‘Why Is a Cranberry Called a Cranberry?’ And Other Thanksgiving Questions Answered
Plus, the Truth Behind Turkey, Apple Pie, and Why the Dallas Cowboys Always Play on Thanksgiving Day.
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Every Monday on The Nonlinear Life we talk about words to live by—popular sayings, mottos, buzzwords, proverbs, truisms, and aphorisms. Also, dad jokes! We call it Words4Life.
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Thanksgiving may be the most beloved but least understood holiday in America. Admit it; most of what you know you learned in kindergarten. But times have changed. Myths have fallen. And menus have adjusted. Are you up to date? In today’s special edition of Words4Life: answers to the most popular Thanksgiving questions that nobody asks.
But should.
1. Why Is a Cranberry Called a Cranberry?
Cranberries are evergreen swamp shrubs that grow low to the ground. They were known in Germany as early the 1640s, and their English name is an adaptation of the Low German word for crane, which is kraanbere, and the Middle German word for berry, which is bere. Frank Caruso, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, notes that the word for crane was used because the plant’s red stamens resemble the neck, head, and bill of a crane.
Healthy cranberry bogs yield a fruitful fall harvest.
German and Dutch settlers to the New World recognized the similarity between the European berry and the one they discovered in the New World and transferred the name. Indigenous Americans had not cultivated the plant, but they had gathered the berries, which the Narragansett called sasemineash, and used them in a sweetened sausage made with dried meat or fish. The eventual cultivation of the cranberry in the 1800s is attributed to Henry Hall, a sailor and Revolutionary War veteran, who lived on Cape Cod—which has been long considered the home region for the fruit.
2. Which Turkey Came First—The Bird or the Country?
Answer: The country.
The bird is native to North America. Few people dispute that. The bird got its name from the country. Few people dispute that. But no one can agree on who gave the bird the name of the country.
Theory 1, which dates back to the 15th century, comes from linguist Mario Pei. He explained that Ottoman traders brought a West African wildfowl to Europe and gave it the name turkey-cock, with the word cock derived from the French word for rooster. In a similar move as the cranberry, when British settlers arrived in Massachusetts and found a similar bird, they transferred the name, even though the birds (as the berries) are of different species.
Theory 2, which comes from etymologist Mark Forsyth, is that Turkish traders brought guinea fowl from Madagascar to Europe; Spanish conquistadors later brought the unnamed American bird back to Europe when they returned from their exploits; the existing name was then attached to the new bird.
Two male wild turkeys (toms) displaying their plumage.
Theory 3, which comes from Pennsylvania Rabbi Harold Kamsler, is that Columbus’s Spanish interpreter, who was Jewish, applied the Hebrew word for peacock, tuki, to the American bird when he arrived in the New World.
As the writer Zach Goldhammer outlined in The Atlantic, all of this debate might be moot because the Aztecs had domesticated the turkey a millennium before Europeans ever set foot in the Americas. Their name for the bird: huehxolotl.
3. Is Apple Pie as American as Apple Pie?
No.
Unlike turkeys, apples are not native to American soil. They’re also not native to the Middle East, which is why it’s unlikely Eve would have been eating an apple in the biblical story of the Garden of Eden.
Alexander the Great first brought the fruit home from central Asia to Europe in the 4th century BCE. By the 16th century, English poets were rhapsodizing them. “Thy breath is like the steame of apple-pyes,” wrote Robert Green in 1590. Shakespeare loved to evoke apples, too, but not always lovingly. Falstaff says, "My skin hangs about me like an old lady's loose gown; I am withered like an old apple.”
Apple Pie by William Meade Prince, 1930
Apple pies did not pop up in American culture until well after the first Thanksgiving. Dutch and Swedish immigrants were mentioning apple pie as early as 1697, and recipe books started including the dessert a century later.
It took until the 20th century for the dessert to become synonymous with America. In 1902 the New York Times declared apple pie “the American synonym for prosperity.” And The Smithsonian says the phrase “As American as apple pie” dates from the early 20th century and was popularized by GIs during America’s overseas wars.
4. Why Do the Dallas Cowboys Always Play Football on Thanksgiving?
They’re good at publicity.
The tradition of playing professional football on Thanksgiving Day began in the 1920s, building off the already popular college custom, which had been around since the 1870s when Yale and Princeton played their annual game. (Yale won.) The Detroit Lions began hosting games in 1934, and that tradition has stuck ever since.
In 1966, the six-year-old Dallas Cowboys, seeking publicity, hosted their first game. As Sporting News tells the story:
[General manager Tex] Schramm sought more national publicity and saw Thanksgiving as a way to boost national attention from football fans in and out of Dallas. The NFL was worried about attendance for the game because the Cowboys had been struggling under head coach Tom Landry. Just in case no one showed up, the NFL guaranteed the Cowboys a certain gate revenue.
They needn’t have worried. A record 80,259 fans showed up, a franchise record. With a few exceptions in the 1970s, the Cowboys have claimed the captive national audience every Thanksgiving Day since. Inevitably, the broadcasters show graphics featuring a Cowboy helmet alongside cranberries, turkey, and apple pie.
A Cowboys fan preparing for the Thanksgiving day game
Because after all these years, football is as American as Thanksgiving.
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What to Say to Someone Who's Grieving
The President, the Pope, and the Future of Faith
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