Remembering the true Thanksgiving

The New York Public Library has embraced social media, with a Facebook page, a Twitter feed and online galleries of their holdings. Now, to usher in Thanksgiving, they've posted a gallery of vintage Thanksgiving menus, holiday postcards and seasonal posters from their colorful visual collections.


The images are a quaint reminder of what the holiday once was -- the culmination of an "extremely auspicious season which the farmer has enjoyed in the planting, growing, and harvesting of the grain crop of the present year," as noted in The New York Times in 1851.


These days it seems we have nearly forgotten the origins of the holiday, lost as it is in a sea of football games, Macy's parades and free supermarket turkeys. For an interesting look at the origins of the observance, try this article, also from The New York Times.