vitamin found in spinach and orange vegetables. The source of vitamin A in vegetables is actually <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/beta-carotene-benefits">beta carotene</a>, which gets broken into two molecules of active vitamin A after consumption. Vitamin A is essential to vision as well as cell differentiation, reproduction, bone health and immune system function. </p>
<h2>Absorption of micronutrients</h2>
<p>Consuming vegetables that contain micronutrients is very important, but just as important is your body’s ability to absorb the nutrients and transport them to the cells that need them. Macronutrients like carbohydrates, fats and proteins that primarily make up the food we eat are very efficiently absorbed into your bloodstream. </p>
<p>However, only 3%-10% of some micronutrients <a href="https://www.pearson.com/en-us/subject-catalog/p/science-of-nutrition-the/P200000007016/9780135371565">actually get distributed throughout your body</a>. Other ingredients and factors in your food can moderate whether you absorb vitamins and minerals.</p>
<p>Therefore, it is important to prepare vegetables in a way that can enhance the body’s ability to absorb their essential vitamins and minerals.</p>
<p>One good example of this is iron – specifically, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11051049">iron in the food you consume</a>. Heme iron, which is the form necessary for incorporation into your body, comes only from animal products and is the most easily absorbed. </p>
<p>The plant-based iron contained in green and orange vegetables, on the other hand, is not bound to a heme, and your body can’t absorb it as readily. Consuming vitamin C alongside vegetables can <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1980.tb21325.x">increase the uptake of nonheme iron</a>. So, a squeeze of lemon or orange juice can not only enhance the flavor of your vegetables but the micronutrients you obtain from them.</p>
<p>Fat-soluble vitamins, like vitamin K and vitamin A, are best absorbed when the meal <a href="https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002399.htm">contains some dietary fat</a>, which you can get from oil. This is particularly important for vitamin K because green vegetables are its primary dietary source. This is in contrast to the other minerals and vitamins discussed that can also be obtained from animals or legumes that contain some amounts of dietary fat already.</p>
<p>After consumption, vitamin K must be packaged with other fats in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/nutrit/nuab061">structures called micelles or lipoproteins</a> that can move around in the bloodstream. That means that it’s a good idea to prepare your greens with some source of fat – olive oil, avocado oil, butter or even a little bacon grease.</p>
<p>So, if you’re staring at the southern style collard greens on your plate and wondering whether they’re as healthy as eating a raw green leaf, think about it in terms of the biochemistry. While raw greens provide you with plenty of fiber and minerals, they won’t help your vitamin K levels as greens cooked in oil will. </p>
<p>Enjoy your time around the holiday table. Load up your plate with everything you like to eat, and make sure to not go completely fat-free in order to help your body process and use all the micronutrients.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217622/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie Pollock receives funding from the National Institutes of Health. </span></em></p>The turkey doesn’t have to be the star this Thanksgiving. Vegetable side dishes are packed with nutrients − depending on how you prepare them, they can help keep you energized this holiday season.Julie Pollock, Associate Professor of Chemistry, University of RichmondLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2169562023-11-17T13:28:07Z2023-11-17T13:28:07ZUnthanksgiving Day: A celebration of Indigenous resistance to colonialism, held yearly at Alcatraz<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559724/original/file-20231115-23-6hallp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C8%2C2951%2C1902&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Teo Kali, an Aztec cultural group, participates in a sunrise "Unthanksgiving Day" ceremony with Native Americans on Nov. 24, 2005, on Alcatraz Island.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/san-francisco-united-states-the-teo-kali-aztec-cultural-news-photo/56269934"> Kara Andrade/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Each year on the fourth Thursday of November, when many people start to take stock of the marathon day of cooking ahead, Indigenous people from diverse tribes and nations gather at sunrise in <a href="https://www.iitc.org/event/indigenous-peoples-thanksgiving-sunrise-gathering-on-alcatraz-island-2023/">San Francisco Bay</a>. </p>
<p>Their gathering is meant to mark a different occasion – the Indigenous People’s Thanksgiving Sunrise Ceremony, an annual celebration that spotlights 500 years of Native resistance to colonialism in what was dubbed the “New World.” Held on the traditional lands of the <a href="https://pehc.colostate.edu/plhc-blog/indigenizing-alcatraz/">Ohlone people</a>, the gathering is a call for remembrance and for future action for Indigenous people and their allies. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://udayton.edu/directory/artssciences/english/toll-shannon.php">scholar of Indigenous literary and cultural studies</a>, I introduce my students to the long and enduring history of Indigenous peoples’ pushback against settler violence. The origins of this sunrise event are a particularly compelling example that stem from a pivotal moment of Indigenous activism: the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/exploring-hate/2021/11/16/today-in-history-occupation-of-alcatraz/">Native American occupation of Alcatraz Island</a>, a 19-month-long takeover that began in 1969. </p>
<h2>Reclaiming of Alcatraz Island</h2>
<p>On Nov. 20, 1969, led by Indigenous organizers Richard Oakes (Mohawk) and LaNada War Jack (Shoshone Bannock), roughly 100 activists who called themselves “<a href="https://www.nps.gov/alca/learn/historyculture/we-hold-the-rock.htm">Indians of All Tribes,” or IAT</a>, traveled by charter boat across San Francisco Bay to reclaim the island for Native peoples. Multiple groups had done smaller demonstrations on Alcatraz in previous years, but this group planned to stay, and it maintained its presence there until June 1971. </p>
<p>Before this occupation, Alcatraz Island had served as a military prison and then a federal penitentiary. <a href="https://www.bop.gov/about/history/alcatraz.jsp">U.S. Prison Alcatraz was decommissioned in 1963</a> because of the high cost of its upkeep, and it was essentially left abandoned. In November 1969, after a fire destroyed the American Indian Center in San Francisco, local Indigenous activists were looking for a new place where urban Natives could <a href="https://muscarelle.wm.edu/rising/alcatraz/">gather and access resources, such as legal assistance and educational opportunities</a>, and Alcatraz Island fit the bill.</p>
<p>Citing a federal law that stated that “<a href="https://lakotalaw.org/news/2019-11-19/alcatraz">unused or retired federal lands will be returned to Native American tribes</a>,” Oakes’ group settled in to live on “The Rock.” They elected a council and established a school, a medical center and <a href="https://www.nps.gov/alca/learn/historyculture/we-hold-the-rock.htm">other necessary infrastructure</a>. They even had a pirate radio show called “<a href="https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip_28-5717m0482m">Radio Free Alcatraz</a>,” hosted by Santee Dakota poet John Trudell. </p>
<p>The IAT did offer – albeit satirically – to purchase the island back, proposing in the 1969 proclamation “<a href="https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/photos-from-alcatraz-island-indigenous-peoples-thanksgiving-sunrise-gathering">twenty-four dollars (US$24) in glass beads</a> and red cloth, a precedent set by the white man’s purchase of a similar island about 300 years ago,” referring to the purchase of Manhattan Island by the Dutch in 1626. </p>
<p>On behalf of IAT, Oakes sent the <a href="https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/alcatrazproclamationandletter.html">following message</a> to the regional office San Francisco office of the Department of the Interior shortly after they arrived:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The choice now lies with the leaders of the American government – to use violence upon us as before to remove us from our Great Spirit’s land, or to institute a real change in its dealing with the American Indian … We and all other oppressed peoples would welcome spectacle of proof before the world of your title by genocide. Nevertheless, we seek peace.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>After 19 months, the occupation ultimately succumbed to internal and external pressures. Oakes left the island after a family tragedy, and many members of the original group returned to school, leaving a gap in leadership. Moreover, the government cut off water and electricity to the island, and a mysterious fire destroyed several buildings, with the Indigenous occupiers and government officials <a href="https://www.nps.gov/alca/learn/historyculture/we-hold-the-rock.htm">pointing the blame at one another</a>. </p>
<p>By June 1971, President Richard Nixon was ready to intervene and ordered federal agents to <a href="https://www.nps.gov/alca/learn/historyculture/we-hold-the-rock.htm">remove the few remaining occupiers</a>. The occupation was over, but it helped spark an Indigenous political revitalization that continues today. It also pushed Nixon to put an official end to the “<a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2013-08/documents/president-nixon70.pdf">termination era</a>,” a legislative effort geared toward ending the federal government’s responsibility to Native nations, as articulated in treaties and formal agreements.</p>
<h2>Solidarity at sunrise</h2>
<p>In 1975, “Unthanksgiving Day” was established to both mark the occupation and advocate for Indigenous self-determination. For many participants, Unthanksgiving Day was also a reiteration of the original declaration released by IAT, which called on the U.S. to <a href="https://libguides.uml.edu/c.php?g=945022&p=6942272">acknowledge the impacts of 500 years</a> of genocide against Indigenous people. </p>
<p>These days, the event is conducted by the International Indian Treaty Council and is largely referred to as the Indigenous Peoples Thanksgiving Sunrise Gathering. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5JYZu9oCVjw?wmode=transparent&start=4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Sunrise ceremony on Alcatraz celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Participants meet on Pier 33 in San Francisco before dawn and board boats to Alcatraz Island, bringing Native peoples and allies together in the place that symbolizes a key moment in the <a href="https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/photos-from-alcatraz-island-indigenous-peoples-thanksgiving-sunrise-gathering">long history of Indigenous resistance</a>. </p>
<p>At dawn, in the courtyard of what was once a federal penitentiary, sunrise ceremonies are conducted to “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/22/thanksgiving-native-american-sunrise-ceremony-alcatraz-occupation-protest">give thanks for our lives, for the beatings of our heart</a>,” said Andrea Carmen, a member of Yaqui Nation and executive director of the International Indian Treaty Council, at the 2018 gathering. </p>
<p>Songs and dances from various tribal nations are performed in prayer and as acts of collective solidarity. At the same gathering, Lakota Harden, who is a Minnecoujou/ Yankton Lakota and HoChunk community leader and organizer, <a href="https://www.peoplepowermedia.org/social-justice/unthanksgiving-ceremony-alcatraz">emphasized that</a> “those voices and the medicine in those songs are centuries old and our ancestors come and they appreciate being acknowledged when the sun comes up.” Through the sharing of song and dance, they enact culturally resonant resistance against the erasure of Native peoples from these lands.</p>
<p>The Indigenous Peoples Thanksgiving Sunrise Gathering also gives people the chance to bring greater community awareness to current struggles facing Indigenous people across the globe. These include the intensifying impacts of climate change, the widespread violence against Native women, children and <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-anti-transgender-laws-will-hurt-indigenous-peoples-rights-and-religious-expression-205742">two-spirit</a> individuals, and ongoing threats to the integrity of their <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/11/unthanksgiving-day-50-anniversary-native-occupation-alcatraz-island-scene/">ancestral homelands</a>. </p>
<h2>Resistance beyond The Rock</h2>
<p>Indigenous Peoples Thanksgiving Sunrise Gathering lands near the end of Native American Heritage Month, which is dedicated to celebrating the vast and diverse Indigenous nations and tribes that exist in the United States. Professor Jamie Folsom, who is Choctaw, <a href="https://www.keloland.com/keloland-com-original/sdsu-professor-explains-native-american-heritage-month/">describes this month</a> as a chance to “present who we are today … (and) to present our issues in our own voices and to tell our own stories.” </p>
<p>The people who will meet on Pier 33 on the fourth Thursday of November continue this story of Indigenous political action on the Rock and, by extension, in North America. The more than 50-year history of this gathering is a testament to the endurance of the original message from Oakes and Indians of All Tribes. It is also part of a larger network of resistance movements being led by Native peoples, particularly young people. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.peoplepowermedia.org/social-justice/unthanksgiving-ceremony-alcatraz">As Harden says</a>, the next generation is asking for change. “They’re standing up and saying we’ve had enough. And our future generations will make sure that things change.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216956/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannon Toll does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The origins of the Indigenous People’s Thanksgiving Sunrise Ceremony, held on the traditional lands of the Ohlone people, go back to 1969, a pivotal moment of Indigenous activism.Shannon Toll, Associate Professor of Indigenous Literatures, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2163262023-11-09T13:32:30Z2023-11-09T13:32:30ZCranberries can bounce, float and pollinate themselves: The saucy science of a Thanksgiving classic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558166/original/file-20231107-21-cmo43c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C9%2C2029%2C1140&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cranberries grow on vines in sandy bogs and marshes.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/Mm6QhN">Lance Cheung, USDA/Flickr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Cranberries are a staple in U.S. households at Thanksgiving – but how did this bog dweller end up on holiday tables? </p>
<p>Compared to many valuable plant species that were domesticated over thousands of years, cultivated cranberry (<em>Vaccinium macrocarpon</em>) is a young agricultural crop, just as the U.S. is a young country and Thanksgiving is <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-advertising-shaped-thanksgiving-as-we-know-it-86819">a relatively new holiday</a>. But <a href="https://soilcrop.tamu.edu/people/desalvio-serina/">as a plant scientist</a>, I’ve learned much about cranberries’ ancestry from their botany and genomics.</p>
<h2>New on the plant breeding scene</h2>
<p>Humans have cultivated <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-018-9314-2">sorghum for some 5,500 years</a>, <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=114445">corn for around 8,700 years</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1534/g3.120.401362">cotton for about 5,000 years</a>. In contrast, cranberries were domesticated around 200 years ago – but people were eating the berries before that.</p>
<p>Wild cranberries are native to North America. They were an important food source for Native Americans, who used them in puddings, sauces, breads and a <a href="https://www.cranberries.org/exploringcranberries/into/maki_back.html">high-protein portable food called pemmican</a> – a carnivore’s version of an energy bar, made from a mixture of dried meat and rendered animal fat and sometimes studded with dried fruits. Some tribes <a href="https://lakotarednations.com/2017/11/wo-lakota-making-wasna/">still make pemmican today</a>, and even <a href="https://tankabar.com/">market a commercial version</a>. </p>
<p>Cranberry cultivation began in 1816 in Massachusetts, where Revolutionary War veteran Henry Hall found that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt7NA7G808Y&t=5s">covering cranberry bogs with sand</a> fertilized the vines and retained water around their roots. From there, the fruit spread throughout the U.S. Northeast and Upper Midwest. </p>
<p>Today, <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=102649">Wisconsin produces roughly 60%</a> of the U.S. cranberry harvest, followed by Massachusetts, Oregon and New Jersey. Cranberries also are grown in Canada, where they are <a href="https://canadianfoodfocus.org/in-season/whats-in-season-cranberries/">a major fruit crop</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558168/original/file-20231107-29-f3xdq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Four men in waders, holding long rakes, thigh-deep in a flooded bog, its surface covered with floating cranberries." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558168/original/file-20231107-29-f3xdq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558168/original/file-20231107-29-f3xdq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558168/original/file-20231107-29-f3xdq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558168/original/file-20231107-29-f3xdq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558168/original/file-20231107-29-f3xdq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558168/original/file-20231107-29-f3xdq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558168/original/file-20231107-29-f3xdq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Farmers often flood cranberry bogs to harvest the fruit, which they rake loose from the vines.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/bBmqts">Michael Galvin, Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A flexible and adaptable plant</h2>
<p>Cranberries have many interesting botanical features. Like roses, lilies and daffodils, cranberry flowers are hermaphroditic, which means they <a href="https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/info/hermaphroditic-plant-information.htm">contain both male and female parts</a>. This allows them to self-pollinate instead of relying on birds, insects or other pollinators. </p>
<p>A cranberry blossom has four petals that peel back when the flower blooms. This exposes the anthers, which contain the plant’s pollen. The flower’s resemblance to the beak of a bird earned the cranberry its original name, <a href="https://gobotany.nativeplanttrust.org/species/vaccinium/macrocarpon/">the “craneberry</a>.” </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558169/original/file-20231107-23-zvban6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A flower with four curved white petals tinged with pink." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558169/original/file-20231107-23-zvban6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558169/original/file-20231107-23-zvban6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558169/original/file-20231107-23-zvban6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558169/original/file-20231107-23-zvban6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558169/original/file-20231107-23-zvban6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558169/original/file-20231107-23-zvban6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558169/original/file-20231107-23-zvban6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A blossom on a cranberry bush in Wisconsin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cranberry_Blossom_%289180939392%29.jpg">Aaron Carlson/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When cranberries don’t self-pollinate, they rely on bumblebees and honeybees to transport their pollen from flower to flower. They can also be propagated sexually, by planting seeds, or asexually, through rooting vine cuttings. This is important for growers because seed-based propagation allows for higher genetic diversity, which can translate to things like increased disease resistance or more pest tolerance. </p>
<p>Asexual reproduction is equally important, however. This method allows growers to create clones of varieties that perform very well in their bogs and grow even more of those high-performing types.</p>
<p>Every cranberry <a href="https://www.wisfarmer.com/story/news/2018/07/13/farm-technology-days-five-fun-cranberry-facts/784392002/">contains four air pockets</a>, which is why they float when farmers flood bogs to harvest them. The air pockets also make raw cranberries bounce when they are dropped on a hard surface – a good indicator of whether they are fresh.</p>
<p>These pockets serve a biological role: They enable the berries to float down rivers and streams to disperse their seeds. Many other plants disperse their seeds via animals and birds that eat their fruits and excrete the seeds as they move around. But as anyone who has tasted them raw knows, cranberries are ultra-tart, so they have <a href="https://plants.usda.gov/DocumentLibrary/plantguide/pdf/pg_viopa2.pdf">limited appeal for wildlife</a>. </p>
<h2>Reading cranberry DNA</h2>
<p>For cranberries being such a young crop, scientists already know <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119616801.ch8">a lot about their genetics</a>. The cranberry <a href="https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Diploid">is a diploid</a>, which means that each cell contains one set of chromosomes from the maternal parent and one set from the paternal parent. It has 24 chromosomes, and its genome size is less than one-tenth that of the human genome. </p>
<p>Insights like these help scientists better understand where potentially valuable genes might be located in the cranberry genome. And diploid crops tend to have fewer genes associated with a single trait, which makes breeding them to emphasize that trait much simpler. </p>
<p>Researchers have also described the genetics of the cultivated cranberry’s wild relative, which is known as the “<a href="https://plants.usda.gov/DocumentLibrary/plantguide/pdf/cs_vaox.pdf">small cranberry” (<em>Vaccinium oxycoccos</em>)</a>. Comparing the two can help scientists determine where the cultivated cranberry’s agronomically valuable traits reside in its genome, and where some of the small cranberry’s cold hardiness might come from. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CxGCZq0xv16/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Researchers are <a href="https://www.vacciniumcap.org/">developing molecular markers</a> – tools to determine where certain genes or sequences of interest reside within a genome – to help determine the best combinations of genes from different varieties of cranberry that can enhance desired traits. For example, a breeder might want to make the fruits larger, more firm or redder in color.</p>
<p>While cranberries have only been grown by humans for a short period of time, they have been evolving for much longer. They entered agriculture with a long genetic history, including things like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264966">whole genome duplication events and genetic bottlenecks</a>, which collectively change which genes are gained or lost over time in a population. </p>
<p>Whole genome duplication events occur when two species’ genomes collide to form a new, larger genome, encompassing all the traits of the two parental species. Genetic bottlenecks occur when a population is greatly reduced in size, which limits the amount of genetic diversity in that species. These events are extremely common in the plant world and can lead to both gains and losses of different genes. </p>
<p>Analyzing the cranberry’s genome can indicate when it diverged evolutionarily from some of its relatives, such as the blueberry, lingonberry and huckleberry. Understanding <a href="https://theconversation.com/modern-tomatoes-are-very-different-from-their-wild-ancestors-and-we-found-missing-links-in-their-evolution-130041">how modern species evolved</a> can teach plant scientists about how different traits are inherited, and how to effectively breed for them in the future.</p>
<h2>Ripe at the right time</h2>
<p>Cranberries’ close association with Thanksgiving was simply a practical matter at first. Fresh cranberries are ready to harvest from mid-September through mid-November, so Thanksgiving falls within that perfect window for eating them. </p>
<p>Cranberry sauce was first loosely described in accounts from the American colonies in the 1600s, and appeared in a <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-americas-first-cookbook-says-about-our-country-its-cuisine-180967809/">cookbook for the first time in 1796</a>. The berries’ tart flavor, which comes from <a href="https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/60677/">high levels of several types of acids</a>, makes them more than twice as acidic as most other edible fruits, so they add a welcome zing to a meal full of blander foods like turkey and potatoes.</p>
<p>In recent decades, the cranberry industry has branched out into <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-cranberries-conquer-the-world-a-us-industry-depends-on-it-87912">juices, snacks and other products</a> in pursuit of year-round markets. But for many people, Thanksgiving is still the time when they’re most likely to see cranberries in some form on the menu.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216326/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Serina DeSalvio does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cranberries add color and acidity to Thanksgiving menus, but they also have many interesting botanical and genetic features.Serina DeSalvio, Ph.D. Candidate in Genetics and Genomics, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1943282022-11-21T19:42:57Z2022-11-21T19:42:57ZThanksgiving hymns are a few centuries old, tops – but biblical psalms of gratitude and praise go back thousands of years<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496538/original/file-20221121-12-ld2g15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1022%2C668&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">King David playing the lyre in a scene from a 15th-century manuscript of the Book of Psalms.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/king-david-playing-the-lyre-scene-from-the-book-of-psalms-news-photo/804439580?phrase=psalter&adppopup=true">Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Thanksgiving doesn’t ring in the ear for months on end, unlike another holiday that lies just ahead. Yet readers may remember a couple of hymns that roll around each November in church, around the dinner table, or even – for readers of a certain age – in school. One I remember well is “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3n7IUCdqAM">Come, Ye Thankful People, Come</a>.” Then there’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmR1JszAM1E">We Gather Together</a>,” or “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha628Pj_Rns">We Plough the Fields and Scatter</a>.”</p>
<p>Interestingly, for songs associated with a distinctly American holiday, none have American origins. “Come, Ye Thankful People” was written by Henry Alford, a 19th-century English cleric who ascended to become dean of <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/496/">Canterbury Cathedral</a> and supposedly <a href="https://archive.org/details/101morehymnstori0000osbe/page/66/mode/2up">rose to his feet to give thanks after every meal and at the close of every day</a>. “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113234570513601660">We Gather Together</a>” is much older, written in 1597 to celebrate the Dutch victory over the Spanish in the Battle of Turnhout. “<a href="https://hymnary.org/text/we_plow_the_fields_and_scatter">We Plough the Fields</a>” was written by a German Lutheran in 1782.</p>
<p>As someone <a href="https://people.cal.msu.edu/stowed/">who studies</a> <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674012905">American culture and religious music</a>, I’m interested in the backstory of the songs that we have come to take for granted. Someone wandering into a church and picking up a hymnal will likely find a handful of hymns filed under “thanksgiving,” but many more express a general sense of gratitude, such as “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s99dNPKYtHk">Now Thank We All Our God</a>” and “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asU005-nnDI">For the Beauty of the Earth</a>.” Even more hymns fall under the related category of praise – after all, a common response to feeling blessed or rescued is to offer praise to the higher being thought to bestow those gifts.</p>
<p>None of these impulses are uniquely Christian, or even religious. But hymns of praise and gratitude have been central to Jewish and Christian worship for millennia. In fact, they go back to one of the best-known scenes in the Hebrew Bible. </p>
<h2>Fleeing Pharaoh</h2>
<p>The earliest musical performance mentioned in the Hebrew Bible is “The Song of the Sea,” referring to two songs Moses and his sister Miriam sing to celebrate the Israelites’ escape from Egypt. As Pharaoh’s army pursues the fleeing slaves to the edge of the Red Sea, God opens a dry path for them before closing up the sea to swallow the soldiers, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=exodus+15&version=NIV">according to the Book of Exodus</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women followed her, with timbrels and dancing. Miriam sang to them: ‘Sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. Both horse and driver he has hurled into the sea.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Jewish singer <a href="https://jweekly.com/2011/01/14/as-we-sing-miriams-song-we-remember-her-protege-debbie-friedman/">Debbie Friedman</a>, who died in 2011, wrote “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZdSEsZ8bMo">Miriam’s Song</a>,” adapting these lines from Exodus into a modern favorite.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A page from an old Book of Psalms shows a woman in a red dress dancing next to a group of people emerging from water." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496046/original/file-20221118-19-3253yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496046/original/file-20221118-19-3253yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496046/original/file-20221118-19-3253yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496046/original/file-20221118-19-3253yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496046/original/file-20221118-19-3253yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496046/original/file-20221118-19-3253yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496046/original/file-20221118-19-3253yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘The Chludov Psalter,’ a book of psalms, shows ‘The Song Of Moses and Miriam,’ from around A.D. 850. Found in the Collection of State History Museum, Moscow.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-chludov-psalter-the-song-of-moses-and-miriam-ca-850-news-photo/959928552?phrase=miriam%20exodus&adppopup=true">Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Temple worship</h2>
<p><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/song-of-exile-9780190466831?cc=us&lang=en&">One research project</a> took me deep into the world of the Hebrew Psalms, which originally were sung mainly during rituals at the temple in Jerusalem. Scholars have speculated for centuries over the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-bible-commentary-9780199277186?cc=us&lang=en&">composition and sequencing of these Hebrew poems</a> that form one book of the Bible. The 150 psalms include a great many laments, expressions of praise and gratitude, and quite a few texts that combine both. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hermann-Gunkel">Hermann Gunkel</a>, a pioneering Bible scholar at the turn of the 20th century, <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/39458847">developed a system</a> of classifying the texts in the Book of Psalms by genre, which experts still use today. What Gunkel called “Thanksgiving” psalms are texts that celebrate God’s actions to bestow blessings and alleviate affliction in particular times and places: <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+30&version=KJV">healing from a serious illness</a>, for example. Gunkel’s categories also include psalms that refer to gratitude for more general divine actions: creating the cosmos and the wonders of the natural world, or protecting the ancient Israelites from foreign enemies. </p>
<p>It’s hard to find a text more brimming with gratitude than <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+65&version=NIV">Psalm 65</a>, which includes verses very suitable for Thanksgiving Day:</p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> The streams of God are filled with water
to provide the people with grain,
for so you have ordained it.
