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Postcards such as these mobilized huge protests in 1907, 1908, and 1909. Obviously Irish-American objected to the stereotypes depicted, but the protests also revealed that Irish-Americans felt entitled to use and enjoy holiday postcards. In part this…

The traditional or crone witch surrounded herself with bottles, pots, and potions that were used towards executing her powers. These items often reappear in Halloween bedroom interiors, especially on the dresser, as young women took on the trappings…

Rich fabrics on the window seat and curtains, as well as the mother’s dress, all denote middle class respectability and material comfort. However, through the window we see that this is clearly a rural family, not a city one, living amid those…

The arduous labor involved in plucking a turkey was invariably shown as a thing of the past for White women. Instead, their anachronistic, Puritan counterparts are charged with such work.

The notion that postcard recipients were expected to become postcard senders is reinforced here. The cycle of give and get was put into motion by sending this postcard; however, the recipient was then asked “Does my old friend remember me,”…

The image of Uncle Sam presenting a turkey at Thanksgiving was also the embodiment of nationhood presenting the embodiment of prosperity and bounty. It is also a very patriarchal image—the male deliverer of prosperity offers his gifts just like the…

These children look out a window that could be part of any urban, middle class home. The furnishings, the books, the fabrics all indicate a bourgeois interior. However, through the window we see they are in the rural landscape, with a single steepled…

Celebrating Thanksgiving and its consumerism become civic virtues in this image. Whether this was seen an inclusive invitation or an exclusive retrenchment depended on the viewer; however, the mechanisms of material nationalism are at work here, by…

Perhaps destined to become the most notorious postcard in the collection, at the very least this builds on the notion that American Indians needed the charitable and missionary uplift of Whites in order to bring them into the Thanksgiving narrative.…