Over the years, I've served up an awful lot of them. Most of the time, the ads offer a sanitized view of the holiday, with a simplification of the story of the first Thanksgiving.
That's why I was surprised to see this ad for Lorain Banking Company, which ran in the Lorain Journal on November 25, 1954. The graphics are fairly typical. But rather than merely thanking its customers and expressing the organization's appreciation for their loyalty, the ad tries something different in the text.
"The land was always there," it begins. "Three miles high where the mountains crested, six miles deep to the oil domes, with a breadth of 1800 and a length of 3000 miles. No one said it would be American, or English, or even white. Least of all the Indians. The Pilgrims owned a tiny slice of it, and took joy in their ownership, when they weren't contesting ownership with the Pecot tribe. They had food enough to stock seven shelves in a modern supermarket and guns that would shoot 450 feet with a good tail wind.
"They were the people – it takes land and people to develop a country, an idea, a civilization.
"The idea that seeded first in Massachusetts soil was Freedom. Freedom to worship God. A new idea, so new the Pilgrims didn't understand it too well themselves. For a long time they put Quakers and such in stocks on the town common, but they didn't burn them, and that was a beginning."
What the ad is acknowledging is the persecution of the Quakers by the Pilgrims, which is somewhat unusual.
The rest of the ad is non-controversial. "The land was big – big enough to absorb a lot of Freedom-hungry people, big enough to hatch a lot of strange new freedoms. Freedom to own a farm, or your own home. Freedom to worship God. Freedom to elect your own assemblyman. Freedom to speak, to write, to print. Freedom to move West if you didn't like it East. Freedom to be your own master, to plan for your own future."
4 comments:
President Abraham Lincoln set aside the last Thursday in November in 1863 as a national day of thanksgiving to a gracious, merciful God; I wonder what Honest Abe would think of the orgy of gluttony, winebibbery, and football that the day has become?
"Winebibbery?" Thanks for the new word, Alan!
I don't run into them all that often, anymore.
You won't see ads like that today, particularly one that leads with a quotation from the Bible.
I agree about "winebibbery" - wonderfully evocative.
I too enjoyed the message and clip art. We used this same holly border tape for holiday ads in the 80’s. Todd
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