You drench its furrows and level its ridges;
you soften it with showers and bless its crops.
You crown the year with your bounty,
and your carts overflow with abundance.
</code></pre>
<h2>A new idea: Songs about Jesus</h2>
<p>Though the original tunes of the psalms have been long lost, their words are still a mainstay of religious singing for both Jews and Christians. </p>
<p>Their key role in Protestant churches today owes partly to <a href="https://wwnorton.com/college/music/concise-history-western-music4/ch/08/outline.aspx">the Reformation of the 16th century</a>. During the Renaissance, Catholics had developed more ornate musical forms for the Mass, including the use of <a href="https://hellomusictheory.com/learn/polyphonic-texture/">polyphony</a>: songs with two or more simultaneous interwoven melodies. Protestants, on the other hand, decided that unadorned psalms, put into standard musical meters that matched existing tunes, were optimal for church.</p>
<p>Reformation leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-lasting-impact-of-luthers-reformation-4-essential-reads-105953">Martin Luther</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/luthers-musical-legacy-is-the-reformations-unsung-achievement-85197">loved music</a> and wrote his own hymns with original words that are still popular today, such as “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y6VN_g7RXQ">A Mighty Fortress is Our God</a>.” As far as the more austere reformer John Calvin was concerned, however, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/019827002X.001.0001">the plainer the better</a>. Unharmonized a cappella psalm singing was plenty good for the sabbath, he insisted.</p>
<p>Calvin’s judgment carried the day in New England, which was settled largely by Puritan Calvinists. In fact, the first book published in North America was “<a href="https://loc.gov/exhibits/bay-psalm-book-and-american-printing/online-exhibition.html">The Bay Psalm Book</a>,” in 1640. It took a century for hymns with new words to start finding acceptance in churches, and even longer for organs to make an appearance there.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A black and white illustration shows a woman helping four children sing from hymnals." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496047/original/file-20221118-15-cu6ivd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496047/original/file-20221118-15-cu6ivd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496047/original/file-20221118-15-cu6ivd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496047/original/file-20221118-15-cu6ivd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496047/original/file-20221118-15-cu6ivd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496047/original/file-20221118-15-cu6ivd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496047/original/file-20221118-15-cu6ivd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An illustration from an 1866 edition of hymn writer Isaac Watts’ ‘Divine and Moral Songs for Children.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/isaac-watts-woodcut-from-watts-s-divine-and-moral-songs-for-news-photo/1430999703?phrase=%22isaac%20watts%22&adppopup=true">Bridgeman/Culture Club/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gradually these restrictions began to soften, even in New England. During the 1700s, hymns began to compete with psalms in popularity. The key innovator was <a href="https://hymnary.org/person/Watts_Isaac">Isaac Watts</a>, a talented poet who wondered why Christians couldn’t sing worship songs that referenced Jesus Christ – since the Book of Psalms, written before his birth, did not. John and Charles Wesley, founders of Methodism, were also inveterate <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/439039">hymn writers</a>.</p>
<h2>Praise yesterday and today</h2>
<p>To modern ears, the difference between psalms and hymns is barely perceptible. Hymns often draw heavily on the images and tropes of the psalms. Even a simple-sounding Thanksgiving hymn like “We Gather Together” contains no fewer than <a href="https://hymnary.org/text/we_gather_together_to_ask_the_lords">11 allusions to particular psalms</a>.</p>
<p>Watts, the Wesley brothers and several other hymn writers were part of movements that helped birth <a href="https://www.nae.org/what-is-an-evangelical/">modern evangelical Christianity</a>. Some of the most famous hymns of thanksgiving and praise have been popularized by evangelical revivals over the centuries: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAPTcSUC7Cw">Amazing Grace</a>,” by an 18th-century English curate, and “<a href="https://billygraham.org/video/george-beverly-shea-sings-how-great-thou-art/">How Great Thou Art</a>,” the theme song of world-famous preacher Billy Graham’s revivals.</p>
<p>Over the past 30 years, the booming genre of <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/singing-the-congregation-9780190499648?cc=us&lang=en&">contemporary worship music</a>, often referred to simply as praise music, has become the standard heard in megachurches and other evangelical congregations across the world. Not surprisingly, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUH_NzfRmbs&t=83s">praise and gratitude</a> are inescapable themes in this genre – whether or not they evoke a Thanksgiving feast.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David W. Stowe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Gratitude and praise are not only some of the most common themes in Christian music, but also some of the oldest.David W. Stowe, Professor of Religious Studies, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1948932022-11-21T13:16:29Z2022-11-21T13:16:29ZWhen’s the best time to use frequent flyer miles to book flights? Two economists crunched the numbers on maximizing their dollar value<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496314/original/file-20221120-12-5vwh0m.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=54%2C155%2C5020%2C3300&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The value of frequent flyer miles can change significantly in the weeks and months ahead of a given travel date.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/landing-airplane-royalty-free-image/539327295?phrase=airplane%20landing&adppopup=true">Jetlinerimages/E+</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Traveling during major holidays like Thanksgiving can be expensive, since so many people want to see their friends and families, wherever they might be. </p>
<p>It’s especially hard this year with <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL">inflation soaring</a> at the fastest pace since the early 1980s. Airline fares <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SETG01#0">were up 43% in October</a> from a year earlier – only a <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t02.htm">handful of categories increased by more</a>. </p>
<p>One way to ease the blow to your wallet or purse is by using frequent flyer miles. While there’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/2733384">quite a bit</a> of research on when is the <a href="https://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/215872">best time to use cash</a> to buy flights, <a href="https://www.bu.edu/questrom/profile/huseyin-karaca/">we wondered</a> – as travel lovers – if there’s an optimal time to use miles. So with the help of <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HikpvLqt_M8OfXrCXta4rm76Z_JreLJt/view">our research assistant</a>, we investigated this question, with a focus on flights over the Thanksgiving holiday. </p>
<h2>Americans return to the skies</h2>
<p>The day before Thanksgiving is one of the busiest days to travel in the U.S. </p>
<p>Before the COVID-19 pandemic upended travel, the Transportation Security Administration <a href="https://www.tsa.gov/coronavirus/passenger-throughput">screened 2.6 million people</a> on Thanksgiving eve of 2019, just shy of the 2.9 million record. While the number plunged in 2020 as demand dropped, it picked up to 2.3 million last year and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-thanksgiving-is-expected-to-be-one-of-the-busiest-for-travel-in-decades-11668532148">is expected to return</a> to pre-COVID-19 levels this year. </p>
<p>The surge in demand, along with significantly higher jet fuel costs, are key factors in leading to more expensive air fares. </p>
<p>To offset these higher costs, <a href="https://newsroom.wf.com/English/news-releases/news-release-details/2022/New-Study-Americans-Lean-Into-Credit-Card-Rewards-to-Offset-Rising-Costs--Including-Travel/default.aspx">many consumers</a> may turn to frequent flyer miles – whether accumulated from other travel or from credit cards – to avoid forking over so much cash. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="many people wait in lines at a security checkpoint at an airport" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496244/original/file-20221119-9492-w10x35.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496244/original/file-20221119-9492-w10x35.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496244/original/file-20221119-9492-w10x35.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496244/original/file-20221119-9492-w10x35.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496244/original/file-20221119-9492-w10x35.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496244/original/file-20221119-9492-w10x35.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496244/original/file-20221119-9492-w10x35.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Thanksgiving holiday is one of the busiest travel times of the year.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/OffTheChartsAirlinesHolidayTest/2a0103aedfa842ab93a0f6d0d89d400f/photo?Query=thanksgiving%20air%20travel&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=56&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/Steven Senne</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Frequent flying 101</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10253866.2015.1096095">Frequent flyer mile programs started</a> in the late 1970s after the <a href="https://www.faa.gov/about/history/brief_history">federal government stopped regulating</a> airfares. Before the change, fares, routes and schedules for all domestic flights were set by the federal Civil Aeronautics Board. </p>
<p>Besides slashing fares, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Travel/airline-frequent-flyer-miles-30-years/story?id=13616082">airlines reacted by creating frequent flyer programs</a>. Texas International Airlines, which ultimately merged with United, and Western Airlines, which later joined Delta, were among the first to institute frequent flyer programs.</p>
<p>In a particular airline’s frequent flyer program, you earn miles when you fly with that airline. Many people get miles by using their credit cards as well. These accumulated miles can then be redeemed for free air travel.</p>
<p>Frequent flyer programs were designed to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/02634509810199535">build customer loyalty</a>, as they provide a rebate to regular passengers. They are also <a href="https://hbr.org/1995/05/do-rewards-really-create-loyalty">meant to lock travelers</a> into a particular airline – since they have a strong incentive to only fly with that carrier.</p>
<p>One downside is that many business flyers go out of their way to use their preferred airline, <a href="https://www.informs.org/About-INFORMS/News-Room/Press-Releases/Study-Finds-that-Frequent-Flyer-Programs-Increase-Cost-of-Business-Travel">which boosts their company’s travel costs</a>.</p>
<p>And although airlines use frequent flyer programs to increase customer goodwill, they frequently <a href="https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/united-airlines-loyalty-program-status-update">change the rules and rewards</a>, which often <a href="https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/delta-just-announced-a-change-that-will-make-people-very-mad-its-actually-a-brilliant-move.html">frustrates customers</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/2733384">Researchers have looked</a> at the <a href="https://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/215872">optimal time to buy</a> airplane <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/s41272-019-00193-7">tickets</a> with cash. In general, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2022/08/31/best-time-to-book-a-cheap-flight/?sh=23fdd1e72ebc">they have found prices</a> tend to dip anywhere from two months to three weeks before the travel dates. Prices are highest for those who want to book their flights very early, to lock it in, and last-minute travelers booking just before their departure dates. </p>
<h2>How frequent flyer miles compare</h2>
<p>To see when’s the best time to book with miles, we looked at <a href="https://www.oag.com/busiest-routes-right-now">one of the busiest routes in the U.S.</a> – New York (JFK) to Los Angeles (LAX). Each month, airlines have over a quarter of a million seats flying direct on that route. There are about 30 nonstop flights a day, run by <a href="https://www.aa.com/en-us/flights-from-new-york-to-los-angeles">three</a> <a href="https://www.delta.com/us/en/flight-deals/united-states-flights/flights-to-los-angeles">different</a> <a href="https://www.jetblue.com/destinations/los-angeles-california-flights">airlines</a>.</p>
<p>Starting about three months before Thanksgiving, we collected weekly data from the online booking sites of these three airlines. We tracked the frequent flyer miles needed as well as the price for every coach flight scheduled to take place within one week of Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>As miles are not interchangeable between airlines in general, we needed an alternative measure for more direct comparison between different airlines. So we calculated how much a frequent flyer mile is worth by dividing the number of frequent flyer miles needed by the ticket price. We then compared the dollar worth of 1,000 miles, depending on the airline, when the booking was made and the flight date.</p>
<p><a href="http://businessmacroeconomics.com/">Economic theory</a> tells us that when there is lots of competition and the product is almost identical, competition should result in all businesses charging roughly the same price.</p>
<p>That wasn’t what we found.</p>
<p>In mid-October, Delta was asking 69,000 miles to fly the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. American Airlines was only asking 33,000 miles for roughly the same flight. This means if you have a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/select/best-travel-credit-cards/">general travel rewards credit card</a> that lets you use miles on different airlines, it pays to shop around.</p>
<p>Just because an airline has a high price in miles doesn’t mean the price will not come down. At the start of November, Delta wanted 69,000 miles to fly at dinnertime on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. A week later the airline cut the price to 53,000 miles. A week after that, it was down to 36,500 miles, a price drop of almost 50% in two weeks.</p>
<p><iframe id="bakbg" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/bakbg/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>While in general the earlier you book, the better, booking too early can cost you. We found the best time to spend your frequent flyer miles for Thanksgiving travel was to book during the first week of October, which was about eight weeks out. In early October, 1,000 frequent flyer miles were worth over $14 in airfare. The last week of October, about four weeks before Thanksgiving, those same miles were only worth shy of $12. </p>
<h2>The best day to fly</h2>
<p>As for what is the best day on which to travel to get the most from your miles, there are two answers. On the Monday before Thanksgiving, your miles are typically worth the most, on average $15 per 1,000 miles. This is in sharp contrast to $11 for the day before Thanksgiving. However, flying Thanksgiving Day itself had required the lowest average number of miles, about 27,000 miles.</p>
<p>If you haven’t booked flights yet, you may be too late to find the best value in frequent flyer miles. However, while we are still gathering and analyzing data, these tips look like they will hold up for future holidays.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194893/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The value of frequent flyer miles sometimes seems to defy the laws of economics.H. Sami Karaca, Professor of Business Analytics, Boston UniversityJay L. Zagorsky, Clinical associate professor, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1944092022-11-18T14:47:03Z2022-11-18T14:47:03ZHow medieval Catholic traditions of thanksgiving prayers and feasting shaped the Protestant celebration of Plymouth’s pilgrims<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496070/original/file-20221118-9929-kjhzwj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=52%2C13%2C933%2C669&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Catholic hymn, "Te Deum" -- which says, “You, God, we praise” -- has been used for centuries in Catholic worship for thanksgiving.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Te_deum_in_the_cathedral_of_Notre_Dame%2C_Iconotheca_Valvasoriana.jpg/1024px-Te_deum_in_the_cathedral_of_Notre_Dame%2C_Iconotheca_Valvasoriana.jpg">Iconotheca Valvasoriana Author Jean Marot via Wikimedia Commons.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Abraham Lincoln <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/lincoln-proclaims-official-thanksgiving-holiday">instituted the celebration of Thanksgiving</a> as a national holiday in 1863 after the Union victory at the battle of Gettysburg, during the American Civil War. It was not a new idea – in 1789, President George Washington had proposed a yearly presidential proclamation of each annual Thanksgiving holiday, but President Thomas Jefferson <a href="https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.org/2015/11/25/did-thomas-jefferson-hate-thanksgiving/">refused to issue one after he was elected</a>, as he considered it a religious event. Later presidents followed his example, and the holiday was effectively discontinued on the national level until Lincoln’s declaration.</p>
<p>Today, Thanksgiving Day has come to be celebrated every year on the <a href="https://www.almanac.com/thanksgiving-day">fourth Thursday of November</a>. As a <a href="https://www.holycross.edu/academics/programs/religious-studies/faculty/joanne-pierce">specialist in Catholic history and worship</a>, I am aware that behind the history and legend of the first Thanksgiving lies a rich story that illuminates the medieval Christian roots of the holiday. </p>
<h2>Medieval Catholic liturgy</h2>
<p>Since the beginning of Christianity, <a href="https://www.usccb.org/eucharist">the Eucharist</a>, also called <a href="https://anglicancompass.com/what-do-anglicans-believe-about-holy-communion/">Holy Communion or the Lord’s Supper</a>, has been the primary worship service for Christians all over the world. The name itself comes from the ancient Greek word for thanksgiving, “eucharistia,” although in part of the New Testament it is also called “the breaking of bread.” </p>
<p>The service came to be called the Mass in Western Europe, derived from the Latin dismissal rite at the conclusion of the ceremony: <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08253a.htm">Ite missa est</a> – “Go, it is the dismissal.” The term is still used by Roman Catholics today.</p>
<p>One of the most important medieval Catholic rituals, the Eucharist involves a special blessing, called a consecration, of bread and wine. This consecration is rooted in what Jesus Christ did during the ritual meal he shared with his apostles before his arrest and crucifixion – <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+22%3A+7-20&version=NRSVCE">the Last Supper</a>. The ritual as a whole is a thanksgiving to God for the offer of salvation from sin in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. From at least the fourth century, Christians were <a href="https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/sunday-10766">expected to attend Mass every Sunday</a>, with a few exceptions, and to rest from work.</p>
<p>But Catholics expressed thanksgiving in other ways, too. One hymn’s first line, “<a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/prayers/the-te-deum.html">Te deum</a>” – which says, “You, God, we praise” – <a href="https://www.hymnologyarchive.com/te-deum-laudamus">has been used for centuries</a> in Catholic worship, frequently on occasions calling for celebration and thanksgiving. </p>
<p>Legend has it that the text was composed by St. Ambrose, a famous theologian and <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-some-roman-catholic-saints-called-doctors-of-the-church-175912">Doctor of the Church</a>. It is sometimes referred to as the “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-A4kueWL4g">Ambrosian hymn</a>” in medieval sources. </p>
<p>An early reference to the hymn is in a sixth-century book, “The Rule of St. Benedict,” a collection of regulations for monks and nuns. It is listed as <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50040/50040-h/50040-h.htm#chapter-12">one of the prayers</a> to be recited or sung at Matins, their daily morning communal prayer service.</p>
<p>The Te Deum was often followed by another short hymn: “<a href="https://hymnology.hymnsam.co.uk/n/non-nobis-domine">Non nobis Domine</a>.” Taken from the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+115&version=NRSVCE">first line of Psalm 115</a>, “Not to us, Lord, not to us but to your name give glory,” it is another brief expression of thanksgiving to God for whatever event was being celebrated.</p>
<p>Catholics sang the Te Deum as a private or public way to offer thanks to God in a number of situations for centuries. King Philip II of Spain, a devout Catholic, ordered it sung after hearing of the victory of a Catholic fleet against the Ottoman Turks at sea off the shore of Greece. This <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/head-head/how-important-was-battle-lepanto">Battle of Lepanto</a> in 1571 stopped a Muslim advance into Catholic Europe.</p>
<h2>Historical English thanksgiving</h2>
<p>Medieval England was a Catholic country, and the public religious rituals celebrated in churches were much the same as those celebrated in Rome and the rest of Catholic Europe, with some local differences. Many of these rituals involved the theme of giving thanks. </p>
<p>In addition, the practice of blessing people, animals or crops was also an important part of medieval Catholic liturgy. Many of these blessing prayers included the theme of thanksgiving as well. One set of blessing prayers dealt with the <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02749a.htm">blessing of ordinary bread</a>. </p>
<p>Across Catholic Europe, bread might be blessed on certain feast days, but in the British Isles, a special ceremony would take place on August 1, when the first of the wheat crop was harvested. This date was called <a href="https://www.almanac.com/fact/lammas-day-from-the-old-english-holiday">Lammas Day</a>, from the Anglo-Saxon words for “loaf” and “Mass.” From at least the ninth century on, bread from these first grains would be baked into <a href="https://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/2017/08/a-little-history-of-lammas.html">intricate shapes</a> and brought to church for a special blessing.</p>
<p>However, this blessing of the first loaves only marked the beginning of the harvest. It was also customary in England, as well as in other parts of Europe, to <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312195694/wherequeenelizabethsleptandwhatthebutlersaw">hold a public festival</a> when the harvest was done, the “gathering-in” or “harvest home.” Dancing, eating, drinking and <a href="https://www.cpre.org.uk/discover/harvest-traditions-in-england/">other forms of entertainment</a> were featured. This was originally a secular festival, although other festivals of this kind could also be held on other occasions, like weddings.</p>
<p>Public liturgies of thanksgiving could also be proclaimed on other occasions. For example, the English victory over the French at the battle of Agincourt in 1415 was celebrated in London by the mayor and populace with the singing of the Te Deum and the ringing of bells at the city’s churches. Later, a <a href="https://www.westminster-abbey.org/media/4968/agincourt-600-service.pdf">prayer service in Westminster Abbey</a> was held, attended by the mayor and members of the royal family.</p>
<h2>The Church of England</h2>
<p>After King Henry VIII broke away from Rome in 1534, the English sovereign became by law the Head of the Church in England. After his death, a reformed English-language liturgy, compiled in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, was used throughout the country. </p>
<p>Public worship services of thanksgiving were held annually on certain specific occasions, like the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/handel-and-the-english-chapel-royal-9780199550968?cc=us&lang=en&">anniversary of the sovereign’s accession to the throne</a>. As in the medieval period, the sovereign could also proclaim a day of thanksgiving, complete with the <a href="https://www.hymnologyarchive.com/te-deum-laudamus">singing of the Te Deum in Latin</a>, to celebrate other important events, like the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13574175.2017.1317080">birth of a royal heir</a> – in this case, the birth of Prince Edward, the future King Edward VI, to King Henry VIII and his third wife, Jane Seymour, in 1537. King James I was the first King of England <a href="https://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/files/14264544/Jack._A_Pattern_for_a_Kings_Inauguration_The_Coronation_of_James_I_in_England.pdf">to be crowned in an English-language ceremony</a>.</p>
<h2>Protestant Pilgrims</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495990/original/file-20221117-25-sr5bc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An engraved illustration of the Pilgrim Fathers leaving England." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495990/original/file-20221117-25-sr5bc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495990/original/file-20221117-25-sr5bc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495990/original/file-20221117-25-sr5bc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495990/original/file-20221117-25-sr5bc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495990/original/file-20221117-25-sr5bc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495990/original/file-20221117-25-sr5bc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495990/original/file-20221117-25-sr5bc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Pilgrims celebrated Thanksgiving in their new home with the traditions they were familiar with.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/pilgrim-fathers-leaving-england-royalty-free-illustration/500074668?phrase=mayflower%20illustration&adppopup=true">TonyBaggett/iStock / via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>However, not every Christian in England was happy with the Book of Common Prayer, finding it still too influenced by Catholic practice. The Pilgrims were among the English Protestant groups who rejected the Church of England’s more moderate reforms completely and wished to separate from it to form their own church communities – <a href="https://historyofmassachusetts.org/mayflower-pilgrims/">separatists</a> – as opposed to the Puritans, who desired further reforms within the Church of England to “purify” it. </p>
