Today
there is a skiff of snow on the
ground and temperatures this week are expected to be cold enough for it to
linger, at least on the grass, through Thanksgiving.
And that’s kind of unusual. Although snow around the holiday is not
unheard of in these parts, it has been pretty rare for many years. Serious snow usually holds off until
December, and there have been a few years in the last ten when there were no
real snow storms until January. A few
Thanksgivings have been marked by late Indian
summer mildness. But most years the
temperatures hover in the mid-forties under typically leaden skies. Just cool and drab enough to make a day of
feasting, football, and playing out complicated family dynamics attractive.
That’s
why the poem Lydia Maria Child published
in 1844 and titled A Boy’s Thanksgiving Day and was later set to music often ends up being sung as a Christmas song. After all, it is about snow and a sleigh—they gotta be going to
Grandfather’s for Christmas, right?
Wrong.
Child was recalling her own childhood when snow indeed laid deep and
thick on the hills and ice froze streams in New England by mid November and
a sleigh was the vehicle of choice. She could recall the bitter
and long winters of what climatologists now
recognize as the Little Ice Age.
The
Little Ice Age is estimated to have lasted from about 1350 to 1850 and to have
been particularly severe in Europe and
Eastern North America. It began after an extended period of warming from
950 to 1250 known as the Medieval Warm Period when a mild climate peaked about
1100 a few degrees below the average temperatures of the last twenty
years. During that time Mediterranean agricultural practices
extended deep into Europe. The plunge
into the deep freeze destroyed much of that agricultural base and caused wide
spread famines and suffering.
There
were variations of temperatures during the Little Ice Age, including short
spurts of mild warming. But especially
sever winters clustered around 1300, 1650, 1750, and the last around 1850. Some experts extend the period almost to the 20th Century to include the epic blizzard years of 1886-87.
The
Little Ice Age was truly devastating. Greenland was completely depopulated of
its Norse settlers and Iceland lost half of its
population. Famines in Scandinavia claimed at least 10% of the
populations, much higher in remote northern farming villages. Unreliable growing seasons and hunger
weakened populations and made them much more susceptible to death during the
periodic plagues that swept
Europe. In densely populated cities like
London death tolls were staggering.
Winter
sea ice extended for miles around Ireland
and regularly closed major ports.
Great rivers, including the Thames
in London, the Rhone and Rhine froze solid. A Swedish
army was able to march across the sea to attack Copenhagen. In the Low Countries rivers, canals, ponds and
marshes froze solid every winter encouraging a culture that included ice skating. Dutch and Flemish Renaissance artists depicted it all in many winter scenes
and landscapes—a type of painting virtually unknown during warmer periods.
In
North America crop failures helped
encourage competing and often warring tribes to create political alliances to
regulate hunting grounds, which became much more important as crops failed and
even to share surpluses in good years.
Thus the Iroquois Confederacy was
born as well as smaller alliances of tribes scattered along the eastern
seaboard from Chesapeake Bay north
to modern Nova Scotia.
When
the folks we call the Pilgrims landed
on the rocky shores of New England they
were seeking not just relief from religious persecution, but a warmer and more
hospitable climate than their refuge in frigid Holland. They were aiming at
balmy Virginia but fate and bad
weather deposited them in the equally grim north. They and their soon to arrive Puritan neighbors suffered in the early
years and their colonies only really took off in a brief warming period.
The
American Revolution was fought
largely during one of the worst of the cold spells and the weather often played
a critical role in the fighting. If
there had not been plenty of snow on the ground and frozen rivers, for
instance, Henry Knox could not have
hauled all of that heavy artillery from the fort at West Point to George
Washington’s troops besieging Boston without oxen dragging the cannons overland on sledges. Washington and the Continental Army famously endured the
heavy snow and bitter cold of Valley
Forge, but the same bitter weather kept British forces cooped up in New
York and other port cities and not wrecking havoc in the countryside.
By
the time of the Revolution, New Englanders had established a late autumn Thanksgiving tradition as an
alternative holiday to Christmas which
they despised as Papist on one hand
and an orgy of pagan revelry on the other.
The celebration had nothing to do with the dinner party shared between the
Pilgrims and local natives which had been long forgotten. It had originated in local proclamations of fasting and prayer for delivery from
the Indians after King Philip’s War and
for local bountiful harvests. Fasting
eventually gave way to feasting in a natural harvest festival. Dates varied
depending on local proclamations, but were generally in late November on some
other day than the Sabbath or Wednesdays when mid-week evening
prayers were held.
The
celebrations came only after not only all the crops were in, which was
typically weeks earlier, but after the snow had fallen and the long hunts for deer, turkey, and other game was
completed—the snow aided in tracking and the absence of leaves made seeing game
easier—and storms made fishing for cod too
dangerous. Larders were full and men, at
least, were idle. Women, of course were
expected to prepare and cook the feast.
As younger children who had no hope of inheriting the farm typically
moved away to find land of their own, it became customary for them to return to
the ancestral homestead for the feast.
And in an era when roads were bad and often impassable, the frozen
ground, snow, and rivers made travel even long distances easier.
So
many a family bundled up, climbed in the sleigh and headed for the old folks
home whether it was just down the road or even days away.
Those
were the happy days Child was recalling.
But she was also 14 years old in the famous Year Without Sunshine. 1815 eruption of
Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies and other volcanic
activity had spewed enough ash high
into the atmosphere to shield the sun from the Northern Hemisphere for most of the
year. Freezing temperatures and snow
were recorded every month in New England.
Crops failed and record shattering snow came that fall. Famine lurked that year, but could not
completely discourage the traditional trek home for Thanksgiving.
Anyway
this year in addition to the bit of snow we have here, I understand a major
storm is brewing along the East Coast. Moisture laden air from the Gulf Coast and Florida is moving north, banging into cold weather from Canada and
the Midwest. The result will be nasty storms lashing
the region and disrupting holiday travel times.
As it moves north the storm will mostly dump rain or a wintery mix and ice on most of the coast. But inland in a band from Pennsylvania through Upstate New York, western New England,
and into Quebec snow accumulations
of several inches are expected, just like in the olden days.
So
if you live there, just break out your sleigh and you can get to Grandma’s pumpkin pie.
Along the way you can sing the song based on
Child’s poem. If you want to use the
original words, here they are:
A Boy’s Thanksgiving Day
Over the river, and through the wood,
To Grandfather’s house we go;
The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
Through the white and drifted snow.
Over the river, and through the wood,
To Grandfather’s house away!
We would not stop for doll or top,
For ‘tis Thanksgiving Day.
Over the river, and through the wood—
Oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes and bites the nose
As over the ground we go.
Over the river, and through the wood—
And straight through the barnyard gate,
We seem to go extremely slow,
It is so hard to wait!
Over the river, and through the wood—
When Grandmother sees us come,
She will say, “O, dear, the children are here,
Bring a pie for everyone.”
Over the river, and through the wood—
Now Grandmother's cap I spy!
Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done?
Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!
—Lydia Maria Child
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