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Thanksgiving Cast in a New Light

By Eddie North-Hager on November 25, 2009 12:40 PM

  • Thanksgiving Cast in a New Light

Growing up in the 1950s and 60s, Lawrence Neinstein’s idea of a traditional Thanksgiving was a day with family, parades and Detroit Lions football games on TV. (In that Cold War era, there were also occasional visits to the bomb shelter exhibition at Sears.)

That wasn’t quite the tradition Neinstein, executive director of the USC University Park Health Center, professor of pediatrics and medicine and a senior associate dean of student affairs, wanted to pass on to his children.

One Thanksgiving, the Neinsteins ventured to the banks of the Merced River in Yosemite to experience pioneer life. Over the course of nearly three decades, Neinstein talked with friends and relatives about his idea to expand Thanksgiving beyond a day dominated by food and fun into a lesson in American history.

The result is Freedom’s Feast - short ceremonies and activities that encapsulate the important reasons behind the holidays that American celebrate. Neinstein and his friends Ron Wolfson and Lee Hendler developed the activities, which are available online at http://freedomsfeast.us

“The concept was really to ultimately try and make some additions to the Thanksgiving festival on a more national level, a rather ambitious idea,” Neinstein said. But it was an idea the three knew could occur, even though it might take decades, he admitted.

Freedom’s Feast’s 10-minute version packs in songs (“My Country ‘Tis of Thee”), quotes (Oprah Winfrey: “Where there is not struggle, there is no strength”), statistics (67 percent of South Carolinians were slaves in 1775) and American history.

This year, the Children’s Museum of Manhattan will celebrate Thanksgiving using Freedom’s Feast. The program has been expanded to other holidays - Presidents Day, Labor Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Independence Day and Memorial Day.

“Freedom’s Feast helps families discover new ways to celebrate major American holidays so that we can pass on the stories, values and behaviors we care about to our next generation of American citizens and leaders,” Neinstein said.