<p>Because of increasing legal persecution of “<a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/nonconformists/#2-who-were-nonconformists-and-what-are-nonconformist-records">non-conformists</a>” – <a href="http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/crossroads/religious-and-confessional-spaces/thomas-hahn-bruckart-dissenters-and-nonconformists-phenomena-of-religious-deviance-between-the-british-isles-and-the-european-continent">those who did not attend or belong to the Church of England</a> – in the early 17th century, they at first left England for a country where they might practice their beliefs freely. In Holland, they settled in the town of Leiden, and lived there for several years. But the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/godinamerica/people/pilgrims.html">Pilgrims faced other problems</a> there – they worked at low-paying jobs and they worried that their children were becoming more Dutch than English. </p>
<p>Eventually, they joined a group of other travelers on a ship called the <a href="https://historyofmassachusetts.org/mayflower-pilgrims/">Mayflower to travel to the New World</a>. There, in 1620, they landed a little farther north than their original destination – Virginia – settling at Plymouth on the coast of what is today Massachusetts in December 1620. </p>
<p>The Pilgrims faced a <a href="http://www.histarch.illinois.edu/plymouth/Maydeaths.html">hard struggle to survive</a> that first winter and many died. But after a good harvest the next year, they celebrated. They may not have sung a Catholic or Anglican Te Deum or danced in the street, but they held a Thanksgiving in their own way following the customs they had grown up with in England: <a href="https://pilgrimhall.org/giving_thanks.htm">with prayer and feasting</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194409/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanne M. Pierce does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Pilgrims who started the first Thanksgiving tradition after they landed in Plymouth were following the customs they had grown up with, originating in medieval times.Joanne M. Pierce, Professor Emerita of Religious Studies, College of the Holy CrossLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1937022022-11-14T14:18:48Z2022-11-14T14:18:48ZWhy is turkey the main dish on Thanksgiving?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494232/original/file-20221108-8958-h84j70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=86%2C0%2C4706%2C3025&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Turkeys have always been a fixture in the holiday's marketing. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/penny-postcard-to-convey-happy-thanksgiving-wishes-from-a-news-photo/550151625?phrase=painting%20turkey&adppopup=true">Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/curious-kids-us-74795">Curious Kids</a> is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">curiouskidsus@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Why did turkey become the national Thanksgiving go-to dish? Gianna, age 10, Phoenix, Arizona</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>Have you ever wondered why Thanksgiving revolves around turkey and not ham, chicken, venison, beef or corn? </p>
<p>Almost <a href="https://today.yougov.com/topics/society/articles-reports/2021/11/24/thanksgiving-food-debates-poll">9 in 10</a> Americans eat turkey during this festive meal, whether it’s roasted, deep-fried, grilled or cooked in any other way for the occasion.</p>
<p>You might believe it’s because of what the Pilgrims, a year after they landed in what’s now the state of Massachusetts, and their <a href="https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/the-wampanoag-side-of-the-first-thanksgiving-story">Indigenous Wampanoag guests</a> ate during their first thanksgiving feast in 1621. Or that it’s because <a href="https://www.almanac.com/wild-turkey-history-all-american-bird">turkey is originally from the Americas</a>. </p>
<p>But it has more to do with how Americans observed the holiday in the late 1800s than which poultry the Pilgrims ate while celebrating their bounty in 1621.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494454/original/file-20221109-2910-iq7eit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two people dressed as Pilgrims sit atop a giant turkey float that is wearing a Pilgrim hat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494454/original/file-20221109-2910-iq7eit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494454/original/file-20221109-2910-iq7eit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494454/original/file-20221109-2910-iq7eit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494454/original/file-20221109-2910-iq7eit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494454/original/file-20221109-2910-iq7eit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494454/original/file-20221109-2910-iq7eit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494454/original/file-20221109-2910-iq7eit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A giant Pilgrim-themed turkey float is a fixture in New York’s annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-thanksgiving-turkey-makes-its-way-during-the-81st-news-photo/78069773?phrase=turkey%20macy%27s%20parade&adppopup=true">Hiroko Masuike/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Did they or didn’t they eat it?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcmassbookdig.mourtsrelationor00brad/?st=pdf&pdfPage=189">only firsthand record</a> of what the Pilgrims ate at the first thanksgiving feast comes from Edward Winslow. He noted that the Wampanoag leader, Massasoit, arrived with 90 men, and the two communities feasted together for three days. </p>
<p>Winslow wrote little about the menu, aside from mentioning five deer that the Wampanoag brought and that the meal included “fowle,” which could have been any number of wild birds found in the area, including ducks, geese and turkeys.</p>
<p>Historians do know that important ingredients of today’s traditional dishes were not available during that first Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>That includes potatoes and green beans. The likely absence of wheat flour and the <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/40532/50517_aer382a.pdf?v=0">scarcity of sugar</a> in New England at the time ruled out pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce. <a href="https://aihd.ku.edu/foods/squash.html">Some sort of squash</a>, a staple of Native American diets, was almost certainly served, <a href="https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/arts-culture/2021-11-24/heres-what-was-served-at-the-real-first-thanksgiving">along with corn</a> and shellfish.</p>
<h2>A resurrected tradition</h2>
<p><a href="https://liberalarts.tamu.edu/history/profile/troy-bickham/">Historians like me</a> who have studied the history of food have found that most modern Thanksgiving traditions began in the mid-19th century, more than two centuries after the Pilgrims’ first harvest celebration.</p>
<p>The reinvention of the Pilgrims’ celebration as a national holiday was largely the work of <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sarah-hale">Sarah Hale</a>. Born in New Hampshire in 1784, as a young widow she published poetry to earn a living. Most notably, she wrote the nursery rhyme “<a href="https://www.almanac.com/sarah-josepha-hale-godmother-thanksgiving">Mary Had a Little Lamb</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494237/original/file-20221108-8962-6x725n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman dressed as a colonial-era settler grabs a live turkey." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494237/original/file-20221108-8962-6x725n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494237/original/file-20221108-8962-6x725n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494237/original/file-20221108-8962-6x725n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494237/original/file-20221108-8962-6x725n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494237/original/file-20221108-8962-6x725n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494237/original/file-20221108-8962-6x725n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494237/original/file-20221108-8962-6x725n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Turkeys were a mainstay of colonial American cooking, including in the South – as this Yorktown, Virginia, historical reenactment suggests.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/virginia-yorktown-victory-center-tidewater-virginia-farm-news-photo/590648857?adppopup=true">Jeff Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In 1837, Hale became the editor of the popular magazine <a href="https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=godeylady">Godey’s Lady’s Book</a>. Fiercely religious and family-focused, it crusaded for the creation of an annual national holiday of “Thanksgiving and Praise” commemorating the Pilgrims’ thanksgiving feast.</p>
<p>Hale and her colleagues leaned on 1621 lore for historical justification. Like many of her contemporaries, she assumed the Pilgrims ate turkey at their first feast because of the <a href="https://www.mass.gov/service-details/learn-about-turkeys">abundance of edible wild turkeys in New England</a>. </p>
<p>This campaign took decades, partly due to a lack of enthusiasm among white Southerners. Many of them considered <a href="https://www.loc.gov/wiseguide/nov02/thanks-early.html">an earlier celebration among Virginia colonists</a> in honor of supply ships that arrived at Jamestown in 1610 to be the more important precedent.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/expulsion_cases/CivilWar_Expulsion.htm">absence of Southerners serving in Congress</a> during the Civil War enabled <a href="https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/lincoln-and-thanksgiving.htm">President Abraham Lincoln</a> to declare Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863.</p>
<h2>Turkey marketing campaign</h2>
<p>Godey’s, along with other media, embraced the holiday, packing their pages with recipes from New England and menus that prominently featured turkey.</p>
<p>“We dare say most of the Thanksgiving will take the form of gastronomic pleasure,” <a href="https://www.seriouseats.com/history-southern-thanksgiving">Georgia’s Augusta Chronicle</a> predicted in 1882. “Every person who can afford turkey or procure it will sacrifice the noble American fowl to-day.” </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493976/original/file-20221107-24-qdj82y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting depicting an old-fashioned, traditional Thanksgiving family feast" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493976/original/file-20221107-24-qdj82y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493976/original/file-20221107-24-qdj82y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493976/original/file-20221107-24-qdj82y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493976/original/file-20221107-24-qdj82y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493976/original/file-20221107-24-qdj82y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493976/original/file-20221107-24-qdj82y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493976/original/file-20221107-24-qdj82y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Turkey is practical, picturesque and relatively affordable.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22Freedom_From_Want%22_-_NARA_-_513539.jpg">Office of War Information via Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One reason for this: A roasted turkey makes a perfect celebratory centerpiece. </p>
<p>A second one is that turkey is also practical for serving to a large crowd. Turkeys are bigger than other birds raised or hunted for their meat, and it’s <a href="https://www.globalagriculture.org/report-topics/meat-and-animal-feed.html">cheaper to produce a turkey than a cow or pig</a>.
The bird’s attributes led Europeans to incorporate turkeys into their diets following their colonization of the Americas. In England, <a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/the-history-of-turkeys/">King Henry VIII</a> regularly enjoyed turkey on Christmas day a century before the Pilgrims’ feast.</p>
<h2>Christmas connection</h2>
<p>The bird cemented its position as the <a href="https://www.squaremeal.co.uk/christmas-parties/christmas-party-ideas/why-do-we-eat-turkey-at-christmas_10022">favored Christmas dish in England in the mid-19th century</a>.</p>
<p>One reason for this was that Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” sought redemption by replacing the impoverished Cratchit family’s meager goose with an enormous turkey. </p>
<p>Published in 1843, Dickens’ instantly best-selling depiction of the prayerful family meal would soon <a href="https://www.biography.com/news/charles-dickens-a-christmas-carol">inspire Hale’s idealized Thanksgiving</a>. </p>
<p>Although the historical record is hazy, I do think it’s possible that the Pilgrims ate turkey in 1621. It certainly was served at celebrations in New England <a href="https://hilltownfamilies.org/2012/11/14/hf-613/?v=7516fd43adaa">throughout the colonial period</a>.</p>
<hr>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Troy Bickham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A mix of New England and British traditions and historical events led to the particular poultry you’ll find on Thanksgiving tables everywhere.Troy Bickham, Professor of History, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1725572021-11-26T13:38:18Z2021-11-26T13:38:18ZBlack Friday: retailers are forcing our heads into the sand to avoid facing climate realities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434130/original/file-20211126-25-17bjyph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4904%2C3250&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Black Friday traditionally marks the beginning of the Christmas retail season.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/hubbardcoe/11224183416">Powhusku/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Black Friday – widely considered the first day of the Christmas shopping season – is celebrated this year on 26 November. “Celebrated” might not be the best term to use, however, when you consider the <a href="https://blackfridaydeathcount.com/">injury and death toll</a> the day has historically brought. </p>
<p>Since Black Friday always falls on the Friday following the American holiday of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-first-thanksgiving-is-a-key-chapter-in-americas-origin-story-but-what-happened-in-virginia-four-months-later-mattered-much-more-170853">Thanksgiving</a>, its appearance in the UK and elsewhere across the world is at best culturally irrelevant and at worst crass. It’s mainly used to ramp up consumer demand to a feverish intensity as Christmas approaches. </p>
<p>There is nothing inherently wrong with consumers having the opportunity to buy products at a discount – although last year in the UK, over 90% of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59380453">Black Friday offers</a> had been listed at the same price or cheaper during the previous six months – but the day has become overwhelmingly defined by shocking images of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-black-friday-shoppers-throw-punches-over-bargains-a-marketing-expert-explains-psychological-ownership-106673">mindless consumerism</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A Best Buy store with a queue outside" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433991/original/file-20211125-27-1e6ovzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433991/original/file-20211125-27-1e6ovzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433991/original/file-20211125-27-1e6ovzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433991/original/file-20211125-27-1e6ovzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433991/original/file-20211125-27-1e6ovzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433991/original/file-20211125-27-1e6ovzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433991/original/file-20211125-27-1e6ovzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black Friday shopping has been known to result in physical brawls and even deaths.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/diariocriticove/8211477680">Diariocriticove/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the UN climate conference COP26, held this month in Glasgow, world leaders were unable to successfully commit to categorically <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/471c7db9-925f-479e-ad57-09162310a21a">phasing out</a> fossil fuels. Their <a href="https://time.com/6121116/cop26-negotiations-failed-why/">failure</a> to take sufficiently ambitious action is an opportunity to reflect on the gap between ideals of ecological reform and the reality of consumerist lifestyles. When it comes down to it, it’s incredibly hard for both countries and people to give up the short-term gratification of materialism to protect the long-term future of our planet.</p>
<p>There is now a growing acceptance that sustainability is not simply a matter of consumers’ individual accountability and choice. Our governments and companies must not be let off the hook for their <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change">failures</a> to properly regulate excessive burning of fossil fuels. And our <a href="https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/12/16/buying-stuff-drives-climate-change/">culture of consumerism</a> is equally to blame for its effect on emissions: household buying habits, often driven by a desire to signal social status or keep up with trends, contribute to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jiec.12371">over 60%</a> of greenhouse gas output globally.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A sign that reads " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433996/original/file-20211125-19-fwvb3b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433996/original/file-20211125-19-fwvb3b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433996/original/file-20211125-19-fwvb3b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433996/original/file-20211125-19-fwvb3b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433996/original/file-20211125-19-fwvb3b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433996/original/file-20211125-19-fwvb3b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433996/original/file-20211125-19-fwvb3b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Consumerism is a growing problem in the face of the climate crisis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/coltonvond/32322366887">Colton Vond/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Look away from the bright lights of Black Friday adverts and the truth will appear. If we are to reduce the impact of climate change, we are all going to have to rethink the prominence of consumerism in our lives and economies. This is no small matter when retail is, according to the <a href="https://brc.org.uk/priorities/better-jobs/">British Retail Consortium</a>, the UK’s biggest private sector employer. </p>
<p>And as a sector, it is showing signs of making a <a href="https://www.capgemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20-06_9880_Sustainability-in-CPR_Final_Web-1.pdf">green transition</a>. At a moment where demand is <a href="https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2021/09/is-the-location-of-retail-stores-still-important/">shifting</a> ever faster away from high street outlets and towards online shopping and global shipping, corporate leaders are signing pledges to <a href="https://ahdb.org.uk/news/how-retailers-collaborating-on-decarbonisation-could-impact-horticulture">decarbonise</a> their businesses.</p>
<p>Many major UK retailers like Morrisons, Co-op, Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer have pledged to achieve net zero emissions <a href="https://brc.org.uk/news/corporate-affairs/retail-to-hit-net-zero-by-2040/">by 2040</a>. To achieve this, they plan to <a href="https://www.edie.net/news/6/Co-op-targets-carbon-neutrality-across-own-brand-food-and-drink-by-2025/">decarbonise</a> shops and domestic deliveries, as well as to eventually make all products bought in the UK net zero. Although this sounds promising, it’s a strategy that fails to address our society’s consumerist mindset by simply encouraging us to buy the same amount of stuff – just at a lower carbon cost than before. Retailers’ grand commitments must be contextualised alongside current practices, which remain far from sustainable. </p>
<p>If you look at the websites of many major retailers today, you’ll see that they are still aggressively competing with each other to sell brand new, energy-guzzling <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/11/21/why-you-shouldnt-buy-a-tv-on-black-friday/?sh=6f8afce1a2cf">smart TVs</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/four-clothing-businesses-that-could-lead-us-away-from-the-horrors-of-fast-fashion-165578">cheap clothes</a> and digital gadgets as part of Black Friday deals. If retailers were serious about climate change, then we would expect to see them transition away from such unsustainable commodities and encourage purchasing more <a href="https://www.greenmatters.com/p/sustainable-electronics-shopping">second-hand</a> or clearance items.</p>
<p>Instead, Black Friday presents us with a retail sector doubling down on deeper consumerism: a stance that is both tone deaf and increasingly incommensurable with the reality of the climate emergency.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172557/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Bradshaw does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s hypocritical for retailers to make carbon pledges with one hand and continue pushing consumerism with the other.Alan Bradshaw, Professor of Marketing, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1708532021-11-22T13:28:37Z2021-11-22T13:28:37ZThe first Thanksgiving is a key chapter in America’s origin story – but what happened in Virginia four months later mattered much more<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432920/original/file-20211119-22767-1auehyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C296%2C4695%2C3532&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In the 19th century, there was a campaign to link the Thanksgiving holiday to the Pilgrims.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-first-thanksgiving-the-indians-joining-in-the-feast-of-news-photo/514887046?adppopup=true">Bettman/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last year marked the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving in New England. Remembered and retold as an allegory for perseverance and cooperation, the story of that first Thanksgiving has become an important part of how Americans think about the founding of their country. </p>
<p>But what happened four months later, starting in March 1622 about 600 miles south of Plymouth, is, I believe, far more reflective of the country’s origins – a story not of peaceful coexistence but of distrust, displacement and repression. </p>
<p><a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300230109/trials-thomas-morton">As a scholar of colonial New England</a>
<a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807858486/the-atlantic-world-and-virginia-1550-1624/">and Virginia</a>, I have often wondered why Americans tend to pay so much less attention to other English migrants of the same era. </p>
<p>The conquest and colonization of New England mattered, of course. But the Pilgrims’ experience in the early 1620s tells us less about the colonial era than events along Chesapeake Bay, where the English had established Jamestown in 1607.</p>
<h2>A compelling origin story</h2>
<p>The Pilgrims etched their place in the nation’s history long ago as plucky survivors who persevered despite difficult conditions. Ill-prepared for the New England winter of 1620 to 1621, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-pilgrims-were-actually-able-to-survive-106990">they benefited when</a> a terrible epidemic raged among the Indigenous peoples of the region from 1616 to 1619, which reduced competition for resources.</p>
<p>Having endured a winter in which perhaps one-half of the migrants succumbed, the survivors welcomed the fall harvest of 1621. They survived because local Wampanoags had taught them how to grow corn, <a href="https://plimoth.org/for-students/homework-help/growing-food">the most important crop in much of eastern North America</a>. That November, the Pilgrims and Wampanoags shared a three-day feast. </p>
<p>This was the event that now marks the first American day of Thanksgiving, even though many Indigenous peoples <a href="https://oneida-nsn.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/IROQUOIS-TRADITIONAL-CEREMONIES-8.17.pdf">had long had rituals that included giving thanks</a> and other European settlers had previously declared similar days of thanks – <a href="https://www.history.com/news/did-florida-host-the-first-thanksgiving">including one in Florida in 1565</a> and <a href="https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/new-englands-first-thanksgiving-maine-style/">another along the Maine coast in 1607</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432905/original/file-20211119-27-6lfpuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Native American woman presents a turkey to a Pilgrim." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432905/original/file-20211119-27-6lfpuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432905/original/file-20211119-27-6lfpuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432905/original/file-20211119-27-6lfpuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432905/original/file-20211119-27-6lfpuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432905/original/file-20211119-27-6lfpuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432905/original/file-20211119-27-6lfpuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432905/original/file-20211119-27-6lfpuo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A postcard from 1912 depicts goodwill and cooperation between Native Americans and colonists.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/postcard-from-circa-1912-with-a-native-ameircan-woman-news-photo/595267242?adppopup=true">Samantha Vuignier/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1623, Pilgrims in Plymouth declared a day to thank their God for bringing rain when it looked like their corn crop might wither in a brutal drought. They likely celebrated it in late July. In 1777, in the midst of the Revolutionary War, the members of the Continental Congress <a href="https://pilgrimhall.org/pdf/TG_First_National_Thanksgiving_Proclamation_1777.pdf">declared a day of Thanksgiving for Dec. 18</a>. The Pilgrims didn’t even get a mention.</p>
<p>In the 19th century, however, annual Thanksgiving holidays became linked to New England, largely as a result of <a href="https://time.com/5910755/mayflower-plymouth-meaning/">campaigns to make the Plymouth experience one of the nation’s origin stories</a>. Promoters of this narrative identified the Mayflower Compact as the starting point for representative government and praised the religious freedom they saw in New England – at least for Americans of European ancestry.</p>
