Birthdays, Holidays, Parades, and Potato Chips—and What We Leave Behind

My children know of this dish and its origins (and I wish I knew more beyond that). I’ve told them my story. They know that Thanksgiving Day and Christmas means Ruffles potato chips and French Onion Dip. Why? Because it reminds me of the same in my childhood, and now it will remind them. They know that the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade points directly to Christmas, and they know one of the landmarks is deep-fried wave-cut potato slices dunked in sour cream and onion.

The television event that the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has become is, I think, a total bore to them. They live in a rapid-pace, message-filled, multi-platform media world. When I was their age, the parade was one of five things I could watch on TV on Thanksgiving morning. We got a morning and evening newspaper. And magazines. TV Guide, Woman’s Day, Family Circle, Reader’s Digest. World Book Encyclopedia. The Sears Wish Book. Things completely foreign to them.

The Sears “Wish Book,” the first year it was called that. I can still remember the smell of the freshly-printed pages.

But as often happens upon reflection, it made me curious—I am the recipient of a mid-20^th Century set of fading holiday traditions, among them Gurley Thanksgiving pilgrim candles, and Hallmark honeycomb paper turkey centerpieces, and my beloved annual parade. But Macy’s hasn’t been here forever. Was there something like that before Macy’s?

I carefully re-folded the Turkey Centerpiece every year. I preserved for years a paper decoration that I was stunned to discover many people threw away!



Upon its debut, the Macy’s Parade was originally Christmas-themed. In 1924, employees organized a Christmas parade with “floats, bands, animals from the zoo and 10,000 onlookers," according to a Macy’s history page. It started at 154^th Street and ended at Macy’s famous Herald Square flagship on 34^th Street, and the unveiling of the store’s Christmas windows. After three years, the parade was shifted to Thanksgiving Day. For fans of Miracle on 34^th Street, it’s interesting to learn that Macy’s seemingly-eternal parade was not the first—Macy’s renowned (and now defunct) competitor, Gimbel’s sponsored the first one, in 1920 in Philadelphia.

Tom Turkey has been an icon of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade since 1973. Here he is in 1979, pursued by another mostly-forgotten childhood memory, Underdog.

Photo By Jon Harder - User JonHarder, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=784775

I found that before that, there was an even earlier tradition, peculiar to New York City—the Ragamuffin Parade. “Before Halloween was the holiday known for dressing up in costume and begging for candy (this practice did not become common until the 1940’s and 50’s), children in NYC often participated in what was called Ragamuffin Day,” writes Carmen Nigro, of the New York Public Library. “On Ragamuffin Day - which was Thanksgiving Day - children would dress themselves in rags and oversized, overdone parodies of beggars…ragamuffins would then ask neighbors and adults on the street, ‘Anything for Thanksgiving?’ The usual response would be pennies, an apple, or a piece of candy.”

Manhattan: Bleecker Street—Perry Street, Thanksgiving ragamuffins, 1933. 

Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. "Thanksgiving ragamuffins, No.16-18." The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1933. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-a50c-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

An article in New York Tribune on November 21, 1909 dated the tradition back 40 years, to about 1870. Carmen Nigro documents that the last reporting of the Thanksgiving Ragamuffin parades was in 1956. Overshadowed by the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and ceded to the rise of Halloween trick or treating, a nearly century-old tradition died out, and is all but forgotten today.

There’s no Sears Wish Book anymore, either. Newspapers are largely digital. Magazines are something of a luxury item. I’m not worried, or sad about the seeming loss of these things. I’m an historian, and the evolution of social traditions is natural. Luckily, our modern successors have the entire history of such things right at their keyboards—if they have the interest and initiative to pursue it, and good curatorial guides to help them. Maybe that’s what I do.

My kids will remember Grandma Mick’s “Sauerkraut,” and Ruffles and Onion Dip, and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and a hundred other oddities of our family.

There’s not even a Yugoslavia anymore. But my youngest son is named Mitchell, after his long-passed Yugoslavian great-grandfather. And he knows that, and he knows why.

I guess that’s how traditions work.



I look at this photo and I can smell it. Grandma Mick’s holiday tradition will live on, at least until I’m not here to make it anymore.



Grandma Mick’s Yugoslavian “Sauerkraut”

INGREDIENTS:

4 tbsp             Olive Oil

2                     White Onions, chopped

2 cloves          Garlic

2 lbs.               Pork, cubed

2 tbsp.            Hungarian Sweet Paprika

1.5 lbs.            Plain Sauerkraut, rinsed and thoroughly drained

1                     Large can, crushed tomato (or fresh tomatoes, peeled and crushed)

1                     15 ounce can, tomato sauce

1 tbsp             Sugar

5                     Bay leaves

2 tbsp             Dried Parsley

Peel of two large fresh oranges

Salt and pepper to taste

In a pan or Dutch Oven, combine olive oil, meat, garlic, and onion.

Brown meat on all sides, add paprika, stir to mix in.

Add drained sauerkraut, orange peel, crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, bay leaves, and sugar. Mix thoroughly, cover pot.

Simmer covered for one hour, or until meat is tender.

Simmer uncovered to reduce liquid, about one hour.
Remove orange peel and bay leaves before serving.