Wien Cranberry Sauce...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 181, 11 December 1942, Page 12

Wien Cranberry Sauce...

os HIS year Thanksgiving Day fell on November 26, and the streets of New Zealand towns were filled at an early hour in the afternoon with thankful visiting Servicemen, themselves filled with all the good things of Thanksgiving-stuffed turkey and mince pie, and cranberry sauce, and salmon mayonnaise, and buttered asparagus. For even though far from home the American serviceman must not be deprived of the benefits of American civilisation, and a thankful New Zealand has her own contribution to make, for Candied Sweet Potatoes figured on the menu at many a camp celebration. And we should like to feel that this happy mingling of New Zealand and American elements inside America may be symptomatic of international harmony in other less material spheres. Governor Bradford, first governor of Massachusetts Colony, was the first to set aside a special day for thanksgiving. In gratitude for the plenteous harvest of 1621, he proclaimed December 13, Thanksgiving Day, and in practical furtherance of his proclamation des-. patched four men in search of game. They returned, struggling under a burden of native turkey sufficient to sustain the colony throughout a whole week of thanksgiving. But it was a Mrs. Sarah J. Hale, who finally named the happy day. Coming down from her native Boston to Philadelphia to edit Godey’s Lady’s Book, she realised for the first time how limited was the observance of Thanksgiving. Thereafter she wrote letters at the rate of dozens a year to the Governors of the various States, suggesting that the last Thursday in November should be set aside for the nationwide celebration of Thanksgiving, and in 1859 all but two of the Governors, demoralised by the correspondence, surrendered en masse. The Thanksgiving of the present is built upon the Thanksgiving of the past, but through the years has taken to itself many of the features of Christmas. The Thanksgiving turkey has driven the Christmas goose from American tables, but on the other hand the Christmas mince pie shares with the traditional pumpkin pie the honour of completing the Thanksgiving indigestion. And so, just as the New Zealander, true to home tradition, eats in midsummer a Christmas dinner intended for sub-Arctic consumption, so the exiled American serviceman consumes in New Zealand’s early summer a vast dinner intended for America’s late fall. But what does it matter? As our Marine said to us, "It’s how much you eat, not the place where you eat it."