As we head into a Thanksgiving Day celebration a bit more covid carefree than in the past few years, I’d like to muse on holiday things both historical and musical. So, rather than draft a gently droll posting extolling the wonders of turkey bone soup or Wild Turkey whiskey cocktails, I am motivated to simply harvest and tweak a posting that a lot of my gentle readers found interesting a couple of years ago. To be quite honest, I can’t think of a better way to think about Thanksgivings past (wonderful), present (blessed), and future (hopeful). So, here’s a bit about one of our most popular holiday songs, and one that has links to our “Happy Valley.”
Let’s just call this the beginning of a new tradition. Now, where’s that bottle of Wild Turkey? But first, let’s move on to local lore . . .
A poem by Lydia Maria Child–a resident of the Northampton, Massachusetts, neighborhood of Florence– was originally published in 1844 as “The New-England Boy’s Song about Thanksgiving Day” in a book of her poetry, “Flowers for Children.”
It celebrates the author’s childhood memories of visiting her grandfather’s house during the New England winter.
We best know it today as the song: “Over the River and Through the Woods.”
Child was a novelist, journalist, teacher, and poet who also wrote extensively about the need to eliminate slavery. In 1833, she published her book “An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.”
It argued in favor of the immediate emancipation of American slaves without compensation to slaveholders. She is sometimes said to have been the first white woman to have written a book in support of this policy. She “surveyed slavery from a variety of angles—historical, political, economic, legal, and moral” to show that “emancipation was practicable and that Africans were intellectually equal to Europeans.” The book was the first anti-slavery work printed in America in book form.
She and her husband, David Lee Child–a journalist and lawyer–were ardent abolitionists
and became part of the flourishing abolitionist community in Northampton when she wrote and published the poem which was later set to a tune by an unknown composer.
The Childs were part of a dedicated abolitionist community in the city and chose the more agriculturally oriented neighborhod of Florence to establish a sugar beet farm and industry that they hoped would supplant the slavery-dependent sugar cane industry of the South.
Alas, this was an economic failure and the Childs moved back to Lydia’s former home of Wayland, Massachusetts, where he died in 1874, she in 1880.
On to our song. . . In the early 19th century, New England was enduring the so-called Little Ice Age—a colder era with earlier winters—and sleigh rides throughout November were common excursions.
The original poem celebrated a visit to “grandFATHER’s” house, however, not “grandmother’s” so let’s remember this tidbit of local lore as we get together with our friends and family!
Childs’s original poem was set to music and today, in a simplified form, has become a traditional Thanksgiving sing-a-long ritual that shows up in nearly every so-called Holiday Songbook—particularly those geared to children. Today for some obscure reason it’s a “grandmothered” version . . .
. . . but it’s worthwhile to hear the original words with their more old-fashioned thoughts and phrases. Ah, the sweet old days!
Tap or click on the triangle in the next image or link to learn much more about Childs and to listen the original poem as set to music.
As we muse upon the past, gentle readers, think ahead to many future holidays with friends and family and, perhaps, at grandmother’s AND/OR grandfather’s house! Enjoy the song also, as a gift to those of us in our time from a woman who was ahead of her time.
Now, it never hurts to look at an updated take on a Thanksgiving theme just to prove that the tradition continues. Click or tap on the triangle in the next link or image for a family-oriented, old timey but new musical salute to Thanksgiving.
So, stay safe, stay well, and–above all–STAY TUNED! Oh yes, and enjoy a bit of both love and levity this holiday season with all the variety of family and friends in these “interesting times!”
And, alas . . .
NOHOBANJO OF NORTHAMPTON, AND NOW EASTHAMPTON, "MUSICAL MUSINGS" 