Thanksgiving is nearly here, pies are in the oven, frozen turkeys are thawing, Pilgrim hats are being made, parade balloons are being prepared, and friends and family are on the road. Today I thought it would be fun to take a look back at archival images of Thanksgiving celebrations from the past—including odd traditions that involved costume-wearing children and those more familiar such as presidential turkey pardoning, turkey dinners, and Thanksgiving Day parades.
Thanksgiving Photos From the Past Century
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Original caption: "Some pretty queer looking pedestrians can be observed at large gatherings at Broadway, but some of the creatures who make their way down the famed thoroughfare in the annual Macy Thanksgiving Parade are enough to faze even a taxi driver. Here throngs of New Yorkers jamming Columbus Circle gape as a flying fish swings onto Broadway from Central Park West." #
Bettmann / Getty -
Young "Thanksgiving maskers," likely in New York City, circa 1910 to 1915. Read more about this early-20th-century tradition here: "Thanksgiving Used to Look a Lot Like Halloween, Except More Racist". #
Bain News Service / Library of Congress -
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Original caption: "Pity the poor bird with a man like this. Getting down to the bare essentials is this earnest trencherman at the Thanksgiving dinner at New York City's Municipal Lodging House, 25th Street and First Avenue on November 22, 1945." #
Anthony Camerano / AP -
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Two actors pose for Thanksgiving photos. Left: Jeanne Crain is sharpening her ax and looking at a turkey on November 11, 1946. Right: Wearing a costume that is half-Puritan, half–chorus girl, Marilyn Monroe seems to have little desire to hunt turkey after finding this gobbler on November 10, 1950. #
Bettmann / Getty -
Sixty small children from New York’s tenements ate a turkey-less Thanksgiving dinner (of beef loaf) November 20, 1940, and dropped 120 pennies in a plate in front of an empty place representing war-afflicted British children overseas. The pennies will be sent to purchase food for British youngsters. Saying grace before the turkey-shaped loaf are (from left) Theadore Timms, Margaret Mackin, 4; John Hanley, 5; Joan Barthelmess, 5; and Edward Sloconi, 5. #
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This African American sharecropper family of six found nothing in the way of delicacies on their Thanksgiving table on November 23, 1939. They had a half-gallon fruit jar of picked tomatoes, and here the family is saying grace. They were members of a group near Poplar Bluff, Missouri, a remnant of sharecroppers who engaged in a roadside demonstration in southeast Missouri in January of 1939, protesting their economic status. #
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt carves the turkey during the annual Thanksgiving dinner for polio patients at Warm Springs, Georgia, and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt smiles beside him, on December 1, 1933. #
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President Harry S. Truman squints as he touches the wattle of a 35-pound Tom Turkey from Oregon that is being presented to him, in the White House Rose Garden on November 18, 1952. #
Henry Griffin / AP -
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his family enjoy a traditional Thanksgiving dinner at the president's vacation retreat at the Augusta, Georgia, National Golf Course, on November 29, 1953. #
Bettmann / Getty -
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President Bill Clinton, flanked by National Turkey Federation chairman Frank Gessell, left, and NTF secretary treasurer Jerry Jerome, watch a 45-pound turkey in the Rose Garden of the White House on November 24, 1998, where the president, in a pre-Thanksgiving tradition, pardoned the bird. The bird will be sent to the Frying Pan Park in Fairfax, Virginia. #
Doug Mills / AP -
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A turkey named "Liberty" surprises President George W. Bush at the annual turkey pardoning event at the White House, three days ahead of Thanksgiving, on November 19, 2001. #
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters -
Tater and Tot, the national Thanksgiving turkey and its alternate, are shown to members of the media during a press conference held by the National Turkey Federation on November 22, 2016, at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. The two turkeys will both be "pardoned" following the presentation of the national turkey to U.S. President Barack Obama scheduled for November 23. #
Win McNamee / Getty -
On November 25, 1987, hundreds of commuters and vacation travelers heading home for the Thanksgiving holidays are forced to wait at New York's Grand Central Terminal after a signal box on the Metro-North track caught fire, delaying traffic. #
Ron Frehm / AP -
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Space Shuttle and International Space Station crew members pose for a photo during their Thanksgiving Day meal on the middeck of the orbiter Endeavour on November 27, 2008. Visible in this image are (from left) Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, Greg Chamitoff, Michael Fincke, Donald Pettit, Steve Bowen, Yury Lonchakov, Eric Boe, Shane Kimbrough, and (at top) Chris Ferguson (partially out of frame) and Sandra Magnus. #
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Joshua Korder of Winona, Minnesota, with Blackfoot Company 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, has Thanksgiving dinner while standing watch in a guard tower on November 26, 2009, in Matakhan, Afghanistan. #
Scott Olson / Getty -
(1 of 3) A firefighter prepares to drop a frozen turkey into a hot deep fryer at a Consumer Product Safety Commission Thanksgiving fire- and food-safety demonstration of holiday kitchen fires in Rockville, Maryland, on November 22, 2016. #
Gary Cameron / Reuters -
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(3 of 3) Flames erupt after a frozen turkey was dropped into a hot deep fryer, spilling oil and catching fire at a Consumer Product Safety Commission Thanksgiving fire- and food-safety demonstration in Rockville, Maryland, on November 22, 2016. #
Gary Cameron / Reuters -
New York Police Department officers stand watch from a building as a float proceeds high above spectators along Sixth Avenue during the 89th Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in Manhattan on November 26, 2015. #
Carlo Allegri / Reuters -
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