<p>For most of the last century, U.S. Presidents have mentioned the Pilgrims in their annual proclamation, <a href="https://pilgrimhall.org/thanksgiving_proclamations.htm">helping to solidify the link between the holiday and those immigrants</a>. </p>
<h2>In Virginia, a tenuous peace shatters</h2>
<p>But the events in Plymouth in 1621 that came to be enshrined in the national narrative were not typical. </p>
<p>A more revealing incident took place in Virginia in 1622. </p>
<p>Since 1607, English migrants had maintained a small community in Jamestown, where colonists struggled mightily to survive. Unable to figure out how to find fresh water, they drank from the James River, even during the summer months when the water level dropped and turned the river into a swamp. The bacteria they consumed from doing so <a href="https://jpwhit.people.wm.edu/H150F2004/earle.pdf">caused typhoid fever and dysentery</a>. </p>
<p>Despite a death rate that reached 50% in some years, the English decided to stay. Their investment paid off in the mid-1610s when an enterprising colonist named John Rolfe planted West Indian tobacco seeds in the region’s fertile soil. <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/chesapeake-in-the-seventeenth-century-essays-on-anglo-american-society/oclc/16690358">The industry soon boomed</a>.</p>
<p>But economic success did not mean the colony would thrive. Initial English survival in Virginia depended on the good graces of the local Indigenous population. By 1607, <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/powhatan-d-1618/link">Wahunsonacock</a>, the leader of an alliance of Natives called <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/tsenacomoco-powhatan-paramount-chiefdom/">Tsenacomoco</a>, had spent a generation forming a confederation of roughly 30 distinct communities along tributaries of Chesapeake Bay. The English called him Powhatan and labeled his followers the Powhatans.</p>
<p>Wahunsonacock could have likely prevented the English from establishing their community at Jamestown; after all, the Powhatans controlled most of the resources in the region. In 1608, when the newcomers were near starvation, the Powhatans provided them with food. <a href="https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/life-of-john-smith.htm">Wahunsonacock also spared Captain John Smith’s life</a> after his people captured the Englishman. </p>
<p>Wahunsonacock’s actions revealed his strategic thinking. Rather than see the newcomers as all-powerful, he likely believed the English <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska-paperback/9780803270916/">would become a subordinate community under his control</a>. After a war from 1609 to 1614 between English and Powhatans, Wahunsonacock and his allies agreed to peace and coexistence.</p>
<p>Wahunsonacock died in 1618. Soon after his passing, Opechancanough, likely one of Wahunsonacock’s brothers, emerged as a leader of the Powhatans. Unlike his predecessor, Opechancanough viewed the English with suspicion, <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/james-horn/a-brave-and-cunning-prince/9781541600034/">especially when they pushed on to Powhatan lands to expand their tobacco fields</a>.</p>
<p>By spring 1622, Opechancanough had had enough. On March 22, he and his allies launched a surprise attack. By day’s end, they had killed 347 of the English. They might have killed more except that one Powhatan who had converted to Christianity had warned some of the English, <a href="http://www.virtualjamestown.org/phatmass.html">which gave them the time to escape</a>.</p>
<p>Within months, news of the violence spread in England. Edward Waterhouse, the colony’s secretary, detailed the “barbarous Massacre” <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/a-declaration-of-the-state-of-the-colony-and-affaires-in-virginia-1622/">in a short pamphlet</a>. A few years later, an engraver in Frankfurt captured Europeans’ fears of Native Americans <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1622_massacre_jamestown_de_Bry.jpg">in a haunting illustration</a> for a translation of Waterhouse’s book.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Engraving of Indigenous Americans slaughtering colonists." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432900/original/file-20211119-23-3367gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432900/original/file-20211119-23-3367gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432900/original/file-20211119-23-3367gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432900/original/file-20211119-23-3367gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432900/original/file-20211119-23-3367gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432900/original/file-20211119-23-3367gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432900/original/file-20211119-23-3367gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Matthäus Merian’s woodcut print depicted brutal bloodshed in Jamestown, shaping European attitudes toward Native Americans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/1622_massacre_jamestown_de_Bry.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Waterhouse wrote of those who died “under the bloudy and barbarous hands of that perfidious and inhumane people.” He reported that the victors had desecrated English corpses. He called them “savages” and resorted to common European descriptions of “wyld Naked Natives.” He vowed revenge. </p>
<p>Over the next decade, English soldiers launched a brutal war against the Powhatans, <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/anglo-powhatan-war-second-1622-1632/">repeatedly burning the Powhatans’ fields at harvest time</a> in an effort to starve them and drive them away.</p>
<h2>Conflict over cooperation</h2>
<p>The Powhatans’ orchestrated attack anticipated other Indigenous rebellions against aggressive European colonizers in 17th-century North America. </p>
<p>The English response, too, fit a pattern: Any sign of resistance by “pagans,” as Waterhouse labeled the Powhatans, needed to be suppressed to advance Europeans’ desire to convert Native Americans to Christianity, claim Indigenous lands, and satisfy European customers clamoring for goods produced in America.</p>
<p>It was this dynamic – not the one of fellowship found in Plymouth in 1621 – that would go on to define the relationship between Native Americans and European settlers for over two centuries.</p>
<p>Before the end of the century, violence erupted in New England too, erasing the positive legacy of the feast of 1621. By 1675, simmering tensions exploded in a war that stretched across the region. On a per capita basis, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/100085/the-name-of-war-by-jill-lepore/">it was among the deadliest conflicts in American history</a>.</p>
<p>In 1970, an Aquinnah Wampanoag elder named Wamsutta, on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the Mayflower, <a href="http://www.uaine.org/suppressed_speech.htm">pointed to generations of violence against Native communities and dispossession</a>. Ever since that day, many Indigenous Americans <a href="http://www.uaine.org">have observed a National Day of Mourning instead of Thanksgiving</a>.</p>
<p>Today’s Thanksgiving – with school kids’ construction paper turkeys and narrative of camaraderie and cooperation between the colonists and Indigenous Americans – obscures the more tragic legacy of the early 17th century.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170853/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter C. Mancall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The communion between Native Americans and the Pilgrims makes for a compelling narrative. But it masks the suspicions and brewing violence that were far more representative of the era.Peter C. Mancall, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1719252021-11-22T13:28:21Z2021-11-22T13:28:21ZTalking turkey! How the Thanksgiving bird got its name (and then lent it to film flops)<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432923/original/file-20211119-12581-1pzk5rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C0%2C4000%2C2628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Not everyone is a fan of Turkey Day.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/free-range-bronze-turkeys-royalty-free-image/1282776886?adppopup=true">E4C via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Meleagris Gallopavo Day” is a bit of a mouthful. Which may be why this Thanksgiving, most people will opt for the less ornithologically precise “Turkey Day.”</p>
<p>And just as turkey is a versatile meat – think of those leftover options! – so too is the word “turkey,” which can refer to everything from the bird itself to a <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/turkey-2915">populous Eurasian country</a> to <a href="https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/worst-movies-of-all-time/">movie flops</a>.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://sasn.rutgers.edu/about-us/faculty-staff/jack-lynch">scholar who studies word origins</a>, I love “talking turkey” – not only how the bird came to be named, but also how the word has evolved over time. But let’s start with what has become the centerpiece of most Thanksgiving Day dinners.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/animals/bird/mega/all.html">North American turkey</a> – the kind that many families will be carving up this Thanksgiving – was being <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/taming-turkey">domesticated in Mexico some 2,000 years ago</a>.</p>
<p>Europeans glimpsed their first turkeys around 1500, when Spanish explorers arrived in the Americas and brought them back to the mother country. By the 1520s, turkeys were <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/11/turkey-history-world-thanksgiving/417849/">being bred in Spain</a>, and soon the delicacy was appearing on rich people’s tables across Europe.</p>
<h2>Oh, dinde!</h2>
<p>But what to call the new import? Europeans in the New World were overwhelmed by the new plants and animals they saw, and often used familiar names for unfamiliar species. The Spanish, for instance, thought turkeys looked like peacocks, so they used the Spanish word “<a href="https://www.spanishdict.com/translate/pavo">pavos</a>.” The French called them “poules d’Indes,” or Indian chickens, later shortened to “<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dinde">dinde</a>.”</p>
<p>To the English, the newly discovered American birds looked like the guineafowl – a bird native to Africa but which was introduced into Europe by Arab and Turkish traders in the 14th and 15th centuries. </p>
<p>And it is this point in the story that the modern-day turkey gets its name.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/ottomanempire_1.shtml">Ottoman Empire</a> was then at its height. Ethnic Turks, based in Constantinople (now Istanbul), ran the empire that spanned the Near East, Middle East and North Africa. As a result, to many Europeans, anyone from “the East” was a “Turk.”</p>
<p>Because Ottomans dominated trade in the eastern Mediterranean, a lot of produce coming to Europe was seen as “Turkish.” So a precious stone from Persia was named “Turkey stone,” and the French version of that name, “pierre turquoise,” gave us the word “<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/turquoise">turquoise</a>.”</p>
<p>In the same way, African guineafowl, introduced by Turkish traders, became a “turkey-cock” or “turkey-hen.” Over time, this was shortened to just “turkey.”</p>
<h2>Now that’s a feast!</h2>
<p>For as long as the New World turkeys have been in Europe, they’ve been featured in celebratory meals. The English word first appears in print in <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=aTJRAQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Dugdale%20Origines%20Juridiciales&pg=PA131#v=onepage&q&f=false">an account of a banquet</a> hosted by politician John Prideaux in 1555: The menu included 38 red deer, 43 pheasants, 50 quince pies, 63 swans, 114 pigeons, 120 rabbits, 840 larks, 325 gallons of Bordeaux wine and “Turkies 2. rated at 4s. a piece.”</p>
<p>History’s most famous turkey dinner, though, was <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-first-thanksgiving-dinner-actually-looked-like-85714">served in Plymouth Plantation in 1621</a>, as 50 Pilgrims who survived a year of brutal hardship joined 90 Native Americans for a three-day feast. Turkey wasn’t the only dish being served. Writing in his <a href="https://www.mass.gov/info-details/bradfords-manuscript-of-plimoth-plantation">History of Plymouth Plantation</a>, Governor William Bradford noted that Native Americans brought “codd, & bass, & other fish,” and others brought “water foule” and venison. But he was especially impressed with the “great store of wild Turkies.”</p>
<p>The bird has become so associated with harvest-time celebratory dinners that we’ve been calling Thanksgiving “Turkey Day” since at least 1870.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the word has continued to find new uses, showing up with <a href="https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/hwibi6q">dozens of meanings</a>. In 1839, the Southern Literary Messenger – a magazine edited by Edgar Allen Poe – reported on a new kind of dance, called the “turkey-trot” from its jerking motions.</p>
<p>In 1920, New York’s Department of Health reported that “Some addicts voluntarily stop taking opiates and ‘suffer it out’ … which in their slang is called taking ‘<a href="https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/5k7gmoa">cold turkey</a>.‘”</p>
<p>The turkey’s reputation for stupidity prompted other meanings. The legendary gossip columnist <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/walter-winchell-biographical-timeline/15619/#podcastsubscribe">Walter Winchell</a> told readers of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/25/opinion/click-click-gobble-gobble.html">Vanity Fair in 1927</a> about some new showbiz slang: “‘A turkey,’” he reported, “is a third rate production.” </p>
<p>Since then, movies that flop with the critics or at the box office have been called turkeys.</p>
<p>Another disparaging sense arrived in the 1950s, when turkey became a name for “a stupid, slow, inept, or otherwise worthless person.” That, in turn, probably led to the rise of the “<a href="https://www.discogs.com/release/3378674-Ohio-Players-Jive-Turkey-Part-1-Streakin-Cheek-To-Cheek">jive turkey</a>,” which first showed up in African American speech in the early 1970s, defined by slang <a href="https://spitalfieldslife.com/2011/02/24/jonathon-green-lexicographer/">lexicographer Jonathon Green</a> as “<a href="https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/kenrl3q#uv4asfq">an insincere, deceitful, dishonest person</a>.”</p>
<h2>Jive or straight talking?</h2>
<p>And what about “talk turkey”? Well, that can mean quite contradictory things.</p>
<p>One dictionary from 1859 defines it as “To talk in a silly manner, talk nonsense.” A similar meaning is attached to another turkey-related word, “<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gobbledygook">gobbledygook</a>.”</p>
<p>Another definition found in the 1889 “Americanisms, Old & New” had “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=OQY1AQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=%22when%20plain%20English%20would%22%20%22turkey%22&pg=PA543#v=onepage&q&f=false">talking turkey</a>” meaning “To use high-sounding words, when plain English would do equally well or better.”</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>The most familiar meaning of “talking turkey,” in which it is a stand-in for “straight talk,” is often said to come from a once popular joke. A white man and an American Indian, the story goes, spend a day hunting together and manage to bag a turkey and a somewhat less bountiful buzzard. The devious white man proposes a “heads-I-win-tails-you-lose” division of the spoils. “I’ll take the turkey, and you the buzzard,” he says, “or, if you prefer, you take the buzzard, and I’ll take the turkey.” The frustrated American Indian replies – usually in some version of would-be comic pidgin English – “You talk all buzzard to me, and don’t talk turkey.”</p>
<p>Those who <a href="http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-tal1.htm">study word histories</a> are skeptical of stories like this, since most are invented after the fact. More likely, “talk turkey” came from pleasant conversation at Thanksgiving dinner, or maybe negotiations between Native Americans and European colonists over the cost of poultry. Whatever the origin, though, when we “talk turkey,” we’re engaging in the kind of straightforward, honest speech the scheming hunter denied his hunting partner.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171925/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jack Lynch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From ‘turkey trot’ to ‘going cold turkey,’ the centerpiece to many Thanksgiving dinners has lent its name to many things. But it also borrowed its name from elsewhere.Jack Lynch, Professor of English, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1704322021-11-17T13:17:45Z2021-11-17T13:17:45ZWhat Americans can learn from other cultures about the language of gratitude<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432257/original/file-20211116-19-973x0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C10%2C6709%2C4456&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A family holds hands and prays before a Thanksgiving meal.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/religious-black-family-saying-grace-before-royalty-free-image/1176300326?adppopup=true"> skynesher/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Families and friends traditionally gather to express gratitude during this time of year. Many also participate in acts of <a href="https://time.com/4580221/thanksgiving-holiday-charity/">service and charity</a> as a way of giving back to their local communities. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://cas.la.psu.edu/people/jde13">communication scholars</a> <a href="https://www.ou.edu/cas/comm/about/people/faculty/elaine-hsieh">who study intercultural communication</a>, we have studied how the many languages around the world have their own unique words and expressions for saying “thank you.” In turn, these expressions reveal <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Rethinking+Culture+in+Health+Communication%3A+Social+Interactions+as+Intercultural+Encounters-p-9781119496106">very different assumptions about how human beings relate to one another</a> and <a href="https://www.sunypress.edu/p-6539-the-art-of-gratitude.aspx">about the world</a> we collectively inhabit. </p>
<h2>Not everyone says thank you</h2>
<p>Americans are known the world over for saying “thank you” <a href="https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_cultural_differences_shape_your_gratitude">in many everyday situations</a>. Though some of these “thank yous” are undoubtedly heartfelt, many are also routine and said without much feeling. Given how often Americans say “thanks,” it might be surprising to know that in several other cultures around the world, people rarely say “thank you.”</p>
<p>In many cultures in South and Southeast Asia, including in India, where the expression in Hindi is “धन्यवाद” – spelled out as “dhanyavaad” in English – a deep degree of unspoken gratitude is assumed in interpersonal relationships. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/thank-you-culture-india-america/395069/">an article</a> in The Atlantic, author Deepak Singh, an immigrant from northern India to the United States, explains that “in the Hindi language, in everyday gestures and culture, there is an unspoken understanding of gratitude.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432259/original/file-20211116-25-1w63jep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Sikh man folding hands in a namaste before another man." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432259/original/file-20211116-25-1w63jep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432259/original/file-20211116-25-1w63jep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432259/original/file-20211116-25-1w63jep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432259/original/file-20211116-25-1w63jep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432259/original/file-20211116-25-1w63jep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432259/original/file-20211116-25-1w63jep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432259/original/file-20211116-25-1w63jep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Indian culture, saying thank you can often be considered inappropriate and too formal.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/real-estate-agent-with-client-at-village-stock-royalty-free-image/1281563029?adppopup=true">Deepak Sethi/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In many relationships – for instance, between parents and children or between close friends – saying thank you is considered <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/thank-you-culture-india-america/395069/">inappropriate</a> in these countries because it introduces a sense of formality that takes away the intimacy of the relationship. Thank you is appropriate when it is deeply and truly felt, and in situations where a person goes above and beyond the normal expectations of a relationship. Then too it is said with great solemnity, with eye contact, and perhaps even with hands at heart center in <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-namaste-has-become-the-perfect-pandemic-greeting-147149">namaste</a> position.</p>
<h2>The economic rhetoric of gratitude</h2>
<p>In American English, many of the expressions of gratitude are couched in transactional language that involves expressions of <a href="https://www.sunypress.edu/p-6539-the-art-of-gratitude.aspx">personal indebtedness</a>. We say, “I owe you a debt of gratitude,” “Thanks, I owe you one,” “One good turn deserves another,” and “How can I ever repay you?” </p>
<p>Thinking of gratitude as a kind of transaction can indeed encourage people to form <a href="https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_gratitude_helps_your_friendships_grow">mutually beneficial relationships</a>. But it can also lead people to see their personal and impersonal relationships in <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-new-year-rethinking-gratitude-88227">economic terms</a> – as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot">transactions</a> to be judged by market criteria of gain and loss. </p>
<p>The American language of gratitude tends to reflect the fact that many of us might see relationships as interpersonal transactions. But if we were to enter into relationships only on the premise of what benefits us personally, and potentially materially, then it can be very limiting. </p>
<p>This is why, we argue, it can be enlightening to look at other languages of gratitude. </p>
<h2>Thanking earth, sky and community</h2>
<p>Many Chinese people, for example, use the phrase “謝天,” or “xiè tiān,” which literally means “thank sky” as a way to express gratitude to all things under the sky. In a famous essay included in many high school textbooks called “<a href="https://www.bookzone.com.tw/event/lc040/booklist.asp">Xiè Tiān</a>,” writer <a href="https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%99%B3%E4%B9%8B%E8%97%A9">Zhifan Chen</a> noted, “Because there are too many people that we feel grateful to, let’s thank sky then.” The writer redirects individuals’ gratitude toward an all-encompassing universe, one that includes all things and all beings. </p>
<p>In Taiwanese, people say “<a href="https://taiwanlanguage.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/%E8%B6%B3%E6%84%9F%E5%BF%83%EF%BC%88tsi%C9%94k-kam%CB%8B-sim%EF%BC%89%E2%94%80%E2%94%80%E9%9D%9E%E5%B8%B8%E4%BB%A4%E4%BA%BA%E6%84%9F%E5%8B%95%E3%80%81%E8%AE%9A%E5%98%86%E3%80%81%E6%AC%BD%E4%BD%A9/">感心</a>,” or “kám-sim,” which means “feel heart,” to express gratitude. In complimenting a good deed, the word is also meant to highlight how people who witness the act but do not directly benefit from it are touched by the benevolence. It encourages people to recognize that the impact of good deeds is not limited to its direct recipients but to other members of the community as well. </p>
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<p>To say “kám-sim” is to recognize that our actions have effects that ripple outward, potentially strengthening and solidifying the social fabric, which ultimately benefits us all. </p>
<p>Every time we express gratitude, we invoke a social world. Often, we invoke a world without realizing its full force. For instance, when we use a language of gratitude characterized by economic metaphors, it can shape our view of the world and our social relationships, encouraging us to see <a href="https://www.sunypress.edu/p-6539-the-art-of-gratitude.aspx">life itself as a series of transactions</a>. Being more conscious about our linguistic conventions and the potentials of our choices can empower us to create a world we really desire. </p>
<p>Learning from <a href="https://www.sunypress.edu/p-6539-the-art-of-gratitude.aspx">other languages of gratitude</a>, perhaps we can make our “thank you” less casual and more heartfelt.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170432/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cultures around the world say ‘thank yous’ in many different ways. Two communication scholars explain what these expressions can reveal to us.Jeremy David Engels, Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences, Penn StateElaine Hsieh, Professor, Communication, University of OklahomaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1666462021-10-07T19:19:48Z2021-10-07T19:19:48ZA study of entrepreneurs explains why we sometimes give without receiving<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425248/original/file-20211007-18680-12ij7ws.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C7744%2C5193&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Why do we give without expecting anything in return? Research into a Silicon Valley business accelerator program shows bonding rituals play a big role. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>From someone <a href="https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2020/03/18/want-to-help-out-your-neighbors-during-coronavirus-here-are-the-dos-and-donts">dropping off dinner at the doorstep of a neighbour with COVID-19</a> to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/india/india-covid-hospital-bed-man-b1838879.html">an octogenarian in India giving up his oxygen bed for a middle-aged patient</a>, instances of people giving to those in need without expectations has made headlines during the COVID-19 pandemic. </p>
<p>People are often in direct competition for shared resources, so biologically, it would make sense that there would be an expectation that giving must be reciprocal. Yet even in situations characterized by intense competition, giving and sharing can take precedence over winning, whether it’s <a href="https://scroll.in/field/999581/pause-rewind-play-when-sailor-lawrence-lemieux-sacrificed-a-medal-to-save-lives-at-1988-olympics">Olympians giving up their medal positions to help peers in need</a> or <a href="https://time.com/5838289/coronavirus-business-support/">small businesses banding together to help fellow entrepreneurs hit by the pandemic</a>. </p>
