- Joined
- Nov 26, 2016
- Location
- central NC
A 19th-century Thanksgiving greeting. (New York Public Library/ Public Domain)
Did you know the 19th-century campaign to make Thanksgiving a permanent holiday was seen by prominent Southerners as a culture war? Sad, but true. Southerners considered it a Northern holiday intended to force Northern values on the South. Southerners even decried pumpkin pie as a Yankee food, although a deviously sweet one.
This decry was due in part to American Cookery, widely considered the first “American” cookbook. American Cookery was known as an example of traditional Northern fare and not one, but two pumpkin pie recipes appeared in it. Both recipes called for "Northern ingredients" such as squash and molasses and as more states—mainly in the North—recognized Thanksgiving, the pie became closely associated with Northern tradition.
Southern leaders attacked Thanksgiving as the North’s attempt to impart Yankee values on the South. Virginians, especially, railed against it. In 1856, the Richmond Whig published a scathing editorial on the District of Columbia’s “repugnant” declaration of thanksgiving, arguing that the holiday did nothing but rob men of a day’s wages and encourage drunkenness. Yikes!!!
In the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln declared the first national Thanksgiving on the final Thursday in November of 1863. This was actually his second thanksgiving proclamation of that year. He also called for a thanksgiving feast after the Union victory at Gettysburg.
(Library of Congress - Public Domain)
While politicians continued to fight over the symbolism of the holiday for years to come, Americans quickly made Thanksgiving celebrations their own. Southern cooks often transformed the Yankee pumpkin pie into sweet potato pie. Yet pumpkin pie remained an iconic Thanksgiving dessert. While the traditional version was once decried as just another invasion of the North, Southern adaptations such as mixing in bourbon, adding pecans, or swapping out squash for sweet potato now created an opportunity for cooks and diners across America to feel both connected and culturally independent. In its own way, pumpkin pie helped unite us.