Rest home or hospital looking food. Maybe it’s a kid’s plate and I am overthinking it. You know it wasn’t cheap!
Mystery meat? Nobody online knows WTH it is! The cornbread, I thought you were talking about the item next to turkey Edited: The long carrot adds class?
Ah, my mom never liked cornbread, we always had bread stuffed turkey. The couple of times I have had cornbread at catering events it was more biscuit shaped. Gaps in my childhood, I never did a Thanksgiving in the US as a kid. Its probably a kid's plate but I strongly disapprove of the hideous plate itself.
My mother was a historian, mostly art but also generally, and she didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving because she didn’t have much patience for traditions that she felt had been reinvented or distorted. She saw it as a holiday based on a highly romanticized and inaccurate version of history, which didn’t align with her values of seeking truth and understanding the past as it was, not as people wished it to be. The image of Pilgrims in black-and-white attire sharing a peaceful meal with Native Americans is largely a 19th-century fabrication. Never had even a yam... Don't ask me why Christmas was fine.
Some aspects of the story of the Pilgrims in Plymouth are correct. They would not have survived without the assistance of Native Americas especially Squanto (Tisquantum) who spoke English. Squanto actually lived in London for five years prior to the Pilgrims coming to Massachusetts -- his history is a fascinating story underlining the complex situation as well as the abuse of native Americans at the time. Additionally there was already significant trade and interchanges between Europeans and Native Americans before the Pilgrims went to the "new world". History makes it fairly clear that there was a first Thanksgiving celebration where the Pilgrims and Native Americans shared food and celebrated. However the good relations between the Native Americans and Pilgrims did not last for long -- mainly due to the depraved behavior of the Europeans. A set of wars occurred in Massachusetts culminating with King Philips War.
Iirc my reading, the first contact with Europeans, the vikings, did not go well, the native Americans killed many and drove the rest back to their long boats.