<p>Why do people give without expecting anything in return? <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/210400">This question continues to baffle sociologists</a> because, theoretically, unilateral giving and receiving within a community cannot be sustained as the desire to receive without any obligation to give back can give rise to more takers than givers. </p>
<p>As organizational theorists, we were interested in the dynamics surrounding unilateral giving when the combined motives of co-operation and competition co-exist. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0001839220970936">Our research team published our findings in the <em>Administrative Science Quarterly</em></a>. We examined how acts of giving emerge and are sustained in a Silicon Valley business accelerator. </p>
<p>Early stage entrepreneurs increasingly gravitate towards start-up accelerators, which provide them access to investors, clients and the experiences of fellow entrepreneurs. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="people listen as a man speaks on a stages" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425252/original/file-20211007-17-scibbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425252/original/file-20211007-17-scibbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425252/original/file-20211007-17-scibbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425252/original/file-20211007-17-scibbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425252/original/file-20211007-17-scibbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425252/original/file-20211007-17-scibbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425252/original/file-20211007-17-scibbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Start-up accelerators offer participants access to other successful entrepreneurs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A typical accelerator brings together entrepreneurs who are unlikely to have known each other prior to entering the program. Besides providing participating entrepreneurs access to potential investors and clients, a key goal of accelerators is to create a supportive community of entrepreneurs.</p>
<p>In a typical start-up accelerator, entrepreneurs are expected to give to their fellow entrepreneurs without expectations, but those seeking help can find themselves competing for resources, including mentorship and funding. </p>
<h2>Creates a cycle of giving</h2>
<p>In our eight-month study of an accelerator in Silicon Valley, we followed three start-up camps. In the beginning, entrepreneurs across all camps actively sought help from fellow entrepreneurs. But the responses to these early requests differed across camps, setting in motion positive or negative dynamics. </p>
<p>We discovered that a single act of giving to a fellow entrepreneur in need spurs a cycle of gratitude and giving in the network. On the other hand, a single act of refusal to help triggers a cycle of shaming and avoidance. But what motivates these early acts of giving? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People sit at a table around a laptop talking" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424449/original/file-20211004-25-piblea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424449/original/file-20211004-25-piblea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424449/original/file-20211004-25-piblea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424449/original/file-20211004-25-piblea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424449/original/file-20211004-25-piblea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424449/original/file-20211004-25-piblea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424449/original/file-20211004-25-piblea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A single act of giving can lead to a cycle of gratitude and giving.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the heart of these dynamics are social interactions at events like formal onboarding events, weekly progress meetings, informal dinners, parties or outdoor activities. The accelerator program was structured so that one of the camps regularly engaged in weekly progress meetings, while others did not. </p>
<p>The accelerator’s weekly progress meetings, which we label “tournament rituals,” focused on entrepreneurs’ shows of strength as they discussed progress made on their products or services. In other camps, informal weekend get-togethers, which we label “bonding rituals,” organically emerged thanks to formal onboarding events that focused on building familiarity among entrepreneurs.</p>
<p>In these bonding rituals, entrepreneurs let their guards down and opened up about challenges they faced as entrepreneurs. This helped participants realize their common experiences as entrepreneurs and the need to help their peers.</p>
<p>Those who participated in these bonding rituals were not only comfortable asking other entrepreneurs for help, but also received help from their peers who gave without expecting anything in return. These early acts of giving generated a sense of gratitude among receivers who willingly paid it forward. This giving-gratitude cycle eventually resulted in a thriving community of giving and a dense network populated by positive relationships. </p>
<h2>Shows of strength don’t lead to giving</h2>
<p>On the other hand, those show-of-strength or tournament rituals generated an expectation among entrepreneurs to be strategic in exchanging resources with others in the accelerator program. Accordingly, when participants strategically approached knowledgeable entrepreneurs in their camp for help, they were rebuffed because their peers saw no value in lending a helping hand.</p>
<p>These early failed exchanges became shaming rituals — for example, entrepreneurs who felt undervalued and rejected by fellow entrepreneurs in their camp avoided interacting with them to steer clear of further negative experiences. This shaming-avoidance cycle resulted in a rapid dissolution of ties and what remained, in the end, was a sparsely connected network.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People looking stern-faced gather around a laptop in an office setting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424454/original/file-20211004-12705-1m0arur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424454/original/file-20211004-12705-1m0arur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424454/original/file-20211004-12705-1m0arur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424454/original/file-20211004-12705-1m0arur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424454/original/file-20211004-12705-1m0arur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424454/original/file-20211004-12705-1m0arur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424454/original/file-20211004-12705-1m0arur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When requests for help are refused, people will avoid future interactions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Piqsels)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In short, organic bonding rituals helped competitors identify with each other, triggering and sustaining early acts of giving. But tournament rituals only encouraged entrepreneurs to further their own interests, which eventually gave rise to more takers than givers.</p>
<p>We believe our research offers valuable insights into human interactions. Beyond start-up accelerators, our research applies to other organizational contexts where both competitive and co-operative motives exist. For instance, our research offers critical lessons for organizations looking to build a more collaborative culture. </p>
<p>Although employees are expected to co-operate, they also compete with each other for promotions. Formal meetings are a regular feature in organizations, but they can foster collaboration by ensuring they focus on the camaraderie among members rather than celebrating their individual wins.</p>
<p>Avoiding shows of strength in formal meetings can also encourage employees to engage in bonding rituals outside the organization, which our study shows are essential for building bonds within the group.</p>
<p>Amid the pandemic era, which has left more people feeling lonely and distanced from their community — <a href="https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2021/01/feature-the-loneliness-pandemic">not willingly but reluctantly</a> — our research underscores the importance of bonding rituals for building healthy communities of giving.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166646/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rekha Krishnan receives funding from SSHRC - Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rajiv Krishnan Kozhikode receives funding from The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p>New research on giving in a business setting could offer insights into human interactions and critical lessons for organizations looking to build a more collaborative culture.Rekha Krishnan, Associate Professor of International Business and Entrepreneurship, Simon Fraser UniversityRajiv Krishnan Kozhikode, Associate Professor, International Business/Management and Organization Studies, Simon Fraser UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1670902021-09-16T16:51:36Z2021-09-16T16:51:36ZWhat is the Moon Festival? A scholar of Chinese religions explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421411/original/file-20210915-25-14jaqtd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2120%2C1414&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A popular delicacy eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival is the mooncake.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/fresh-moon-cake-just-baked-still-hot-royalty-free-image/1174711798">Xvision/Moment via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With the arrival of September and hints of cooler temperatures also comes one of most important traditional festivals in the Chinese calendar, the <a href="https://www.chinahighlights.com/festivals/mid-autumn-festival.htm">Mid-Autumn Festival, or Zhongqiu jie (中秋節), also known as the Moon Festival</a>. </p>
<p>At this time of the year, the Chinese store down the road from our home in Gainesville, Florida, is stocked with <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224067752/duck-eggs-and-lotus-seeds-waxing-nostalgic-about-mooncakes">mooncakes</a>, known in Chinese as yuebing (月餅). The same is true of Chinese stores around the world. There is even the option these days of buying these desserts from online retailers such as Amazon.</p>
<p>These traditional delicacies are readied in anticipation of the festival, observed on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. This is a time for family and friends to gather, watch the full moon and eat mooncakes and other delicacies. Other festivity highlights include public lantern displays, dance parties, traditional performances and worship of the moon goddess and other deities.</p>
<p>Because of the central theme of family reunion, sometimes the festival evokes <a href="https://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/8319">comparison to Thanksgiving</a> in the U.S.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421404/original/file-20210915-19-173jgwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Group of smiling people gathered around lit candles at night." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421404/original/file-20210915-19-173jgwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421404/original/file-20210915-19-173jgwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421404/original/file-20210915-19-173jgwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421404/original/file-20210915-19-173jgwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421404/original/file-20210915-19-173jgwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421404/original/file-20210915-19-173jgwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421404/original/file-20210915-19-173jgwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Mid-Autumn Festival is a time of gathering for families celebrating the holiday.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/asia-chinese-family-celebration-moon-cake-festival-royalty-free-image/1278980956">Kong Ding Chek/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Mooncakes: Tradition and innovation</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/business/international/millions-of-mooncakes-as-chinese-festival-approaches.html">gifting and eating of mooncakes</a> is arguably the most emblematic feature of the festival. The round shape of the mooncake is meant to evoke an image of the full moon. The roundness of the full moon, in turn, symbolizes wholeness; by extension, it conveys a sense of spiritual contentment, coming together and reunion. </p>
<p>Usually, mooncakes come with <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224067752/duck-eggs-and-lotus-seeds-waxing-nostalgic-about-mooncakes">traditional fillings</a>, such as red bean or white lotus seed paste. There are many <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/dining/mooncake-recipes.html">regional variations</a>, some of which contain a preserved egg yolk in the middle. The yellow egg yolk adds another layer of symbolism, as it resembles the round moon in the sky. </p>
<p>Additionally, there are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-VrveA3xB4">contemporary flavors</a> such as chocolate, coffee or green tea. It is even possible to find <a href="https://blog.generalmills.com/2011/09/the-story-behind-haagen-dazs-mooncakes/">ice cream mooncakes</a>. These are created by commercial ice cream companies in order to tap into the lucrative mooncake market and cater to contemporary tastes. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421400/original/file-20210915-14430-1xouq97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Plate of mooncake slices with yolk center." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421400/original/file-20210915-14430-1xouq97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421400/original/file-20210915-14430-1xouq97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421400/original/file-20210915-14430-1xouq97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421400/original/file-20210915-14430-1xouq97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421400/original/file-20210915-14430-1xouq97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421400/original/file-20210915-14430-1xouq97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421400/original/file-20210915-14430-1xouq97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The egg yolk center of some mooncakes represents the full moon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/tasty-baked-egg-yolk-pastry-moon-cake-for-mid-royalty-free-image/1263890146">insjoy/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The legends behind the festival</h2>
<p>As a <a href="https://florida.academia.edu/MarioPoceski">scholar of Chinese religions</a>, I am especially fascinated by the legends associated with the origins of the festival. These are notable elements of popular lore, rooted in China’s long history and rich cultural traditions. </p>
<p>Customarily, the Mid-Autumn Festival is associated with the popular legend about Chang’e (嫦娥), the goddess of the moon. The <a href="https://products.abc-clio.com/abc-cliocorporate/product.aspx?pc=A1488C">earliest versions</a> of the story can be traced back to the <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/Warring_States_Period/">Warring States</a>, a significant historical period between 475-221 B.C., marked by recurrent warfare, bureaucratic reforms and political consolidation. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421407/original/file-20210915-19-1yftgl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Circa 1368-1644 painting of moon goddess Chang'e," src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421407/original/file-20210915-19-1yftgl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421407/original/file-20210915-19-1yftgl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421407/original/file-20210915-19-1yftgl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421407/original/file-20210915-19-1yftgl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421407/original/file-20210915-19-1yftgl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1435&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421407/original/file-20210915-19-1yftgl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421407/original/file-20210915-19-1yftgl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1435&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Offerings are made to the moon goddess Chang'e during the Mid-Autumn Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/45754">Metropolitan Museum of Art</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Chang’e is said to have stolen the elixir of immortality from her husband, Yi, the great archer and hero of <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/chinese-mythology">Chinese mythology</a>. She then escaped to the moon, where she was condemned to a lonely existence.</p>
<p>Later versions of the story, still told today, present a more flattering image of the goddess. She is described as a model of feminine beauty and elegance. She digests the elixir only in order to prevent it from falling in the hands of an evil person. She then chooses the moon as her immortal abode, to be close to her beloved husband. </p>
<p>On his part, Yi makes sacrifices to his departed wife that feature cakes and fruits. The local people sympathize with him and also start making the same offerings. </p>
<p>To this day, Chinese people continue this tradition, making offerings of mooncakes in commemoration of the goddess as they make wishes or pray for familial unity and harmony.</p>
<h2>Historical background</h2>
<p>In the agricultural society of premodern China, the Mid-Autumn Festival was linked with <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/festivals-feasts-and-gender-relations-in-ancient-china-and-greece/D18175C2D3BE4C7B37F6134CCA868CA9#">harvesting season celebrations</a>. </p>
<p>The term “mid-autumn,” which became the name of the festival, appears in “Zhou li” (周禮), or the <a href="https://brill.com/view/title/15332">Rites of Zhou</a>. This is one of the early <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300081855/five-confucian-classics">Confucian classics</a>, the core texts that constitute the main canon of classical Confucianism. The earliest history of the festival is uncertain, but scholars have shown that its celebration already took place during the <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/China_s_Golden_Age/ile3jSveb4sC?hl=en&gbpv=0">Tang era</a> that lasted from 618-907 A.D., and increased in popularity during the <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/cite/?id=2655">later imperial period</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421403/original/file-20210915-13-1s07wef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two people holding lanterns." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421403/original/file-20210915-13-1s07wef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421403/original/file-20210915-13-1s07wef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421403/original/file-20210915-13-1s07wef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421403/original/file-20210915-13-1s07wef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421403/original/file-20210915-13-1s07wef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421403/original/file-20210915-13-1s07wef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421403/original/file-20210915-13-1s07wef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lanterns are a common symbol of the Mid-Autumn Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/mid-autumn-festival-royalty-free-image/1310932672">Khanh Bui/Movement via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Celebrations in other Asian nations</h2>
<p>The Mid-Autumn Festival is also celebrated in Asian countries beyond China, as well as among the Chinese diaspora in other parts of the world. This is especially the case with <a href="https://www.chinahighlights.com/festivals/mid-autumn-festival-in-singapore.htm">Southeast Asian countries</a> with large ethnically Chinese populations, such as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. </p>
<p>It is also an important <a href="https://vietnam.travel/things-to-do/vietnams-magical-mid-autumn-festival">festival in Vietnam</a>. Called Tết Trung Thu, it is primarily celebrated as the <a href="http://thingsasian.com/story/mid-autumn-childrens-festival">children’s festival</a> and is associated with unique Vietnamese legends. </p>
<p>Besides moon watching and the ubiquitous mooncakes, among its unique features are the performances of traditional dances and the lanterns carried by children, as they walk under the glow of the full moon with their light illuminating the path. </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mario Poceski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Moon Festival, rooted in China’s long history and rich cultural traditions, will be celebrated on Sept. 21. In China, though, the festival is a three-day public holiday.Mario Poceski, Professor of Buddhist Studies and Chinese Religions, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1620742021-07-05T20:03:19Z2021-07-05T20:03:19ZWhy vacations feel like they’re over before they even start<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408434/original/file-20210625-15-14kihrf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=38%2C7%2C5074%2C3395&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People tend to reflexively assume that fun events will go by really quickly.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/dropped-ice-cream-cone-royalty-free-image/1217995927?adppopup=true">Chris Clor/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When a vacation approaches, do you ever get the feeling that it’s almost over before it starts?</p>
<p>If so, you’re not alone. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.1247">In studies</a> <a href="https://www.business.rutgers.edu/faculty/gabriela-tonietto">Gabriela Tonietto</a>, <a href="https://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/FacultyAndResearch/Faculty/FacultyBios/Maglio.aspx">Sam Maglio</a>, <a href="https://eccles.utah.edu/team/eric-vanepps/">Eric VanEpps</a> and I conducted, we found that about half of the people we surveyed indicated that their upcoming weekend trip felt like it would end as soon as it started. </p>
<p>This feeling can have a ripple effect. It can change the way trips are planned – you might, for example, be less likely to schedule extra activities. At the same time, you might be more likely to splurge on an expensive dinner because you want to make the best of the little time you think you have. </p>
<p>Where does this tendency come from? And can it be avoided?</p>
<h2>Not all events are created equal</h2>
<p>When people look forward to something, they usually want it to happen as soon as possible and last as long as possible.</p>
<p>We first explored the effect of this attitude in the context of Thanksgiving. </p>
<p>We chose Thanksgiving because almost everyone in the U.S. celebrates it, but not everyone looks forward to it. Some people love the annual family get-together. Others – whether it’s <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/psychologists-thanksgiving-dinner-stress_n_59ee86b1e4b03535fa937e9c">the stress of cooking</a>, <a href="https://thetakeout.com/survey-americans-hate-doing-dishes-on-thanksgiving-1845653105">the tedium of cleaning</a> or <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/dreading-thanksgiving-with-the-family-follow-this-advice-1542118843">the anxiety of dealing with family drama</a> – dread it.</p>
<p>So on the Monday before Thanksgiving in 2019, we <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.1247">surveyed 510 people online</a> and asked them to tell us whether they were looking forward to the holiday. Then we asked them how far away it seemed, and how long they felt it would last. We had them move a 100-point slider – 0 meaning very short and 100 meaning very long – to a location that reflected their feelings.</p>
<p>As we suspected, the more participants looked forward to their Thanksgiving festivities, the farther away it seemed and shorter it felt. Ironically, longing for something seems to shrink its duration in the mind’s eye.</p>
<h2>Winding the mind’s clock</h2>
<p>Most people believe the idiom “time flies when you’re having fun,” <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797609354832">and research</a> has, indeed, shown that when time seems to pass by quickly, people assume the task must have been engaging and enjoyable. </p>
<p>We reasoned that people might be over-applying their assumption about the relationship between time and fun when judging the duration of events yet to happen. </p>
<p>As a result, people tend to reflexively assume that fun events – like vacations – will go by really quickly. Meanwhile, pining for something can make the time leading up to the event seem to drag. The combination of its beginning pushed farther away in their minds – with its end pulled closer – resulted in our participants’ anticipating that something they looked forward would feel as if it had almost no duration at all.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An empty beer bottle on a sandy beach." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408435/original/file-20210625-26-1w5e2o5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408435/original/file-20210625-26-1w5e2o5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408435/original/file-20210625-26-1w5e2o5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408435/original/file-20210625-26-1w5e2o5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408435/original/file-20210625-26-1w5e2o5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408435/original/file-20210625-26-1w5e2o5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408435/original/file-20210625-26-1w5e2o5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vacations are fleeting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/bottle-on-beach-royalty-free-image/122276040">LSaloni/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.1247">In another study</a>, we asked participants to imagine going on a weekend trip that they either expected to be fun or terrible. We then asked them how far away the start and end of this trip felt like using a similar 0 to 100 scale. 46% of participants evaluated the positive weekend as feeling like it had no duration at all: They marked the beginning and the end of the vacation virtually at the same location when using the slider scale.</p>
<h2>Thinking in hours and days</h2>
<p>Our goal was to show how these two judgments of an event – the fact that it simultaneously seems farther away and is assumed to last for less time – can nearly eliminate the event’s duration in the mind’s eye.</p>
<p>We reasoned that if we didn’t explicitly highlight these two separate pieces – and instead directly asked them about the duration of the event – a smaller portion of people would indicate virtually no duration for something they looked forward to.</p>
