Woolworth’s introduced America to glass yuletide ornaments

Christmas as we know it in America began in 1880 at the first Woolworth’s five-and-dime store in Lancaster, Pa., when a box of blown-glass ornaments from Germany was put on sale. 

Paul Seaton, a British historian and creator of the virtual Woolworth’s Museum in London, tells the story: 

Bernhard Wilmsen, a traveling salesman from Germany, called on storeowner Frank Winfield Woolworth in Lancaster in the fall of 1880. Wilmsen was peddling glass Christmas ornaments, individually blown, mind you, by German craftsman from the village of Lauscha. 

Frank Winfield Woolworth

Wilmsen said these ornaments were “all the rage” in Europe, as people were choosing glass ornaments to decorate their homes at Christmas. Woolworth responded that “Americans would not waste money on them because they didn’t ‘do’ anything.” 

In the end, he relented and bought one case – 12 dozen – of the decorations. 

Much to his surprise, all 144 decorations sold out in less than a day, yielding an overall profit of $4.32 (3 cents apiece). The next year, Woolworth doubled the order, and sold out again. He had found a winner. 

“To push home the advantage, Frank Woolworth placed most of his orders with a single supplier,” Seaton reported. And Wilmsen benefited immensely. “It is estimated that total sales between 1880 and 1939 exceeded a staggering 500 million individual baubles.” 

In 1939, at the age of 81, Wilmsen said: “I grew with Woolworth. I have sold them at least $25 million worth of Christmas tree ornaments. I have a big factory. I have 255 people working to fill Woolworth orders. I am the oldest Woolworth supplier.”

 

Christmas decorations became big business for Woolworth’s, and the Christmas season was one of the reasons Woolworth’s became an American retail icon, influencing generations of shoppers. 

To complete the story, Lauscha’s first glassblowers were Christoph Müller and Hans Greiner. 

Then, in 1847, another Hans Greiner (a descendent of the first Hans) introduced the idea of producing glass Christmas ornaments in the shape of fruits and nuts and other foods, instead of hanging the real items on their evergreens. 

Perhaps one of those glassy German food ornaments was a green pickle that would be difficult to see when tucked into an inner bough, giving rise to a great holiday legend. 

One source says: “A very old Christmas Eve tradition in Germany was to hide a pickle ornament deep in the branches of the family Christmas tree. The parents hung the pickle last after all the other ornaments were in place…and after the children went to bed. The first child to find the pickle on Christmas morning gets a special treat or an extra present from St. Nicholas.” 

It’s largely a myth, but leave it to Danny Lipford, the home improvement guy. “Once we heard the legend, we adopted the tradition, and the pickle has a place of well-hidden honor on our tree each year.” 

“We don’t save the game for Christmas morning – instead, the pickle gets hidden right away, and visitors are invited to find it and claim their prize,” Lipford said. “I don’t know what it is about pickles, but the game captures everyone’s imagination. Competition is sometimes fierce among adults, and children love to find it over and over again.” 

“Sometimes the silliest traditions are the best ones,” Lipford said, “and the pickle is a ‘dilly’ of a game, guaranteed to get the whole family gathered around the tree laughing within minutes. Just make sure your prize basket is well-stocked!”

Christmas candy canes have spiritual implications

You might say that candy canes are a Christmas gift from heaven. Two food science scholars at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada have traced the beginnings of candy canes to the Cologne Cathedral in Germany. 

“One well-regarded story suggests that in 1670, a Catholic choirmaster in Cologne gave out pure white sugar sticks to the children as a way to soothe them during the long nativity ceremony,” wrote Veronica Ann Hislop and Dérick Rousseau. 

“The choirmaster asked a local candy maker for each sugar stick to be turned into a hook to resemble the shape of a shepherd’s staff,” the researchers wrote. “Shepherds are common symbols in the Christian faith and can be seen in the Christian story of the birth of Christ.” 

“An alternative theory suggests the hook was invented simply to make the candy sticks easier to hang on Christmas trees,” said Hislop and Rousseau. 

That leads us to Wooster, Ohio, which occupies a short-but-sweet chapter in candy cane legend and lore. 

August Imgard was just 19 when he came to America in 1847 from Wetzlar, Germany. Living with an older brother named Frederick Imgard in Wooster, August decorated a small blue spruce tree with white candy canes that he made from his mother’s recipe. 

To this day, the National Confectioners Association, based in Washington, D.C., recognizes August Imgard as the first person to hang candy canes on a Christmas tree in the U.S.A. 

Canadians Hislop and Rousseau said: “Peppermint is one of the world’s oldest medicinal herbs. During the 18th century, your local apothecary was also your candy maker.” 

“That’s because the medicinal ingredients that were prescribed were usually unpalatable concoctions. To help get the patient to consume the unpleasant medicine, peppermint was often added because its cooling taste helped to mask the flavour of awful-tasting drugs.” 

“It wasn’t until the 19th century that the apothecary and candy maker started to become separate professions.” 

Freelance journalist Kate Miller-Wilson found an 1844 recipe for “peppermint sticks that were striped with color” in a cookbook authored by Eleanor Parkinson of Philadelphia. She ran a confectionary shop located next door to her husband’s tavern. 

Parkinson “gives detailed instructions for leaving most of the candy white and dying a small amount another color, and then rolling the two colors together to create a twisted, striped pattern,” Miller-Wilson wrote. 

The 20th century was the new frontier for the manufacturing of candy canes in a factory setting. 

