While the battle between Virginia and Massachusetts continues for claim to the first Thanksgiving (and as any good student of Virginia history will tell you, Virginia wins), the WaPo’s Brigid Schulte logs in another chapter in the long simmering debate:
When Suhay moved to Virginia Beach five years ago, her children came home from school with tales of Virginia’s first Thanksgiving. She was incensed and set out to prove that their teachers were wrong. Instead, she found out that they were right. So she wrote a children’s book about the experience. In it, a little boy who discovers the truth about the first Thanksgiving being in Virginia celebrates with ham. He sets about starting a petition to get the president of the United States to pardon not just a turkey, as the president has every year for 60 years — Bush plans to pardon two turkeys today — but also a pig. Thus, the book, “Pardon Me, It’s Ham, Not Turkey.”
…
So will Bush pardon the pig?
“The president is going to continue the historic tradition of pardoning a turkey,” said White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore.
No pig?
“No. He’s focused on the turkey.”
Still, after all of yesterday’s hoopla, Virginia’s Thanksgiving may indeed be more widely recognized as first. But a century of Massachusetts tradition will be hard to supplant, even at Berkeley Plantation, where turkey biscuits with cranberry were served yesterday. Not a ham in sight.
For the record, the turkey and cranberry sandwiches at Berkley Plantation were dee-licious. No ham sandwiches though… I looked.
Guess I’ll have to wait ’til Christmas! Perhaps His Excellency the Governor can introduce the tradition?