<p>We tested this theory in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.1247">another study</a>, in which we told participants that they would watch two five-minute-long videos back-to-back. We described the second video as either humorous or boring, and then asked them how long they thought each video would feel like it lasted. </p>
<p>We found that the participants predicted that the funny video would still feel shorter and was farther away than the boring one. But we also found that participants believed it would last a bit longer than the responses we received in the earlier studies. </p>
<p>This finding gives us a way to overcome this biased perception: focus on the actual duration. Because in this study, participants directly reported how long the funny video would last – and not the perceived distance of its beginning and its end – they were far less likely to assume it would be over just as it started.</p>
<p>While it sounds trivial and obvious, we often rely on our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucy043">subjective feelings – not objective measures of time</a> – when deciding how long a period of time will feel and how to best use it.</p>
<p>So when looking forward to much-anticipated events like vacations, it’s important to remind yourself just how many days it will last. </p>
<p>You’ll get more out of the experience – and, hopefully, put yourself in a better position to take advantage of the time you do have.</p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162074/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Selin Malkoc does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new study finds that the feeling is pervasive – and can change the way trips are planned and how money is spent.Selin Malkoc, Professor of Marketing, The Ohio State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1504292020-11-25T15:58:23Z2020-11-25T15:58:23Z‘Constructive arguing’ can help keep the peace at your Thanksgiving table<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371292/original/file-20201125-18-1l7j574.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=310%2C567%2C4980%2C3358&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Those with different perspectives don’t have to butt heads.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/brothers-having-a-discussion-while-on-a-family-royalty-free-image/1210634816">FluxFactory/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sex, income, religion and politics – these are some of the biggies on the list of taboo topics during polite discussion. Even a conciliatory tone doesn’t always protect you if the subjects are spicy. When singer Katy Perry once tweeted post-election encouragement to reach out to family members who supported the other candidate, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/katy-perry-trump-family-us-election-b1718881.html">she was skewered online</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1325534297294471168"}"></div></p>
<p>Traditionally the year-end holidays are a time when friends and family with diverse points of view gather. In a pre-Thanksgiving Pew Research Center survey in 2018, people who reported more family discord about politics were <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/11/20/most-say-their-family-is-ok-with-discussing-politics-but-it-helps-if-the-family-agrees/">less likely to be comfortable talking politics</a> with their family, with 40% of respondents saying they try to avoid the subject.</p>
<p>Even during this tumultuous year, with stress running high for so many reasons, there are ways to discuss politics without the shouting and angst. Based on courses I teach on <a href="https://utdallas.academia.edu/JamesHoneycutt">conflict resolution in relationships and organizations</a>, here’s my practical advice, whether you’re connecting via Zoom or in person.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371294/original/file-20201125-13-wsdr0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman and man arguing at table" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371294/original/file-20201125-13-wsdr0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371294/original/file-20201125-13-wsdr0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371294/original/file-20201125-13-wsdr0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371294/original/file-20201125-13-wsdr0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371294/original/file-20201125-13-wsdr0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371294/original/file-20201125-13-wsdr0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371294/original/file-20201125-13-wsdr0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What do you have to gain by letting the conversation get heated?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/family-of-4-having-a-discussion-at-dinner-table-royalty-free-image/161097992">Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Keeping the conversation conflict-free</h2>
<p>During arguments, it’s easy to fall into what marriage therapist John Gottman calls the <a href="https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-four-horsemen-recognizing-criticism-contempt-defensiveness-and-stonewalling/">four horsemen of the apocalypse</a>: contempt, criticism, defensiveness and withdrawal. Once you go there, it’s hard to have any kind of constructive or positive outcome.</p>
<p>Here are the rules I’ve developed for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/026540759301000208">constructive arguing</a> among couples:</p>
<ul>
<li>Show positive understanding – “I get where you’re coming from.”</li>
<li>Exhibit rationality – for instance, keep cool, don’t raise your voice.</li>
<li>Be concise, be specific, don’t generalize.</li>
<li>Show consideration – for example, don’t push your view as the only one.</li>
</ul>
<p>It’s easy to get frustrated and start letting go of these ideals, especially in the heat of the moment.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Process-of-Highly-Effective-Coaching-An-Evidence-Based-Framework/Hicks/p/book/9781138906013">coaching strategy</a> that encourages empathic understanding can help here. Known as support for thought, this technique encourages you to support your counterpart’s willingness and ability to think constructively. You show respect for their different point of view and ask questions that reflect active and supportive listening.</p>
<h2>Changing minds through discussion</h2>
<p>Maybe you have higher aims than just keeping the peace. Sometimes you really want to challenge someone’s beliefs. There are ways to do so constructively.</p>
<p>For example, you can try to get your family member to recognize a discrepancy between their current anxiety and their ideal future by suggesting some outcomes that are counter to their current beliefs.</p>
<p>Imagine your aunt is scared of losing health insurance. What she hopes for in the future is affordable health care. If you can recognize where she’s coming from and where she wants to wind up, you can bring up a point that might not fit with her current view but that would help her accomplish her goals – like mentioning the possibility of using less expensive telemedicine options. You’re using <a href="https://ebrary.net/8755/psychology/empathic_understanding">empathic understanding</a>, identifying with the perspective of another.</p>
<h2>Brains like to keep it simple and the same</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371296/original/file-20201125-21-1lh8z1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman not liking what she's hearing from man" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371296/original/file-20201125-21-1lh8z1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371296/original/file-20201125-21-1lh8z1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371296/original/file-20201125-21-1lh8z1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371296/original/file-20201125-21-1lh8z1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371296/original/file-20201125-21-1lh8z1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371296/original/file-20201125-21-1lh8z1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371296/original/file-20201125-21-1lh8z1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Accept that some people aren’t open to a new perspective.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/woman-speaking-with-senior-man-royalty-free-image/pha120000025">Patrick Sheandell O'Carroll/PhotoAlto Agency RF Collections via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>You might save yourself some unpleasantness if you keep in mind the old maxim that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. People can change their minds – but it’s not easy. The human default is to <a href="http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/social-cognition/belief-perseverance/">stick to your beliefs</a>.</p>
<p>For one thing, people are cognitive misers and it’s more efficient to adhere to pre-existing beliefs. It takes time, research and mental effort to make a change. Back in the 1950s, <a href="http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/genpsypiaget.html">psychologist Jean Piaget called the process</a> of modifying your existing ideas as a result of new information or new experiences “accommodation.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.earlyyearseducator.co.uk/features/article/assimilation-and-plasticity-help-to-shape-the-brain">Neuroscience research</a> reveals that the way the brain’s connected makes it easier to assimilate new information that reinforces existing beliefs than to “unlearn” old information and replace it.</p>
<p>Political beliefs appear to be particularly “mindless” – people don’t tend to spend a lot of time <a href="https://doi.org/10.2190/IC.34.2.b">internally rehearsing their arguments</a> when those claims fall along party lines. People rely a lot on existing stereotypes as shortcuts as they move through political discussions. </p>
<p>So, if a person is not receptive to your political arguments after you’ve given it your best shot, maybe you can take heart in knowing you’re up against brain functions that have evolved over millennia to help people make efficient decisions without needing to painstakingly analyze every new bit of data.</p>
<p>Since the alternative is utter futility and fatalism, try to keep hope alive that compromise does sometimes occur. With any luck your holiday discussions, when approached calmly and respectfully, can provide some examples.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150429/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James M. Honeycutt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Talking with people who hold different political views doesn’t have to be an exercise in futile rage. Here are some tips to help you peacefully and fruitfully discuss spicy topics.James M. Honeycutt, Lecturer in Executive Education; Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies from Louisiana State University, University of Texas at DallasLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1506302020-11-23T22:24:38Z2020-11-23T22:24:38ZHow George Washington used his first Thanksgiving as president to unite a new country<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370863/original/file-20201123-23-ik6kck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=42%2C17%2C5572%2C3728&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President George Washington aimed to unify the country with his first Thanksgiving message.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/george-washington-statue-royalty-free-image/98843590?adppopup=true">Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Thursday, Nov. 26, 1789, George Washington woke early. Assisted by his enslaved valets – <a href="https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/william-billy-lee/">William “Billy” Lee</a> and the young <a href="https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/christopher-sheels-1776/">Christopher Sheels</a> – he powdered his hair, put on his favorite black velvet suit, tied his white neckwear and donned his yellow gloves. </p>
<p>Finally ready, he set out to travel the short distance from the President’s House, at what used to be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1922/11/12/archives/no-3-cherry-st-first-white-house-house-where-washington-lived-stood.html">3 Cherry St.</a>, New York, and St. Paul’s Chapel, which still stands at <a href="https://www.trinitywallstreet.org/about/stpaulschapel">209 Broadway</a>.</p>
<p>He had an important aim that day: to celebrate Thanksgiving. Washington had thought carefully about this Thanksgiving, the first of his presidency. On Oct. 3, 1789, following the recommendation of a joint committee of the Senate and House of Representatives, Washington had issued a <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-04-02-0091">proclamation</a>. He urged the people of the United States to celebrate “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.”</p>
<p>But Washington believed that particular Thanksgiving in 1789 was a crucial occasion. He would use it to call on the people he now led to hold their new country together in the face of forces that he knew could pull it apart.</p>
<h2>Devotion in the service of unity</h2>
<p>It was not the first Thanksgiving Americans celebrated. The <a href="https://www.plimoth.org/learn/just-kids/homework-help/thanksgiving/thanksgiving-history">first</a> took place at Plymouth colony in the autumn of 1621 – Pilgrims held a feast to thank God for their first harvest and invited members of the neighboring Wampanoag tribe. </p>
<p>It was not even the first national Thanksgiving – which was held on <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-12-02-0573">Dec. 18, 1777</a>, at then-General Washington’s behest. Nor was Thanksgiving yet a federal holiday to be observed every last Thursday of November – it became so with the <a href="http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm">1863 proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370877/original/file-20201123-21-8xn7fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="George Washington's Oct. 3, 1789, Thanksgiving Day Proclamation." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370877/original/file-20201123-21-8xn7fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370877/original/file-20201123-21-8xn7fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370877/original/file-20201123-21-8xn7fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370877/original/file-20201123-21-8xn7fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370877/original/file-20201123-21-8xn7fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1188&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370877/original/file-20201123-21-8xn7fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1188&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370877/original/file-20201123-21-8xn7fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1188&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Washington’s Oct. 3, 1789, Thanksgiving Day Proclamation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/299956">National Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nov. 26, 1789, was a Thursday, and the weather was miserable. Few New Yorkers showed up at St. Paul’s Chapel to see the president: “<a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/01-05-02-0005-0003-0026">I went to St. Pauls Chapel</a>,” Washington wrote in his diary, “though it was most inclement and stormy.” There were “but few people at Church.”</p>
<p>The president had prepared for the occasion. He also contributed a sizable sum of his own money to buy beer and food for prisoners confined for debt in the New York City jail. The donation was deemed to be a magnanimous and moving gesture, suitable to the spirit of the holiday. A week later, in an advertisement in the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/rr/news/18th/444.html">Dec. 3 issue of the New York Journal</a>, those very prisoners returned their “grateful thanks” to their president “for his very acceptable donation on Thursday last.”</p>
<p>Washington’s first Thanksgiving as a president may have not been tremendously successful, given the scarce attendance at the church service. </p>
<p>Yet, <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/maurizio-valsania-1098422">as a scholar writing a biography about Washington</a>, I believe it was an important step in his much larger political plan to bring the executive branch to the people’s doorstep. </p>
<p>What Washington wanted was a virtuous kind of populism in the new country he led. Washington’s populism wasn’t about inciting an angry mob; it was about sharing in their rituals, worshiping their God, speaking their own language. And he did so in the sole interest of the American people. </p>
<p>Thanksgiving 1789, for Washington, was at once religious and more than religious. Washington’s proclamation invoked devotional language, literally. The upcoming festivity, <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-04-02-0091">in his words</a>, could “be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.”</p>
<p>But Washington’s main concern was political. The nation was recently formed, and he feared that it could easily collapse. Its many internal divisions and separate interests could be lethal. Consequently, the president wanted this holiday to be a civic celebration in which “we may then all unite.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370878/original/file-20201123-17-kti67c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Washington's proclamation as printed in a newspaper of the time" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370878/original/file-20201123-17-kti67c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370878/original/file-20201123-17-kti67c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370878/original/file-20201123-17-kti67c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370878/original/file-20201123-17-kti67c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370878/original/file-20201123-17-kti67c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370878/original/file-20201123-17-kti67c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370878/original/file-20201123-17-kti67c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Washington’s proclamation was printed in newspapers throughout the country.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/the-first-president/thanksgiving/">George Washington's Mt. Vernon</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Pardon our national…transgressions’</h2>
<p>As its first president, Washington recognized that the United States was born out of slavery, conquest and violence as much as of sacred principle. Civic unification required acknowledgment of these flaws. Thus, in the proclamation, Washington asked God “to pardon our national and other transgressions.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5625">A tremendously self-aware man</a>, Washington knew that he was a deeply flawed person himself. </p>
<p>He was a slave owner, a relentless pursuer of African American fugitives and a destroyer of Native American villages. He was also a warrior who deployed brutality against enemies. He was a commander who resorted to corporal punishment with his own soldiers. Washington believed that he was not a saint to be mindlessly imitated. This made him humble in his duties.</p>
<p>More importantly, Washington also grasped the power of his symbolic position as president. He sought to leverage that for the good of the nation. </p>
<p>As president, Washington could not advertise his actions effectively via Twitter and social media. He had to show himself around constantly, no matter the weather. He had to painstakingly attend balls, plays, dinners, public receptions and of course the church. Every occasion, every Thanksgiving counted.</p>
<p>Through his outings, Washington met with a diversity of people, including those who were second-class citizens or were not citizens at all. Women, for example, greeted Washington at nearly every stop of the extended <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/George-Washingtons-Journey/T-H-Breen/9781451675436">presidential trips he took between 1789 and 1791</a>. Textile workers in New England, Jewish leaders in Newport, many enslaved persons in the South and churchgoers everywhere did the same.</p>
<p>These women and men, in bondage or free, believers or skeptics, played a part in the invention of a new political theater. Maybe, it was just a theatrical illusion. But these individuals – just like the prisoners in the New York City jail – thanked President Washington because they felt they were voices in a larger political culture.</p>
<p>Washington made sure his Thanksgiving message – not simply a message, but a “proclamation” – sounded clear and strong: May God “render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150630/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maurizio Valsania does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For his first presidential Thanksgiving, George Washington aimed to pull his country together in the face of the many internal divisions that could yank it apart.Maurizio Valsania, Professor of American History, Università di TorinoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1495122020-11-20T13:24:42Z2020-11-20T13:24:42ZKeeping indoor air clean can reduce the chance of spreading coronavirus<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370378/original/file-20201119-24-1eum6g1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C58%2C1328%2C899&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Open windows and doors to boost air flow and help remove airborne particles.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/open-window-in-room-at-home-royalty-free-image/665506663?adppopup=true"> Daniela Torres/EyeEm via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The vast majority of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ina.12766">SARS-CoV-2 transmission occurs indoors</a>, mostly from the inhalation of airborne particles that contain the coronavirus. But in spite of the obvious risks posed by being inside, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/holidays.html">small household gatherings</a> are driving much of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html">recent surge in cases</a>.</p>
<p>The best way to prevent the virus from spreading in a home would be simply to keep infected people away. But this is hard to do when an estimated <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-people-spread-the-coronavirus-if-they-dont-have-symptoms-5-questions-answered-about-asymptomatic-covid-19-140531">40% of cases are asymptomatic</a> and asymptomatic people can <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.3201%2Feid2607.201595">still spread the coronavirus to others</a>. Next safest is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/us/coronavirus-what-to-do-outside.html">to entertain outside</a>, but if you can’t, there are a few things you can do to reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus. </p>
<p>First – and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2020.106859">most important</a> – always wear masks, make sure everyone stays at least 6 feet away from other people and don’t spend too much time indoors. But in addition to these precautions, making sure the air inside is as clean as possible can also help. I am an <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=rU-EO54AAAAJ">indoor air quality researcher</a> who studies how to reduce the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10473289.1996.10467523">transmission of airborne infectious diseases</a>. Using <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-use-ventilation-and-air-filtration-to-prevent-the-spread-of-coronavirus-indoors-143732">increased ventilation</a> or running an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/0004-6981(85)90003-4">appropriately sized air cleaner or filter</a> can add an extra layer of protection. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370380/original/file-20201119-24-s8nre7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A table with a cooked meal on it inside of a room with doors and windows open." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370380/original/file-20201119-24-s8nre7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370380/original/file-20201119-24-s8nre7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370380/original/file-20201119-24-s8nre7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370380/original/file-20201119-24-s8nre7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370380/original/file-20201119-24-s8nre7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370380/original/file-20201119-24-s8nre7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370380/original/file-20201119-24-s8nre7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">More ventilation is better.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/breakfast-table-in-a-garden-shed-royalty-free-image/661780119?adppopup=true">Westend61 via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Fresh air is safer air</h2>
<p>A safer home is one that constantly has lots of outside air replacing the stale air inside. </p>
<p>Homes are typically ventilated through open windows or doors, or from air leaking in through unintentional openings and cracks in the building itself. A typical air exchange rate for a home is around <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1995.tb00338.x">0.5 air changes per hour</a>. Because of the complicated way air moves, that translates into taking about two hours to replace two-thirds of the air inside an average home, and about six hours to replace all of it.</p>
<p>This slow air exchange is not good when you want to limit the spread of an airborne virus. The higher the ventilation rate the better – so how much fresh air is ideal? While the exact exchange rate depends on the size of a room, as an example, a 10-by-10-foot room with three to four people inside should have at least <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2020.105537">three air changes an hour</a>. In a pandemic this should be higher, and the World Health Organization recently recommended <a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/media-resources/science-in-5/episode-10---ventilation-covid-19">six air changes per hour</a>. </p>
<p>Knowing the exact air exchange rate for your home isn’t necessary; just know that more is better. Thankfully, increasing the ventilation of a house or apartment is easy. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370381/original/file-20201119-15-1m9kxvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A graphic showing a fan blowing air out of an open window." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370381/original/file-20201119-15-1m9kxvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370381/original/file-20201119-15-1m9kxvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370381/original/file-20201119-15-1m9kxvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370381/original/file-20201119-15-1m9kxvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370381/original/file-20201119-15-1m9kxvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370381/original/file-20201119-15-1m9kxvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370381/original/file-20201119-15-1m9kxvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fans and exhaust vents can further increase ventilation by pushing inside air outside.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/room-ventilation-a-good-example-if-there-is-royalty-free-illustration/1254710035?adppopup=true">Makoto Hara/iStock/Getty Images Plus via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Open as many windows as you can – the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10473289.2002.10470775">larger the opening</a> the better. Open doors to the outside. Run the exhaust fans in your bathroom and above the stove – though only do this if the exhausts go to the outside and if you <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10473289.1996.10467519">also have a window or door open</a>. Additionally, you can place fans in open windows and blow the inside air out to even further boost your air flow. </p>
