I looked up the Thanksgiving issue of the Brownwood Bulletin from 100 years ago, just to see what it was like. It’s interesting to notice what has changed and what is still the same a century down the road.

The newspaper itself published a Day of Thanks tribute, written in flowery language, a bit ostentatious seeming to me, but even so, seemingly sincere: “Thanksgiving Day originated as a time of thanks for plentiful harvests which made it certain that early settlers of America would be able to endure the winter without starving,” it says. “Thanksgiving has come to mean much more. It is the time of thanks for all such blessings as good crops, prosperity, health, peace, children, happy homes,” the paper proclaimed. A lot of church functions were scheduled, most of which involved food of some sort and frequently involved invitations to the whole community. Of course, the community was much smaller then, so inviting the whole lot probably would not have been the gargantuan task it would be today.

Those adverse to the churches’ offerings could buy Thanksgiving dinner at The Old Grey Mare Cafe, next door to Mallow’s. Fifty cents will get you cream of fowl with rice celery (not sure what rice celery is), baked turkey and dressing, cranberry sauce, snow flaked potatoes, cream peas, sweet potato salad, pumpkin pie and coffee. Not bad!

Most of the ads are tributes to Thanksgiving from area merchants. Brownwood Floral Co. offers a special on mums for Thanksgiving, one of the few outright ads using the holiday as a springboard. More typical is the one from Roussel-Robertson Company, notifying us in large print that they will be closed Thanksgiving Day, and issuing a proclamation of sorts that reads in part: “As individuals, and as a Nation, we Americans will bow our heads over tomorrow’s festive board in gratitude for peace, prosperity and plenty.”

The Reverend Francis Young published a poem entitled, Think and Thank, written in perfect meter, surprisingly both witty and encouraging. You’d never see a poem like that, or any type of poetry actually, in the paper today, much to our loss I think. Jones & Dublin slipped into Christmas commercialism first, letting us know that their Christmas Opening Sale begins on December 1st, and that a lot of toys will be available. This was the closest thing to a Black Friday sale I saw.

Mainly the feeling I got from reading the old Thanksgiving paper was things were, at least outwardly, a lot more respectful. The high school was holding prayer services, yet no one was angry over it. No one was writing vitriolic editorials about how Thanksgiving is hateful. No one was publicly arguing about who should be here in the country or who should not. There was less division, it seems to me. If companies were, even then, trying to capitalize off of Thanksgiving, slowly building the cynical theater of commercial jingles and cheap junk sales we’re bombarded with today, the endless advertisements encouraging the purchase of things we probably don’t even need, they didn’t seem to want you to know it!

I looked up some history on Black Friday, just to try to decipher when the whole commercialization thing came about, because to me, it was very noticeably missing from the 1923 edition. It’s complicated, but basically in the early 1950s everyone seemed to decide to go Christmas shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. Retailers took notice, and the whole thing devolved into today’s strange ritual of giving thanks to God for our blessings one day, then trampling each other to get a new toaster oven the next.

Thanksgiving was declared a national holiday by President Lincoln. The purpose of that was to call to mind the origins of our country, and to try to heal the wounds of division, the deep hatreds, that sprang out of the Civil War. It wasn’t to sell cars and TVs. Commercialized as Thanksgiving, and all our holidays for that matter, have become, there is still something good there, just as there was 100 years ago in the Brownwood paper. It draws people together. It’s not the sales or the food, but a need to reconnect with family and friends. This is, after all, as Lincoln knew, and as it was in 1923 and is still today, the bedrock of our country. Happy Thanksgiving!

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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns appear Thursdays on BrownwoodNews.com