I like being interviewed, but I don’t like being interviewed. I enjoyed this interview, because the topic is a favorite. I shared the discussion on Thanksgiving Foodways with Rafia Safar and Jam Rohr. But as with all things after the fact, I remembered 50-11 things I could have said but didn’t. So here they are in a nutshell:
- Plant-based eating was not unusual for enslaved Africans. Sometimes that was how they ate to survive during winter months, when hunting was not an option or meat rations ran out.
- Thanksgiving is one of those holidays, where few Americans have a vested interest in the lore or facts of the alleged events. We’re a nation of immigrants both voluntary and involuntary. Very few of us can relate to the immigrants who are the stars of what has been documented as a fabricated story. Some will give thanks. Some will give thanks for an extended weekend. Some will give thanks for the one time of year they can meet up and eat up with relatives and friends.
- It is a new holiday in the American South. Southerners, especially those closely aligned with the confederacy, somewhat boycotted the “yankee” holiday that became a federal holiday post-Civil War. They had to warm up to it. They have.