<p>I live in Colorado, and the winter cold has arrived. I still think it is worth it to have windows open, but I open them only about halfway and turn on the heaters in my house. This wastes energy, but I keep the time I have to do this to a minimum, and once visitors leave, I keep the windows open for at least an hour to completely air out the house. </p>
<p>All of these things add up and increase ventilation.</p>
<h2>Filtration as a backup</h2>
<p>If you are worried that your home ventilation is still too low, <a href="http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/ina.12036">air filtration</a> can offer another layer of safety. Much the way an N95 mask works, running air in your home through a filter with small openings can capture airborne particles that could contain the coronavirus.</p>
<p>There are two ways to filter air in a home: using a built-in system – like central heating, for example – or using stand-alone air cleaners.</p>
<p>In my home, we use both air cleaners and our heating system to filter the air. If you have central heating, make sure your <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ina.12617">furnace filter</a> has a <a href="https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/what-merv-rating-1">minimum efficiency reporting value (MERV)</a> of at least 11. This value describes how effective a filter is at removing airborne particles and contaminants from the recirculated air. The standard on most furnaces is a MERV 8 filter and many furnaces are not capable of running with a more efficient filter, so make sure to check your filter and ask a technician before replacing it. But a MERV 8 filter is better than no filtration at all.</p>
<p>You can also use a stand-alone air cleaner to remove airborne particles, but how effective they are depends on the size of the room. The bigger the room, the more air needs to be cleaned, and stand-alone cleaners are only so powerful. My home has an open floor plan, so I can’t use my air cleaner in the main living space, but it can be helpful in bedrooms or any other smaller enclosed spaces. If you consider buying an air cleaner, I worked with some colleagues at Harvard to build a tool that can be used to <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NEhk1IEdbEi_b3wa6gI_zNs8uBJjlSS-86d4b7bW098/edit#gid=1882881703">determine how powerful an air cleaner you need</a> for different room sizes. </p>
<p>And don’t forget to also consider how effective an air cleaner’s filter is. Your best option is a cleaner that uses a <a href="https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/what-hepa-filter-1">high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter</a>, as these remove more than 99.97% of all particle sizes.</p>
<p>If you decide to share your home with others in the coming months, remember that being outside is by far the safest. But if you must be inside, shorten the length of time your guests stay, wear masks and socially distance at all times. In addition to these precautions, keeping air flow high by opening windows as wide as possible, driving more air into your home with exhaust fans and using air cleaner and filters can help further reduce the chance of spreading the coronavirus.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149512/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shelly Miller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Being indoors with other people is a recipe for spreading the coronavirus. But removing airborne particles through proper ventilation and air filtration can reduce some of that risk.Shelly Miller, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado BoulderLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1492302020-11-20T13:15:42Z2020-11-20T13:15:42ZReturning the ‘three sisters’ – corn, beans and squash – to Native American farms nourishes people, land and cultures<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370181/original/file-20201118-15-102ilmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=45%2C0%2C5120%2C3372&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 'three sisters' are staple foods for many Native American tribes.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.ie/detail/photo/traditional-foods-of-the-southwest-tribes-royalty-free-image/530050376?adppopup=true">Marilyn Angel Wynn/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Historians know that <a href="https://www.plimoth.org/learn/just-kids/homework-help/thanksgiving/thanksgiving-history/partakers-our-plenty">turkey and corn</a> were part of the <a href="https://www.plimoth.org/learn/just-kids/homework-help/thanksgiving/thanksgiving-history">first Thanksgiving</a>, when Wampanoag peoples shared a harvest meal with the pilgrims of Plymouth plantation in Massachusetts. And traditional Native American farming practices tell us that squash and beans likely were part of that 1621 dinner too. </p>
<p>For centuries before Europeans reached North America, many Native Americans grew these foods together in one plot, along with the less familiar sunflower. They called the plants sisters to reflect how they thrived when they were cultivated together.</p>
<p>Today <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/04/native-americans-stories-california">three-quarters of Native Americans live off of reservations</a>, mainly in urban areas. And nationwide, many Native American communities <a href="https://civileats.com/2019/07/24/indigenous-food-security-is-dependent-on-food-sovereignty/">lack access to healthy food</a>. As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=yCZ-SMUAAAAJ&hl=en">scholar of Indigenous studies</a> focusing on Native relationships with the land, I began to wonder why Native farming practices had declined and what benefits could emerge from bringing them back. </p>
<p>To answer these questions, I am working with <a href="https://www.agron.iastate.edu/people/marshall-mcdaniel">agronomist Marshall McDaniel</a>, <a href="https://www.hort.iastate.edu/directory/ajay-nair/">horticulturalist Ajay Nair</a>, <a href="https://www.globe.iastate.edu/staff/donna-winham/">nutritionist Donna Winham</a> and Native gardening projects in Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Our research project, “Reuniting the Three Sisters,” explores what it means to be a responsible caretaker of the land from the perspective of peoples who have been balancing agricultural production with sustainability for hundreds of years. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lSwGxJe4bVs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Gail Danforth, an Elder of the Oneida Nation in Northeast Wisconsin, explains “three sisters” gardening.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Abundant harvests</h2>
<p>Historically, Native people throughout the Americas bred indigenous plant varieties specific to the growing conditions of their homelands. They selected seeds for many different traits, such as <a href="https://emergencemagazine.org/story/corn-tastes-better/">flavor, texture and color</a>. </p>
<p>Native growers knew that planting corn, beans, squash and sunflowers together produced mutual benefits. Corn stalks created a trellis for beans to climb, and beans’ twining vines secured the corn in high winds. They also certainly observed that corn and bean plants growing together tended to be healthier than when raised separately. Today we know the reason: Bacteria living on bean plant roots pull nitrogen – an essential plant nutrient – from the air and <a href="http://www.tilthalliance.org/learn/resources-1/almanac/october/octobermngg">convert it to a form that both beans and corn can use</a>.</p>
<p>Squash plants contributed by shading the ground with their broad leaves, preventing weeds from growing and retaining water in the soil. Heritage squash varieties also had spines that discouraged deer and raccoons from visiting the garden for a snack. And sunflowers planted around the edges of the garden created a natural fence, protecting other plants from wind and animals and attracting pollinators.</p>
<p>Interplanting these agricultural sisters produced bountiful harvests that sustained large Native communities and <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/eam.2015.0016">spurred fruitful trade economies</a>. The first Europeans who reached the Americas were shocked at the abundant food crops they found. My research is exploring how, 200 years ago, Native American agriculturalists around the Great Lakes and along the Missouri and Red rivers fed fur traders with their diverse vegetable products.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CCJSIzdFSOJ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<h2>Displaced from the land</h2>
<p>As Euro-Americans settled permanently on the most fertile North American lands and acquired seeds that Native growers had carefully bred, they imposed policies that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/87.2.550">made Native farming practices impossible</a>. In 1830 President Andrew Jackson signed the <a href="https://guides.loc.gov/indian-removal-act">Indian Removal Act</a>, which made it official U.S. policy to force Native peoples from their home locations, pushing them onto subpar lands. </p>
<p>On reservations, U.S. government officials discouraged Native women from cultivating anything larger than small garden plots and pressured Native men to practice Euro-American style monoculture. Allotment policies assigned small plots to nuclear families, further limiting Native Americans’ access to land and preventing them from using communal farming practices. </p>
<p>Native children were forced to attend boarding schools, where they had no opportunity to <a href="https://doi.org/10.5749/jamerindieduc.57.1.0145">learn Native agriculture techniques or preservation and preparation of Indigenous foods</a>. Instead they were forced to eat Western foods, turning their palates away from their traditional preferences. Taken together, these policies <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-0802-7.html">almost entirely eradicated three sisters agriculture</a> from Native communities in the Midwest by the 1930s.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370194/original/file-20201118-17-u6vrmb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of Great Lakes tribes c. 1600." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370194/original/file-20201118-17-u6vrmb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370194/original/file-20201118-17-u6vrmb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370194/original/file-20201118-17-u6vrmb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370194/original/file-20201118-17-u6vrmb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370194/original/file-20201118-17-u6vrmb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370194/original/file-20201118-17-u6vrmb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370194/original/file-20201118-17-u6vrmb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Native American tribes in the Great Lakes region pre-European settlement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.mpm.edu/content/wirp/ICW-21">Milwaukee Public Museum</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reviving Native agriculture</h2>
<p>Today Native people all over the U.S. are working diligently to <a href="https://www.oupress.com/books/15107980/indigenous-food-sovereignty-in-the-united-sta">reclaim Indigenous varieties of corn, beans, squash, sunflowers and other crops</a>. This effort is important for many reasons. </p>
<p>Improving Native people’s access to healthy, culturally appropriate foods will help lower rates of <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/aian-diabetes/index.html">diabetes</a> and <a href="https://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/native-american/obesity">obesity</a>, which affect Native Americans at disproportionately high rates. Sharing traditional knowledge about agriculture is a way for elders to pass cultural information along to younger generations. Indigenous growing techniques also protect the lands that Native nations now inhabit, and can potentially benefit the wider ecosystems around them. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IooHPLjXi2g?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network explain the cultural importance of access to traditional seed varieties.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But Native communities often lack access to resources such as farming equipment, soil testing, fertilizer and pest prevention techniques. This is what inspired Iowa State University’s Three Sisters Gardening Project. We work collaboratively with Native farmers at <a href="https://gardenwarriorsgoodseeds.com/2015/01/19/tsyunhehkw-oneida-nation-wisconsin/">Tsyunhehkw</a>, a community agriculture program, and the <a href="https://www.wisconsinlife.org/story/the-lands-we-share-laura-manthe-the-oneida-white-corn-growers/">Ohelaku Corn Growers Co-Op</a> on the Oneida reservation in Wisconsin; the <a href="http://72.15.165.18/index.php/en/nebraska-indian-community-college/about-nicc-1">Nebraska Indian College</a>, which serves the Omaha and Santee Sioux in Nebraska; and <a href="https://dreamofwildhealth.org/">Dream of Wild Health</a>, a nonprofit organization that works to reconnect the Native American community in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, with traditional Native plants and their culinary, medicinal and spiritual uses.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-favorite">Weekly on Wednesdays</a>.]</p>
<p>We are growing three sisters research plots at ISU’s Horticulture Farm and in each of these communities. Our project also runs workshops on topics of interests to Native gardeners, encourages local soil health testing and grows rare seeds to <a href="https://doi.org/10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hill">rematriate them</a>, or return them to their home communities.</p>
<p>The monocropping industrial agricultural systems that produce much of the U.S. food supply <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-agriculture-needs-a-21st-century-new-deal-112757">harms the environment, rural communities and human health and safety in many ways</a>. By growing corn, beans and squash in research plots, we are helping to quantify how intercropping <a href="https://doi.org/10.14237/ebl.7.1.2016.721">benefits both plants and soil</a>. </p>
<p>By documenting <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/19320248.2016.1227750">limited nutritional offerings at reservation grocery stores</a>, we are demonstrating the need for Indigenous gardens in Native communities. By interviewing Native growers and elders knowledgeable about foodways, we are illuminating how healing Indigenous gardening practices can be for Native communities and people – their bodies, minds and spirits. </p>
<p>Our Native collaborators are benefiting from the project through rematriation of rare seeds grown in ISU plots, workshops on topics they select and the new relationships they are building with Native gardeners across the Midwest. As researchers, we are learning about what it means to work collaboratively and to conduct research that respects protocols our Native collaborators value, such as treating seeds, plants and soil in a culturally appropriate manner. By listening with humility, we are working to build a network where we can all learn from one another.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149230/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christina Gish Hill receives funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs. </span></em></p>For centuries Native Americans intercropped corn, beans and squash because the plants thrived together. A new initiative is measuring health and social benefits from reuniting the “three sisters.”Christina Gish Hill, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Iowa State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1502562020-11-19T21:27:04Z2020-11-19T21:27:04ZWhile spending holidays at home, here are a dozen more things you can do to help stop COVID-19<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370425/original/file-20201119-23-1vdegln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C0%2C5071%2C3195&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">While it may be deflating, events like the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade are best watched from home this year. Here, the Harold the Fireman balloon lies face down as he readied for the parade on Nov. 27, 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-harold-the-fireman-balloon-lays-face-down-after-being-news-photo/1190513733?adppopup=true">Gary Hershorn via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Americans prepared for the first Thanksgiving in the time of the coronavirus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/11/19/world/covid-19-coronavirus">issued a stark warning</a> a week before the big day: Don’t travel.</p>
<p>No over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s condo. No flying to a beach gathering with the family you choose.</p>
<p>And if it sounds like the CDC is trying to be like the Grinch who stole Thanksgiving, it is important to remember the grim statistic of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html">more than a quarter of a million people dead from COVID-19</a>. There is no mistaking: The coronavirus is out of control.</p>
<p>Ultimately, lowering the staggering numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths lies squarely with us. Yes, governments can mandate actions; but we’re the ones responsible for adhering to them. Our failure is clear when you look at the latest numbers: Deaths from the virus <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/">are projected</a> to soon approach 2,000 Americans a day, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html">cases continue to climb</a> in the vast majority of states.</p>
<p>If national numbers don’t spur action, will it help to localize the problem? You can find out what’s happening closer to home <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases-50-states">here</a> at the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Drill down to see the data in your state and county, then take a moment to pause and consider the catastrophic consequences. It’s still within our power to reverse course and lower these numbers. But as a public health <a href="https://www.purdue.edu/hhs/nur/directory/faculty/aaltonen_pamela.html">scholar and researcher</a>, I can tell you that as infections increase, the more difficult that becomes. </p>
<p>Even the rural states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Wyoming <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html">are experiencing</a> tremendous surges. Exhausted hospitals and health care workers across the U.S. are becoming overwhelmed, if not already there. Overwhelmed systems <a href="https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-surge-hospitals-overwhelmed-b0d089a0-87cc-4745-b128-8b0972c0ddf8.html">place care at risk</a>. Those with other health conditions need medical intervention and hospitalization. And those with a lax attitude about COVID-19 put themselves <a href="https://psnet.ahrq.gov/issue/new-us-health-crisis-looms-patients-without-covid-19-delay-care">at increased risk</a> for negative health outcomes. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Vaccines are on the horizon, but in the meantime, the pandemic is not winding down." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370187/original/file-20201118-13-1hvclas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370187/original/file-20201118-13-1hvclas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370187/original/file-20201118-13-1hvclas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370187/original/file-20201118-13-1hvclas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370187/original/file-20201118-13-1hvclas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370187/original/file-20201118-13-1hvclas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370187/original/file-20201118-13-1hvclas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vaccines may be on the way, but the pandemic is hardly winding down.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-walk-by-the-pfizer-world-headquarters-in-new-york-on-news-photo/1229551927?adppopup=true">Kena Betancur / AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Changing behavior is a must</h2>
<p>Modifying our behavior minimizes the chances to spread infection. But this is a big task. Government actions <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/covid-19-is-out-of-control-what-can-we-do/617097/">are most effective</a> when based on local data and the option to loosen or tighten restrictions based on solid information. We should not view these actions as an attempt to take away our civil liberties. Instead, we should think of them as liberating, a way to keep us away from the virus. </p>
<p>It is not too late to modify your behavior if you’ve been reluctant to accept the realities of the virus. With promising vaccines on the horizon, our challenge as individuals is to reduce current infection numbers. And to do that, everyone must commit to established public health strategies. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A traditional Thanksgiving this year may not be a good idea." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370191/original/file-20201118-13-c04rcu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370191/original/file-20201118-13-c04rcu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370191/original/file-20201118-13-c04rcu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370191/original/file-20201118-13-c04rcu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370191/original/file-20201118-13-c04rcu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370191/original/file-20201118-13-c04rcu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370191/original/file-20201118-13-c04rcu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Skipping the traditional Thanksgiving this year may be a good idea.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/family-eating-thanksgiving-dinner-royalty-free-image/594827567?adppopup=true">Ariel Skelley via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A dozen things you can do</h2>
<ol>
<li><p>Always mask up when indoors and around people who don’t live in your household.</p></li>
<li><p>Always mask up when outdoors and unable to maintain physical distancing. </p></li>
<li><p>Use either disposable masks or a multi-layer tightly woven cotton mask. Single-layer kerchiefs are insufficient.</p></li>
<li><p>When you mask up, make sure it fits your face and covers both nose and mouth. Wash or sanitize your hands after touching or removing the mask. </p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/cloth-face-cover-guidance.html">Remember that</a> masks are not a substitute for physical distancing. </p></li>
<li><p>Maintain at least six feet of distance between you and others outside of your household.</p></li>
<li><p>Wash your hands frequently with soap and water for 20 seconds, or use a hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol.</p></li>
<li><p>Avoid motions that transfer organisms from your hands to your face. Your mouth, nose and eyes have mucous membranes that are potentially receptive to these organisms.</p></li>
<li><p>Clean frequently touched surfaces.</p></li>
<li><p>Do as much as possible outside and keep interactions with others short.</p></li>
<li><p>Fortify ventilation systems for more frequent air exchanges.</p></li>
<li><p>Curtail in-person holiday celebrations with those not in your household. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Celebrations are <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/covid-19-is-out-of-control-what-can-we-do/617097/">particularly challenging</a> because it’s difficult for everyone to self-quarantine for the 14 days prior to the event. Also, events are typically inside rather than out; spacing of six feet may not be an option; ventilation systems in our energy-efficient homes are likely COVID-19-insufficient; and one cannot be masked while eating. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>So for Thanksgiving, do a virtual gathering instead. Cook the same menu in different houses to promote a sense of sharing. Send e-cards to each other with a personal note and wish for a good holiday. Or do a Zoom call where all can speak and express thankfulness for the ability to still be able to connect this year. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/heidi-stevens/ct-heidi-stevens-i-was-hospitalized-with-covid-19-1116-20201116-3z3jt5dexneydhyun7lgm46uvm-story.html">It is not unusual</a> for COVID-19 patients to rage when they discover that those around them dismissed or downplayed the wisdom and experience of scientists and doctors about the realities of the pandemic. But there is no need to give up, even in the face of increasingly frightening statistics. Instead, now is the time we need to commit not just to ourselves, but to one another. What’s standing in the way of curtailing the numbers of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths is us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150256/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pamela M. Aaltonen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Inaction over the next few months could cost tens of thousands of lives. Here are things you should do now to stay safe and to stop the spread of the coronavirus.Pamela M. Aaltonen, Professor Emerita; Immediate Past President, APHA, Purdue UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1491442020-11-10T13:26:21Z2020-11-10T13:26:21ZHow to host a safe holiday meal during coronavirus – an epidemiologist explains her personal plans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368383/original/file-20201109-22-35doja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2826%2C1772&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Holiday events will need to be a little different due to the pandemic.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/christmas-thanksgiving-food-roast-turkey-dinner-on-royalty-free-image/157280258?adppopup=true"> Funwithfood/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: After this story was published, the Centers for Disease Control updated its <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/travel-during-covid19.html">guidance for celebrating Thanksgiving</a>. The new guidance, announced on Nov. 19, recommends that people do not travel for the holidays and only meet with those who already live in their households.
