However, the concept of the holiday has undergone a long evolution throughout the course of history before today's notion of the holiday became perpetuated. The great expansion of the culture of consumption in the last decades of the nineteenth century helped shift this basic socioeconomic perspective of the Thanksgiving holiday; holidays were originally thought to be more of an impediment to industrial production, holidays were found, on the flip side, to have all kinds of possibilities when it came to consumption (Schmidt, 1991)
Yet it was during this period that the early ideas about Thanksgiving were beginning to be 'invented' in its present form. At the end of the 19th century and through the consummation of a sacred meal, a diverse collection of immigrants worked to define themselves as the descendants of the Pilgrims as a representation of their desire to become enmeshed with the American culture as a means to become assimilated (Siskind, 1992) Much of the social constructs of that period were ripe for such a festival to gain popularity among the masses of immigrants
Thanksgiving Cultural Implications of Thanksgiving, Then and Now How did the first Thanksgiving affect the culture of the time and also how does it affect our culture today? The first Thanksgiving Day celebrations were not necessarily held on the same day of each year. Rather they were proclaimed by various ministers and governors to celebrate specific events that might include items such as a particularly good harvest or some sort of military victory (Smith, 2003)
Although the first Thanksgiving were actually an elaborate and expensive ritual that represented a time of abundance in regards to resources, they bear little resemblance to the stories that are told today. (Wallendorf & Arnould, 1991)