Things I don't miss about old-fashioned, Norman Rockwell era Thanksgivings.

[pnwmom]

Women doing all the cooking and clean-up, except that one man's job was to carve the turkey.

Racist and sexist jokes around the dinner table.

Too much alcohol in general and someone actually drunk.

Cigarette smoke to inhale before and after dinner. Sometimes pipes and cigars.

Children who were supposed to be seen and not heard.

Gay people who were not supposed to be seen or heard.

No, I'm not pining for an old-fashioned Thanksgiving, now that I think about it.

ON EDIT:

Norman Rockwell knew the other side of Thanksgiving in that era -- he just chose not to paint it.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/11/norman-rockwell-200911

Maybe as I grew up and found that the world wasn’t the perfectly pleasant place I had thought it to be I unconsciously decided that, even if it wasn’t an ideal world, it should be and so painted only the ideal aspects of it—pictures in which there were no drunken slatterns or self-centered mothers, in which, on the contrary, there were only Foxy Grandpas who played baseball with the kids and boys [who] fished from logs and got up circuses in the back yard.…

[BlueStreak]

1. Notice anything unusual about this picture?

I searched and searched and searched and this is the only one I could find depicting anything other than a Caucasian.

And of course, the subjects were a very light-skinned with ambiguous enough features that a person -- you know a real American genuine white person -- could tell themselves this wasn't really a black person. And if it was, well you know how good those blacks are at athletics.

Yes, Rockwell was the product of a different time, no more and no more less racist than America at large.

I like to go to ethnic restaurants (Chinese, India, Ethopian, etc). I like the food, but more than that, I often find myself as the only Caucasian in a sea of diversity. I like that. I look at the others and wonder what their stories might be. Why would anybody want to hear the same story over and over. Diversity makes life so much more interesting.

[Jetboy]

2. What about the one with the little black girl walking to school or church

with escort?

[Jetboy]

3. I am not good at linking but the picture can be found.

IMO it gives incite into the heart of the artist. He is with the right side.

[monmouth3]

4. That picture was of the little girl during segregation when she had to be escorted into a school

so the barbaric white southerners didn't hurt her.

[nyquil_man]

7. This?

[BlueStreak]

10. Thanks.

[Tanuki]

30. The girl in the picture is Ruby Bridges, and years later she got to see

her picture hanging outside the Oval Office!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_We_All_Live_With
[img][/img]

[pnwmom]

5. Yes, that's another difference for many of us.

If you do a google image search for "Norman Rockwell black" you can see some of his pictures in which he depicted African Americans.

[ThoughtCriminal]

6. How about this one

[nyquil_man]

8. There's also this:

New Kids In The Neighborhood, 1967:

[Victor_c3]

9. Damn. I love Norman Rockwell's art

I never REALLY looked at it until, well, now. I browsed it and was familiar with his style, but never really took it in when I was a youth. Maybe with age and some life experience I'm finally able to look at it below just the surface.

[LeftyMom]

18. I don't see how people with straight, reddish hair can be read as racially ambiguous.

[Number23]

19. I don't understand your post. Are you suggesting that the people in this picture were NOT

white? Because I'm not seeing that. At all.

[JI7]

20. Norman Rockwell has some great paintings about Civil Rights, but in this pic both are White

[cynatnite]

11. We never had Thanksgivings like those...

One of my uncles always drank too much. Most of the guys and a couple of my aunts played poker in the garage/Thanksgiving dining room after eating. The room would have an aroma of a pipe and cigar smoke. Not too much, either. My cousins and I would watch the Thanksgiving parade until it was time to eat and then our cousins would chase us out to watch football.

Us kids usually wound up playing on the living room floor while my mother, her sister and my grandmother sipped wine, laughed and got us all pies.

It wasn't a perfect Rockwell Thanksgiving, but it wasn't all bad either.

I hate it when these comparisons get made. I don't think they ever really existed in the first place.

