Sybil Bruncheon's "Christmases That Mostly WEREN'T!"... Food! Glorious FOOD!...

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When the Recession hit, many families had to go without Christmas presents... and even dinner. Daddies explained to their children (often while the Daddies cried or banged their hands on the table!) what a Recession was, and how it wasn't as bad as a Depression, but still...!!

That's when a grocery store nearby would ask a local wax-dummy maker to design a fake turkey to be driven from house to house at Holiday time. It only cost $5.00 to rent the wax-dummy turkey for ten minutes, and then off it would go to the Fergusons, the Baxters, or the nice old lady with all the cats on the corner of Elco and Fairfield...

And that's when Mother would come in and say that even though we didn't have turkey, good little children should eat 20 or so rolls... with lard... and not complain...

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Sybil Bruncheon's "Fun 'n' Gaymes For Thanksgiving Time!"...

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Hi there, Boys and Girls! Do you like to play games with each other during our Holiday times?... especially when Mommy and Daddy are having martinis downstairs with other grown-ups, and you've locked the bedroom door? Sure! Who doesn't!...

... well, here's a game from our favorite Highlights Magazine from November!... you know, Highlights? It's the fun magazine in the dentist's office waiting room where you sit and someone's screaming in the other room while your parents tell you to sit still and stop being a big baby! I hate that, don't you?

... well, here's a photo of a little girl named Fifi at the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade watching the floats, the big helium balloons, the marching bands, the baton twirlers, and scary elf-clowns. She's all dressed up in her fancy parade-watching outfit that her Mommy bought at Filene's... in the BASEMENT!... and LOOK!... on her shoulder is a little brooch! Do you know what a brooch is?... well, it's a fancy word for a lady-pin. Yes, it's true that a police man wears a badge, but don't call it a man-brooch because he might yell... or throw you in Tiny-Jail... which is just a bird-cage but with thicker bars.

Anyway, Fifi's brooch is kind of strange, so the game is for you to select the best description of what it is... here are the answers, and you pick the best!

1) It's a pipe cleaner craft project that little Fifi made at her Brownies jamboree. She won third prize in the "Gifts For Grandma Contest", and she would have won first place if she hadn't told the judges it was of a dog she saw run over by a steam shovel...

2) It's a bunch of dust bunny hair she found under the sofa and glued together with spit and a wire. Fifi likes Picasso, and claimed it's an abstract from her own "Blue Period".

3) Fifi's kitty, Mr. Scratchkins, has been shedding lately, and she decided to help by giving him a hair-cut and making a miniature voo-doo doll of him complete with claws made of toothpicks and red eyes made from cranberries... for the HOLIDAYS!

4) A TV show told a story about a place called Mt. Everest and the scary giant-people that live up in the sky called the Yeti. Fifi asked Daddy what an Abominable Snowman is, and he showed her by putting on his thermal underwear, and a pair of underpants over his face, and then he hid in the front closet for when Mommy came home from the store! Fifi laughed and laughed... and made a pin just like him!

5) It's bird poop and Mommy just went to get a Kleenex.

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Sybil Bruncheon’s A Whole Month Of Thanksgiving… LEFTOVERS!!!!.....

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Bernice had enjoyed Aunt Carlina's pumpkin pie so much, that when she finished the last piece, she decided to wear the nice doily from the pie plate as a hat... um… thingie.

...and she wore it straight through to Easter the following Spring. ...even though the crumbs started attracting the ants back in March... And oh, how they itched.

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From Sybil Bruncheon's "The Other Side of Thanksgiving"...

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Nowadays, we all think of Thanksgiving as a cheerful Holiday full of national tradition, family affection, and civic good will, but did you know that 100 years ago, there was a mischievous and occasionally sinister side to the celebration? Well, there was! Here are some Thanksgiving greeting cards with very strange overtones... some even with children! You be the judge...

Card #1; Designed by Elmér Friedkush, a former nursery school principal, this card from 1897, had a disturbing caption printed on the back (in very, very fine print!); "Little Sonya took great pleasure in showing the turkey how ugly he was!... and then she made a poot in the face of her kitty, Mrs. Whiskers! But that was alright for she never wore pantalettes under her dresses! What a naughty little girl she was!"...

