Thanksgiving Puck

Louis M. Glackens's cover for Puck's Thanksgiving number presents a triumvirate of holiday symbols—a live turkey, a ceramic jug of alcohol, and a smiling pie—each locked in wooden stocks atop a low platform. Ringing them in a jubilant chain-dance are dozens of Pilgrim figures rendered in blue silhouette, their buckled hats and cloaks identifying them as the Puritan forebears of the American holiday. The pilgrims stream over rolling green hills in the background, suggesting an entire nation converging on the feast. The stocks invert the usual power relation: the celebrants have captured Thanksgiving itself. Glackens's joke is gently anticlerical—the sober Puritan founders are shown rejoicing over the very earthly pleasures, drink included, their theology officially discouraged. No ethnic caricature is present; the humor is purely calendrical and cultural.