The author of this piece has revised her own plans to be in accord with the new guidance. Her aunt and uncle will no longer be attending her family for Thanksgiving in person, but will be joining virtually in an effort to keep everyone safe.</em></p>
<p>Like many people in this unusual year, I am adjusting my family’s holiday plans so that we can all be safe during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. </p>
<p>I am an epidemiologist and mother of four with a large extended family. Given the serious <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa/u-s-sets-single-day-record-for-covid-19-cases-during-new-surge-idUSKBN2781UF">nationwide resurgence</a> of COVID-19 infections, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/holidays.html">gatherings of family and friends over the upcoming holidays</a> have the potential to amplify the spread of the virus. Several <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6944e1.htm">recent studies</a> have further confirmed that <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.04.20188417v2">indoor socializing at home carries a significantly higher risk</a> of viral transmission than outdoor activities. Health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have warned that much of transmission this fall is happening across all age groups at <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fauci-says-small-gatherings-driving-new-covid-outbreaks-worries-about-n1245159">small indoor gatherings</a>.</p>
<p>For the past 15 years my family tradition is to travel from Washington, D.C., along with both grandparents, to sunny Florida to celebrate Thanksgiving with cousins. This year we decided to skip the travel and will have fall and winter celebrations at home. </p>
<p>We are not canceling the holidays, but to keep ourselves and others safe, we are keeping plans small and flexible and remembering that the health of those we love is most important as we enter the season of gratitude. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368386/original/file-20201109-13-36b4nf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman wearing a mask using a hand sanitizer dispenser." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368386/original/file-20201109-13-36b4nf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368386/original/file-20201109-13-36b4nf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368386/original/file-20201109-13-36b4nf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368386/original/file-20201109-13-36b4nf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368386/original/file-20201109-13-36b4nf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368386/original/file-20201109-13-36b4nf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368386/original/file-20201109-13-36b4nf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Maintaining vigilant social distancing, mask-wearing and good hygiene in the weeks leading up to the holidays are the first steps to reduce risk.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/VirusOutbreakCaliforniaMallReopening/a79cc7ae93d64952a2c0e1dce379f7ec/photo?Query=hand%20sanitizer%20california&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=37&currentItemNo=18">AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Before you gather</h2>
<p>First, it is important that everyone who will be attending any holiday celebration is on the same page about how to take precautions before getting together. The idea is to lower infection risk in the weeks leading up to the holidays and then test to confirm. </p>
<p>In general, everyone should plan to be vigilant in their public health practices beforehand, especially since grandparents are at higher risk. In my family, we have <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-use-covid-19-testing-and-quarantining-to-safely-travel-for-the-holidays-147154">agreed to limit contact with other people</a> as much as possible the week before Thanksgiving. We have also agreed that everyone <a href="https://theconversation.com/quarantine-bubbles-when-done-right-limit-coronavirus-risk-and-help-fight-loneliness-140134">needs to be extra cautious around the few close people we see regularly</a>. </p>
<p>In conjunction with quarantining, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-use-covid-19-testing-and-quarantining-to-safely-travel-for-the-holidays-147154">testing</a> is the second strategy. </p>
<p>Research has consistently shown that people are most contagious a day or two before they show symptoms, so everyone <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-use-covid-19-testing-and-quarantining-to-safely-travel-for-the-holidays-147154">plans to get tested with an RT-PCR test</a> within 72 hours of Thanksgiving, while still being able to get results in hand before we gather. </p>
<p>If the demand for <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-tests-are-pretty-accurate-but-far-from-perfect-136671">tests</a> is high and wait times are long, we will get rapid tests. But these are a second choice, as they are <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-use-covid-19-testing-and-quarantining-to-safely-travel-for-the-holidays-147154">less reliable and can be expensive</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368385/original/file-20201109-21-f67ue1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two couples sit at opposite ends of a table outside while eating a meal." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368385/original/file-20201109-21-f67ue1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368385/original/file-20201109-21-f67ue1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368385/original/file-20201109-21-f67ue1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368385/original/file-20201109-21-f67ue1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368385/original/file-20201109-21-f67ue1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368385/original/file-20201109-21-f67ue1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368385/original/file-20201109-21-f67ue1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sitting far apart or even at separate tables outside will reduce the chance of spreading the coronavirus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/seniors-enjoying-afternoon-coffee-in-garden-on-long-royalty-free-image/1226358893?adppopup=true">amriphoto/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Where and how to eat and socialize</h2>
<p>No matter how careful you and your family are, there is some risk that someone will be infected. With that in mind, the goal is to reduce the conditions that lead to <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/09/29/science.abd7672">viral spread</a>. The biggest risks are indoor spaces with <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-use-ventilation-and-air-filtration-to-prevent-the-spread-of-coronavirus-indoors-143732">poor ventilation</a>, large groups and close contact. So we are planning the opposite: a short outdoor Thanksgiving with a small group and plenty of space between everyone.</p>
<p>To reduce the risk of infection from flying and to keep the gathering small, the only people coming to Thanksgiving at my family’s home in D.C. are my mother, my aunt and my uncle – all of whom live within driving distance. This is in addition to myself, my husband and our kids. When deciding how many people will come to the holidays, keep it small and consider the amount of space you have to maintain social distancing. </p>
<p>If the weather cooperates, we plan to be outside for trivia games and the turkey meal. Rather than eat around one table, we will have individual tables and place settings spaced far apart and space heaters around. I’ve got a mini care package planned for each guest so that everyone will have their own blanket, hand sanitizer, utensils and a festive mask. My mother won’t be helping out in the kitchen this year and, unfortunately, that goes for cleanup too. We won’t take a group picture but I will be sure to capture some of the special moments. </p>
<p>If the weather doesn’t cooperate, Plan B is to be inside in the large family room with as many windows open as possible and with everyone spaced as far apart as possible. Being outside is safer, but if you must be indoors, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-use-ventilation-and-air-filtration-to-prevent-the-spread-of-coronavirus-indoors-143732">improve ventilation</a> by opening doors and windows. Consider turning on exhaust fans and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-use-ventilation-and-air-filtration-to-prevent-the-spread-of-coronavirus-indoors-143732">using an air purifier</a>. </p>
<p>Everyone who lives in the household will be in one section while my mom will have her own individual area, as will my aunt and uncle. Even though we won’t hold hands before sharing the meal, we will still recite that we are “thankful for family, friends and food.”</p>
<p>Whether outside or inside, everyone will wear masks when they aren’t eating, maintain 6 feet of distance and use the hand sanitizer that I will place throughout the house. </p>
<p>It is also important to be mindful of alcohol consumption, as a pandemic is not the time for lowered inhibitions and bad judgment.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368388/original/file-20201109-17-h4jwg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young boy waves to his grandmother at the door of a home." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368388/original/file-20201109-17-h4jwg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368388/original/file-20201109-17-h4jwg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368388/original/file-20201109-17-h4jwg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368388/original/file-20201109-17-h4jwg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368388/original/file-20201109-17-h4jwg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368388/original/file-20201109-17-h4jwg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368388/original/file-20201109-17-h4jwg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The safety of loved ones is the most important thing to remember, even if it means the holidays will be a little different this year.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/social-distance-visit-between-young-boy-and-his-royalty-free-image/1219335032?adppopup=true">Cavan Images/Cavan via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>After the event</h2>
<p>I hope everyone enjoys the meal and quality time spent with one another in this melancholy year, but the work is not done once the dishes are clean and everyone is home safely.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Everyone is planning to get another COVID–19 test one week after the meal. Additionally, Thanksgiving is our family’s trial run for Christmas, so a few days after, I plan to call everyone and discuss what worked well and what didn’t. If all goes well, I hope to repeat this quarantine, test and gather process for Christmas.</p>
<p>The ending of 2020 deserves to be celebrated, given this difficult year. This Thanksgiving will be different from those of other years, and my kids understand they need to manage their expectations. But we still plan to uphold our tradition of writing all that we are thankful for and reading our messages aloud to one another. We will still share love, some laughs and a good meal while everyone does their part to protect one another.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149144/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melissa Hawkins receives funding from USDA. </span></em></p>COVID-19 and holiday family gatherings are not a good pair. But taking the right precautions before, during and after the family gets together can greatly reduce coronavirus risk this holiday season.Melissa Hawkins, Professor of Public Health, Director of Public Health Scholars Program, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1471542020-10-23T12:23:10Z2020-10-23T12:23:10ZHow to use COVID-19 testing and quarantining to safely travel for the holidays<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364823/original/file-20201021-15-l4nww4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=128%2C98%2C4907%2C3238&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">For anyone thinking about traveling during the pandemic, COVID-19 testing can be an important, but not all-powerful, tool. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/VirusOutbreakMemorialDayTravel/1766cbc5f60b4d94ba5c484b49591712/photo?Query=COVID%20airport%20family&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=13&currentItemNo=11">AP Photo/Charlie Riedel</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With the holidays approaching, many people are considering whether to visit relatives or friends in the coming weeks. At the same time, cases of COVID-19 are surging toward the highest levels since the beginning of the pandemic. As <a href="https://chmfamilymedicine.msu.edu/people/claudia-finkelstein/">a physician</a>, daughter of vulnerable seniors and mother of young adults, I have been thinking a lot about whether testing will help me decide if it’s safe to see my family. </p>
<p>Testing may help you to make sure you and your loved ones stay healthy, but COVID-19 testing is not as simple as yes or no, infected or safe. There are many factors to keep in mind when using a coronavirus test to plan your holiday travels safely.</p>
<h2>Some tests are better than others</h2>
<p>Broadly speaking, there are two categories of tests. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/testing-overview.html">Antibody tests</a> – which look for evidence of previous infection – can’t tell you whether you currently have COVID-19 and aren’t useful for planning to visit family.</p>
<p>The other category of tests look for evidence of the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/testing-overview.html">virus in your body</a>. There are two types of these viral tests available – <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/testing.html">RT–PCR tests</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/antigen-tests-for-covid-19-are-fast-and-easy-and-could-solve-the-coronavirus-testing-problem-despite-being-somewhat-inaccurate-137977">rapid antigen tests</a> – and these are the ones to use when trying to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364825/original/file-20201021-13-1uxg0t0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A medical professional inserting a nasal swab into an older man's nose." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364825/original/file-20201021-13-1uxg0t0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364825/original/file-20201021-13-1uxg0t0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364825/original/file-20201021-13-1uxg0t0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364825/original/file-20201021-13-1uxg0t0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364825/original/file-20201021-13-1uxg0t0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364825/original/file-20201021-13-1uxg0t0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364825/original/file-20201021-13-1uxg0t0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The gold standard viral test is an RT–PCR test that looks for viral genetic material.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/VirusOutbreakVaccineDiversity/c85cfe10d1aa46658a8d072beeda56bb/photo?Query=COVID%20testing%20swab&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1125&currentItemNo=7">AP Photo/Taimy Alvarez</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>No lab test for COVID-19 is 100% accurate. Although false positives are certainly not a good thing, a false negative result – testing negative when you actually have the virus – is the bigger danger if you plan on seeing family. The false negative rates for RT-PCR tests <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m1808">range from 2%-29%</a>. Much of that range is due to different manufacturers and user error. While fairly accurate, these tests often involve a visit to a health care provider and are somewhat expensive – <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/15/health/coronavirus-test-cost/index.html">around US$100</a>, though <a href="https://www.castlighthealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Costs-of-COVID-19.pdf">costs vary widely by state</a> – and it can take <a href="https://www.kateto.net/covid19/COVID19%20CONSORTIUM%20REPORT%2017%20TEST%20OCT%202020.pdf">up to three days to get results</a>. RT-PCR tests are the best tests available, but for some people, especially if you’ll be seeing someone in a vulnerable age group, the high-end 29% false negative rate might leave more uncertainty than you are comfortable with. </p>
<p>Rapid antigen tests, in comparison, are <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/milestone-fda-oks-simple-accurate-coronavirus-test-could-cost-just-5">faster and cheaper</a>, but less accurate than RT–PCR tests. You can usually get results within a day of taking the test, but false negative rates can be <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/coronavirus-antigen-tests-quick-and-cheap-too-often-wrong">as high as 50%</a>. They are most likely to be accurate when they are <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/resources/antigen-tests-guidelines.html">given to people with symptoms</a> within a week of symptom onset, but rapid tests are not meant to be diagnostic tests for an individual. They are much better at <a href="https://theconversation.com/rapid-screening-tests-that-prioritize-speed-over-accuracy-could-be-key-to-ending-the-coronavirus-pandemic-143882">monitoring whole populations where people can be tested repeatedly</a>, and quite frankly have little use as a one-time test.</p>
<p>With a rapid test you may get results instantaneously at a lower price, but they should not be the only thing to inform a travel decision. When the health of a family member is on the line, accuracy is your friend. RT–PCR tests are generally considered to be more accurate.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364826/original/file-20201021-17-b8xxrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Crowds of people walking on sidewalks in Las Vegas, some wearing masks, some not." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364826/original/file-20201021-17-b8xxrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364826/original/file-20201021-17-b8xxrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364826/original/file-20201021-17-b8xxrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364826/original/file-20201021-17-b8xxrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364826/original/file-20201021-17-b8xxrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364826/original/file-20201021-17-b8xxrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364826/original/file-20201021-17-b8xxrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Any potential exposure, like walking in a crowded area or being in an enclosed indoor space, can reset the 14-day quarantine period.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/VirusOutbreak-Nevada/58804eaa0ab34c3da4482b26c3800060/photo?Query=crowd%20covid%20mask&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=38&currentItemNo=13">AP Photo/John Locher,File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Timing matters</h2>
<p>Regardless of which viral test you use, the results are accurate only for the moment when you were tested and reflect only the ability of the test to detect the virus. A negative result today of course doesn’t prevent you from getting infected tomorrow.</p>
<p>But with the coronavirus, neither does a negative test mean you haven’t been exposed to the virus. The time between coming in contact with the virus and beginning to shed infectious virus particles – the incubation period – varies anywhere <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/if-youve-been-exposed-to-the-coronavirus#:%7E:text=The%20time%20from%20exposure%20to,before%20starting%20to%20experience%20symptoms">between two and 14 days</a>. For example, it’s possible you could get exposed today, test negative tomorrow and then go on to be infectious a few days later.</p>
<p>Additionally, it is possible to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2008373117">spread the virus before you show symptoms</a> – when you are presymptomatic – or even if you <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-people-spread-the-coronavirus-if-they-dont-have-symptoms-5-questions-answered-about-asymptomatic-covid-19-140531">never develop any symptoms at all</a>. </p>
<h2>Minimize risk, accept uncertainty</h2>
<p>First off, if you have any symptoms at all, stay home. If you do not have symptoms, then you can start to think about travel for the holidays.</p>
<p>Knowing that tests are imperfect, the safest thing you can do is to <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/duration-isolation.html">strictly self-quarantine for 14 days before your visit</a>. Testing can offer a helpful data point, but a quarantine is the more foolproof option.</p>
<p>If you can’t quarantine for a full 14 days, the next best thing is to limit potential exposure to the virus, isolate as much as possible as long as possible before you travel and get tested.</p>
<p>If you are worried about being an asymptomatic carrier and are unable to isolate, consider getting tested at least five days after your last possible exposure. This <a href="https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/your-covid-19-testing-questions-answered">maximizes the chance of a test detecting the virus</a> if you are infected. </p>
<p>Remember that traveling itself carries risk of exposure too. Driving with appropriate precautions – wear a mask, wash your hands and social distance – seems to be <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-safe-travel-advice/art-20486965">safer than flying</a>.</p>
<p>The process of flying – the crowded airports, bus rides and close seating on the plane – is a <a href="https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/11/20-3299_article">serious exposure risk</a>. Ideally, after flying you would self–isolate again at your destination for as long as possible and consider getting tested. That is a lot of time alone and waiting for test results, but I can think of no higher stakes than the safety of loved ones.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365066/original/file-20201022-16-vlsda9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A flowchart from the CDC showing when to delay travel." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365066/original/file-20201022-16-vlsda9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365066/original/file-20201022-16-vlsda9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365066/original/file-20201022-16-vlsda9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365066/original/file-20201022-16-vlsda9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365066/original/file-20201022-16-vlsda9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365066/original/file-20201022-16-vlsda9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365066/original/file-20201022-16-vlsda9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There are a lot of reasons to delay travel, and during a pandemic, caution is wise.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/when-to-delay-travel.html">Centers for Disease Control</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>You’re not in it alone</h2>
<p>Maintaining health is a group effort, and it takes only one infected person to cause an outbreak. Openly discuss the precautions that the people you are visiting are taking and the possibilities of social distancing during the visit. </p>
<p>[<em>Get facts about coronavirus and the latest research.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=coronavirus-facts">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.</a>]</p>
<p>Remember that one negative test in a party of travelers is only that, one negative test. Just because you test negative doesn’t mean you can assume that other people in your household are negative too. Everyone needs to get tested and follow the same isolation measures, as much of the spread occurring <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/14/health/us-coronavirus-wednesday/index.html">is happening at smaller private gatherings in close quarters</a>.</p>
<p>Many people want to see our loved ones during the holidays. But there are enormous, life-and-death reasons to plan the visit carefully and to use information, isolation and testing wisely. You may decide that the risk is too high, and that is OK. But, if you decide to visit for the holidays, the safest option is a strict 14-day quarantine. Testing can help inform your decision, but is not the only thing that you should rely on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147154/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claudia Finkelstein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Over the approaching holidays, people around the world will want to travel to see friends and family. Getting tested for the coronavirus can make this safer, but testing alone is not a perfect answer.Claudia Finkelstein, Associate Professor of Family Medicine, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1271952019-11-26T15:08:19Z2019-11-26T15:08:19ZAre you as grateful as you deserve to be?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303346/original/file-20191124-74572-zl4a6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gratitude is not only a great feeling but a healthy one. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/african-american-woman-wearing-sweater-smiling-1121616575?src=a804ec61-e4ab-4d9d-bc84-951949c7cb04-1-2">Aaron Amat/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a physician, I have helped to care for many patients and families whose lives have been turned upside down by serious illnesses and injuries. In the throes of such catastrophes, it can be difficult to find cause for anything but lament. Yet Thanksgiving presents us with an opportunity to develop one of the healthiest, most life-affirming and convivial of all habits – that of counting and rejoicing in our blessings.</p>
<h2>Gratitude’s benefits</h2>
<p>Research shows that grateful people tend to be <a href="https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2019/03/practicing-gratitude">healthy and happy</a>. They exhibit lower levels of stress and depression, cope better with adversity and sleep better. They tend to be happier and more satisfied with life. Even their <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2010.01273.x">partners</a> tend to be more content with their relationships.</p>
<p>Perhaps when we are more focused on the good things we enjoy in life, we have more to live for and tend to take better care of ourselves and each other.</p>
<p>When researchers asked people to reflect on the past week and write about things that either irritated them or about which they felt grateful, those tasked with <a href="https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/images/application_uploads/Emmons-CountingBlessings.pdf">recalling good things</a> were more optimistic, felt better about their lives and actually visited their physicians less.</p>
<p>It is no surprise that receiving thanks makes people happier, but so does expressing gratitude. An experiment that asked participants to write and deliver thank-you notes found large increases in reported levels of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7701091_Positive_Psychology_Progress_Empirical_Validation_of_Interventions">happiness</a>, a benefit that lasted for an entire month.</p>
<h2>Philosophical roots</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303347/original/file-20191124-74593-1dpf6nt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303347/original/file-20191124-74593-1dpf6nt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303347/original/file-20191124-74593-1dpf6nt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303347/original/file-20191124-74593-1dpf6nt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303347/original/file-20191124-74593-1dpf6nt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303347/original/file-20191124-74593-1dpf6nt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303347/original/file-20191124-74593-1dpf6nt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Giving thanks is important for our psyches and our souls.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/christian-man-open-hands-worship-eucharist-1091200646">Love You Stock/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of the greatest minds in Western history, the Greek philosopher Aristotle, argued that we become what we <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html">habitually do</a>. By changing our habits, we can become more thankful human beings.</p>
<p>If we spend our days ruminating on all that has gone poorly and how dark the prospects for the future appear, we can think ourselves into misery and resentment.</p>
<p>But we can also mold ourselves into the kind of people who seek out, recognize and celebrate all that we have to be grateful for.</p>
<p>This is not to say that anyone should become a Pollyanna, ceaselessly reciting the mantra from
Voltaire’s <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19942/19942-h/19942-h.htm">“Candide</a>,” “All is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds.” There are injustices to be righted and wounds to be healed, and ignoring them would represent a lapse of moral responsibility.</p>
<p>But reasons to make the world a better place should never blind us to the many good things it already affords. How can we be compassionate and generous if we are fixated on deficiency? This explains why the great Roman statesman <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cicero">Cicero</a> called gratitude not only the greatest of virtues but the “<a href="https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/cicero-on-moral-duties-de-officiis">parent</a>” of them all.</p>
<h2>Religious roots</h2>
<p>Gratitude is deeply embedded in many religious traditions. In Judaism, the first words of the morning prayer could be translated, “<a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/morning-blessings/">I thank you</a>.” Another saying addresses the question, “Who is rich?” with this answer: “<a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/pirkei-avot-ethics-of-the-fathers-chapter-4/">Those who rejoice in what they have</a>.”</p>
<p>From a Christian perspective, too, gratitude and thanksgiving are vital. Before Jesus shares his last meal with his disciples, he <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+22&version=NKJV">gives thanks</a>. So vital a part of Christian life is gratitude that author and critic <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/G-K-Chesterton">G.K. Chesterton </a> calls it “<a href="http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/short-history-of-england/6/">the highest form of thought</a>.”</p>
<p>Gratitude also plays an essential role in Islam. The 55th chapter of the Quran enumerates all the things human beings have to be grateful for – the Sun, Moon, clouds, rain, air, grass, animals, plants, rivers and oceans – and then asks, “<a href="https://www.clearquran.com/055.html">How can a sensible person be anything but thankful to God</a>?”</p>
<p>Other traditions also stress the importance of thankfulness. Hindu festivals <a href="https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/hinduism/articles/a-hindu-thanksgiving-its-all-about-gratitude.aspx">celebrate blessings and offer thanks for them</a>. In Buddhism, gratitude develops patience and serves as an <a href="https://www.sunyatacentre.org/the-three-poisons/">antidote to greed</a>, the corrosive sense that we never have enough. </p>
<h2>Roots even in suffering</h2>
<p>In his 1994 book, <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/A-Whole-New-Life/Reynolds-Price/9780743238540">“A Whole New Life</a>,” the Duke University English professor <a href="https://today.duke.edu/showcase/reynoldsprice/">Reynolds Price</a> describes how his battle with a spinal cord tumor that left him partially paralyzed also taught him a great deal about what it means to really live.</p>
<p>After surgery, Price describes “a kind of stunned beatitude.” With time, though diminished in many ways by his tumor and its treatment, he learns to pay closer attention to the world around him and those who populate it. </p>
<p>Reflecting on the change in his writing, Price notes that his books differ in many ways from those he penned as a younger man. Even his handwriting, he says, “looks very little like that of the man he was at the time of his diagnosis.”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Cranky as it is, it’s taller, more legible, and with more air and stride. And it comes down the arm of a grateful man.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A brush with death can open our eyes. Some of us emerge with a deepened appreciation for the preciousness of each day, a clearer sense of our real priorities and a renewed commitment to celebrating life. In short, we can become more grateful, and more alive, than ever.</p>
<h2>Practicing gratitude</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303351/original/file-20191124-74567-wuixju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303351/original/file-20191124-74567-wuixju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303351/original/file-20191124-74567-wuixju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303351/original/file-20191124-74567-wuixju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303351/original/file-20191124-74567-wuixju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303351/original/file-20191124-74567-wuixju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303351/original/file-20191124-74567-wuixju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Good conversation, good friends and connections – not material possessions – bring great joy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-people-having-great-time-cafe-409251184">Jacob Lund/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When it comes to practicing gratitude, one trap to avoid is locating happiness in things that make us feel better off – or simply better – than others. In my view, such thinking can foster envy and jealousy. </p>
<p>There are marvelous respects in which we are equally blessed – the same Sun shines down upon each of us, we all begin each day with the same 24 hours, and each of us enjoys the free use of one of the most complex and powerful resources in the universe, the human brain.</p>
<p>Much in our culture seems aimed to cultivate an attitude of deficiency – for example, most ads aim to make us think that to find happiness we must <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953617307748">buy something</a>. Yet most of the best things in life – the beauty of nature, conversation and love – are free.</p>
<p>There are many ways to cultivate a disposition of thankfulness. One is to make a habit of giving thanks regularly – at the beginning of the day, at meals and the like, and at day’s end.</p>
<p>Likewise, holidays, weeks, seasons and years can be punctuated with thanks – grateful prayer or meditation, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-lifesaving-power-of-gratitude-or-why-you-should-write-that-thank-you-note-99177">writing thank-you notes</a>, keeping a gratitude journal and consciously seeking out the blessings in situations as they arise.</p>
<p>Gratitude can become a way of life, and by developing the simple habit of counting our blessings, we can enhance the degree to which we are truly blessed.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Gunderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Thanksgiving is a life-enriching practice worth cultivating all year long.Richard Gunderman, Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.