[Major Nikon]

13. Me neither

My grandmother always handled the turkey, but my dad did most of the rest of it. Dad smoked a pipe, but only in his office and I always thought Captain Black left a pleasing aroma even there. Smoking was never allowed at the table. There were a few who helped with the cleanup, including the men. Us kids were delegated to the kids table, but there wasn't enough room otherwise. My uncle always preferred to sit with us, but he was something of the black sheep of the family. Anyone who drank too much would have incurred the wrath of my grandmother and never heard the end of it. Nobody was that brave. Dad was a Unitarian minister. Racism, sexism, or homophobia wasn't tolerated in our home even if others did it elsewhere. Dad would run you out of the house for it even on Thanksgiving and everyone knew it.

[freshwest]

12. Only one of those I saw was the first and escaped that fate by hanging out with the men.

Who did not make bigoted jokes or discuss anything but how each other was getting along. No need to agree on anything, just catch up.

Religion was also not part of the meal, as it was just a choice one made and no one's business but that one person. Same as, 'Do you want to have mashed potatoes or do you want sweet potatoes?'

When people recognize consciously that beliefs are a matter of personal choice and nothing more, they lose the power to terrify or condemn.

As far as being seen and not heard, some days it was more of not seen or heard as they were worn out and left us to decide what we chose to do.

We weern't that chummy, but we had time to think. We were odd, I guess.

I miss them very much during the holidays.

[maced666]

14. Boy, old Thanksgivings are bad. New ones with shopping frowned upon.

Some people are and will never be happy. I choose to shed all the negativity and move forward with my friends that look to and find/make happiness, not doom and despair.
Life is too short.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

17. Not too long ago, someone started an OP suggesting that Charles Shulz was racist...

it can get a little goofy around here sometimes.

Welcome.

[Niceguy1]

28. of all the threads here

That one I won't forget...he was a great man, according to family that knew him.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

39. Yeah, that was a DU low point.

The OP was set straight, but she'll believe what she wants to believe.

Another low point was when a couple of BOGers tried to diminish Harry Belafonte by suggesting his only accomplishment was a song about a banana. All because he dared criticize Obama...

It really can get pretty ugly around here.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

15. Nonsense.

Your bizarre characterization does not fit my family.

The men grocery shopped, cooked and/or cleaned up along with the wimmin' folk.

No racist or sexist jokes.

No more alcohol then, than now.

Three grandparents smoked, but they took it outdoors when the grandkids were visiting. But for the pipe, we liked the smell. And this may come as a shock to you, but folks do still smoke indoors.

Nothing wrong with children being seen and not heard. Too many parents let their kids run wild, without regard for others. I'm A-OK with polite and well-behaved. We were expected to be, and still grew up to be productive members of society.

There are no gay people in my family, but I'm pretty certain if there were, they wouldn't have been shut out from the festivities.

[pnwmom]

24. LOL. If you think there are no gay people anywhere in your extended family

chances are your family is not as gay friendly as you think it is.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

38. I knew you'd pounce on that.

You're nothing, if not predictable.

I should have edited my previous post to state "immediate family." I'm sure down the line there have been gay family members, but knowing my live-and-let-live Methodist parents and grandparents, I'm sure said family members would have been welcomed like any others. Perhaps I don't know much about my extended family. You don't either. But go on with your omniscience.

And go on believing all lily whites sat around drunk, sucking down cigars, bossing the women around, and telling racist, sexist and homophobic jokes. Oh, and scratching and farting. And if Irish, fighting. All while keeping the children cowering in fear of being heard.

Rockwell was racist!!111!!.

LOL backatcha.

[Freddie]

16. I love the smell of someone smoking a cigar

After holiday meals my dad, grandpa and uncles would go out to the porch and puff away. They're all gone now but Dad, but the rare smell of a cigar brings back memories of those days. (Tried smoking one once, yuck!)

[JI7]

21. people still get Drunk, i'm sure Racist and Sexist Jokes are still heard at many

famlies.

[JI7]

22. Does anyone know what this one is about ?

[Tanuki]

33. I would say that the lady just got thrown from a horse,

and the little kid is pointing out in which direction the horse ran off. Just a little "slice of life" vignette, like many of Rockwell's paintings.

[Aristus]

23. Rockwell did TOO depict gays!

Okay, maybe not; but I can't be the only one to note the homoeroticism of this painting.

