Turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, family… Thanksgiving is a cluster of family traditions. But once upon a time, for some Americans, it was more like a carnival.
Modern Thanksgiving celebrations date back to around the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation setting a specific day for Thanksgiving in November. However, Thanksgiving celebrations stretch back much farther than that in American history. One of the things modern Thanksgiving erased, writes historian Elizabeth Pleck, was its previous rowdy associations, which were pretty much the opposite of what the holiday is now.
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