Card #2; This card was drawn by the German political cartoonist, Fritzy Kalmuchen in 1901. Known for his extremist views, his pro-Prussian nationalism, and his obsession with Aryan mysticism, he became a devotee of the budding science of Freudian dream study… here he shows a little elf/boy trying to hypnotize a turkey into allowing him to behead it. Notice that the ax is highly decorated and matches the elf/boy’s costume. Fritzy reveals in the caption on the back that the turkey hypnotizes the elf/boy right back… and convinces him to behead himself…

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Sybil Bruncheon's "Thanksgivings Past"... Eating on the run in 1968...

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We have here an actual photo of Mrs. Helen Fobisher, a secretarial assistant at the General Motors showroom on West 57th Street in Manhattan during Thanksgiving week. Mrs. Fobisher had been with the company for just seven years (right out of college!), and in addition to her meticulous work habits, she also exhibited an extraordinary talent for innovation and, dare we say it, INVENTION!

Seen here is Helen in her "Disco-Desk", a one-piece piece of office furniture that allowed people to sit at their desks in perfect comfort without the trouble of pulling up a chair. And concealed in the space-age polymer-structure of the desk-top was a hot-plate food-prep unit which made it possible to simply press a few buttons, and have your lunch appear right in front of you... without interrupting your work-day! Talk about modern convenience and efficiency!! No more wasted time standing in line in the cafeteria or waiting at the corner deli for a hot corned beef sandwich that would be totally cold by the time you got back to the office. The Disco-Desk offered a fairly comprehensive menu of standard American work-day lunch-fare; the sort of food and refreshments that one would expect on an average weekday, Monday through Friday, nine to five! Certainly nothing too exotic, and definitely nothing French!

And wasn’t Helen lucky? Her bosses at GM were so impressed with her Disco-Desk, they bought her designs and patent as a surprise to her right before Thanksgiving! What a way to celebrate the Holiday season, huh? Interestingly, the New Products Division decided that instead of using Helen’s Disco-Desk for the office, they would install a small motor and four swivel casters and sell the desk as a futuristic bumper car at Coney Island. It was called the George Jetson Jalopy… it was a tremendous failure.

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Sybil Bruncheon's "Thanksgivings Past"... It's In The Mail!

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This particular card is part of the Harburton Holiday Greeting Card Collections... This Thanksgiving card was painted by Siglitz Bünter using his own children Kåaren and Biff as models. This is the third in the series showing scenes from a typical Thanksgiving in 1905 America; In card #1 the children welcome their parents and relatives to the barnyard to select a turkey. 2) The unchaperoned children play tricks on the turkey and try to engage it in mischief before it's killed for Mother. 3) The turkey realizes what is about to happen and turns on the children who are out of earshot of the adults. ...and 4) The enraged turkey pecks out the eyes of Kåaren and pushes her down a well. It then tears Biff to pieces and eats some of them while other barnyard animals gather to clap and laugh...

Needless to say, although they were wildly popular at the time, a complete set of the Siglitz Bünter cards is extremely rare to find today. Sotheby's auctioned a complete set in 1998 for $36,000 even though cards 3 and 4 were strangely stained... and stuck together.

(with thanks to Bob Gutowski for the image)

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From “Sybil Bruncheon Plays With Her Food!”… Chapter 14...

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… apropos of Thanksgiving, my cook, Hilda, and I learned from Escoffier that if there's ever an… um, “accident”... in the kitchen, one should quickly "incorporate" it into the meal and serve the results confidently... to the... uh, survivors. And remember!... a good sauce covers a multitude of sins!!

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SYBIL BRUNCHEON’S THANKSGIVING BULLETINS FROM OUT AND ABOUT:

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For Mike Pence and all our Creationist brothers and sisters... The pilgrims encountered dinosaurs when they first came to the New World, along with Adam, Eve, Enoch, the Tower of Babel, Samson, Delilah, Job, Lot, and a pillar of salt which they placed on the Thanksgiving table beside the Pteradactyl Pturkey...

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Sybil Bruncheon's "A Whole Month Of #Thanksgiving!"...

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That awful moment when your brother-in-law notices you've left the mini-marshmallows OFF the sweet potato casserole...

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