I once composed a joke caption for it:

"I...I'm sorry, dearest. I just don't know how to tell her..."

[Drunken Irishman]

25. Norman Rockwell was a strong progressive who supported FDR and Civil Rights.

Just sayin'. It's not his fault the right-wing co-opted what he believed to be the perfect America (one that the Republicans would hate).

[pnwmom]

26. Thanks for the info. He did have some pictures

that showed a different side to America. It was probably harder to get those published, I'm guessing.

[Drunken Irishman]

27. Yes. It's a big reason he left the The Saturday Evening Post...

They wouldn't let him do politically charged paintings.

[Tanuki]

29. Actually, Rockwell's Four Freedoms first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post

so they obviously weren't "harder to get published".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms_(Norman_Rockwell)
"President Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech inspired a set of four Four Freedoms paintings by Norman Rockwell. The four paintings were published in The Saturday Evening Post on February 20, February 27, March 6 and March 13 in 1943. The paintings were accompanied in the magazine by matching essays on the Four Freedoms. The most famous is Freedom from Fear.

The United States Department of the Treasury toured Rockwell’s Four Freedoms paintings around the country after their publication in 1943. The Four Freedoms Tour raised over $130,000,000 in war bond sales.

Rockwell's Four Freedoms paintings were also reproduced as postage stamps by the United States Post Office.[11] Also, postage stamps of the Four Freedoms were issued in 1943[12] and in 1946.[13]"
====================

I'm sorry your family gatherings were so unpleasant, but there is no need to blame Norman Rockwell or Thanksgiving for boorish behavior on the part of your relatives.

[pnwmom]

31. His Four Freedoms picture depicted a very sanitized Thanksgiving,

wouldn't you say? People have fantasies of how Thanksgiving used to be, compared to now, based on that sanitized image. But it masks what was really going on for many families.

Back in the 50's, were any of your relatives comfortable being out and bringing gay partners to the celebration? If so, that was pretty unusual and you were very lucky. Same thing if you had no smokers in your family in the 50's, blowing tar and nicotine into the kids' lungs, and no one ever had too much to drink.

My immediate family when I was growing up didn't have ALL of those behaviors at Thanksgiving. There were no racial jokes, for example -- I was subjected to that at other people's Thanksgivings I attended in the 70's. My list was a compilation of less than wonderful aspects of many Thanksgivings over the years -- a reality check for people who think things were so much better in the past.

But that perfect world never existed, except in the imaginations of the people who want it to.

[REP]

32. Idealized, not sanitized

The illustration is of Four Freedoms. The group being served a turkey is illustrating Freedom from Want. It is symbolism used to express an ideal.

I'm sorry you had to endure such ordeals in your past. I'm much, much younger than you seem to be, so I can't say how the 50s were since I wasn't born until the mid 60s, but my family never had any of what you described in the years I've been associated with it; nor has my husband's (and our families include openly LBGT members).

[pnwmom]

34. Were members openly gay when you were a child in the 60's?

That would have been pretty unusual, and I congratulate your family if that was the case.

Just for the record, you're not "much, much younger" than I, though every decade had its own issues.

But maybe you really did have the perfect childhood.

[DemocraticWing]

35. One interesting thing about Rockwell

Is that he was close friends with the Leyendecker brothers, who were out in the 50s. I don't know if he ever would have painted anything that reflected acceptance of LGBT people, although unfortunately getting something like that published would have been nearly impossible for an artist back then.

[pnwmom]

36. Interesting. Welcome to DU, DemocraticWing! n/t

[DonViejo]

37. This past Summer, Smithsonian magazine published an

article strongly suggesting Rockwell, himself, was gay. He was purportedly closer to a male friend than to his own wife and travelled with this male friend quite extensively.

[pnwmom]

41. That would fit with another article I read. His own family life,

unfortunately, was far from ideal.

[REP]

40. No perfect childhood - just LGBT friends and family

Though it was somewhat shocking that my parents had (gasp!) black friends over, but their marriage was considered "mixed" back in the day.

As for my husband's family - his aunt has been out longer than either of us have been alive. She and her wife are awesome; not for being out so long, though I do admire bravery; they're just the kind of couple we want to be.