Bob McCormack became the “candy cane man” in 1919, when he started his business in Albany, Ga. McCormack had his ducks in a row. He had worked with a large bakery in Tennessee and lined up investors from Alabama in advance of launching McCormack’s Famous Candy Company. 

Yet, the ultimate success of this family business was due to the prayers…and inventions…offered by the family Catholic priest. He was the Rev. Gregory Harding Keller, whose sister was married to Bob McCormack. 

Father Keller invented the machine to twist the soft candy into spirals and cut the stick candy in 1952 and another machine to put the crook in the candy cane in 1957. 

His candy twisting/cutting/bending machinery became known as the “Keller Candy Cane Forming Machine.” 

Afterward, the familiar peppermint-flavored, red-and-white swirled candy canes began to roll off McCormack’s production line lickety-split, and the company vaulted into a market leadership position. 

Today, the brand is known as Bobs Candies, a unit of Ferrara Candy Company.

Town of Santa Claus has the holiday spirit

Christmas decorations stay up year-round in one small town that bears the name Santa Claus. You will find it in Spencer County, which hugs the bottom of Indiana just north of the Ohio River above Kentucky. 

Its 2,403 residents are unified in their commitment to extend the hand of holiday hospitality to guests who come to have their photo made with Santa in every season.

 

The town is already hopping in advance of Christmas 2021. Children are encouraged to send their letters to St. Nicholas in Santa Claus, Ind., early to ensure a prompt reply. It’s been a holiday tradition for volunteer elves to respond to children’s letters to Santa since 1914. 

Address envelopes to Santa Claus, P.O. Box 1, Santa Claus, IN 47579. 

The post office there, located at 45 Kringle Circle, has a “unique holiday picture postmark cancellation stamp.” Each year, local high school art students are invited to submit their sketches in a holiday postmark contest. 

The community was settled in 1854 and chose the name Santa Fe. In 1856, when the town was working to establish a post office, its application was denied. Citizens were told that Indiana already had a Santa Fe with a post office, which had been authorized in 1849. 

The Spencer County crowd regrouped and selected Santa Claus as the new name for the town. Details surrounding that occurrence have been lost in the fog of Christmases past. Not even Rudolph has been able to pierce through the murkiness.

 

Demonstrating its own brand of Christmas spirit is a town named North Pole in Alaska. It’s located on the Tanana River, between Fairbanks and Moose Creek. 

North Pole, which today has a population of 2,066, started out as Mosquito Junction. That name had been selected by Bon and Bernice Davis, who arrived in 1944 as the first homesteaders. The name of the village was later softened to Davis. 

A land development company had the bright idea in 1952 of renaming Davis as North Pole to attract business. 

The town’s historian said the developers “reasoned that some toy manufacturer might be induced to locate a factory in North Pole, so their products could be advertised as being ‘Made in North Pole.’ Also, someone might start a Santa Land, which would become a northern version of Disneyland.” 

“Bon Davis thought that the idea was far-fetched but acceded to the request,” according to the North Pole webmaster. And so it was decreed in 1953 that North Pole would be the town’s official name. 

Conrad and Nellie Miller had moved to the community in 1950 to establish a trading post. He happened to look a lot like Santa, so they rebranded their entire operation as Santa Claus House…at 101 St. Nicholas Drive. 

It developed into a year-round “Christmas store” and tourism destination. You can’t miss it. Look for the jumbo Santa statue that marks the spot. He’s a big guy, standing 42 feet tall and weighing 900 pounds.

 

Con and Nellie have passed on, so their children, Mike Miller and Merry Christmas Miller are now running the business.

Santa is “on duty” at the store from June 1 through Christmas Eve, but he leaves on Dec. 24 at 3 p.m. to prepare for making his rounds. (It’s 1,700 miles from North Pole in Alaska to the “other” North Pole on top of the world.) 

Visitors to Santa Claus House should also explore the big red barn on the property – home of the “Antler Academy (of Flying & Reindeer Games).”

Christmas star burns bright over Star, N.C.

In Montgomery County, N.C., the Christmas rush at the Town of Star’s post office begins on Dec. 1. When Postmaster Angela Johnson opens the doors at 8:30 a.m., she’s likely to find folks lined up…for a block or two. 

Local postal patrons want to be among the very first to get their Christmas cards and letters hand-stamped with Star’s new holiday pictorial postmark.

 

The holiday postmark tradition in Star began in 1987, and it has earned the town a designation by the United States Postal Service (USPS) as an official “Christmas Town.” 

Typically, Johnson said the Star post office receives about 24,000 requests for the special postmark during the Christmas season, but she may have to recruit volunteers this year to handle an expected spike in volume.

 

Star’s status as a “Christmas treat” in North Carolina is the subject of a five-page feature article and photo spread that appeared in the December 2021 issue of Our State magazine. Our State claims that each issue is read by 1,117,000 people. 

Written by Trudy Haywood Saunders of Mount Gilead (another town in Montgomery County), the Our State story effectively conveys that a down-homey Christmas spirit is part of Star’s DNA. Mayor Mary Hughes O’Brien “sets the tone at the top.”

 

Star is smack-dab in the middle of North Carolina. Truly, it is the geographic center of North Carolina, and there’s a stone marker and plaque to prove it. Folks will travel to get a Christmas postmark stamp, Johnson told Saunders.

 

All roads lead to Star. It’s about 50 miles south of Greensboro, 70 miles east of Charlotte and 85 miles west of Raleigh. 

Star’s little post office is located on Main Street, and it’s open Monday-Friday, from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., but closed for lunch between noon and 1 p.m. Saturday hours are 8:30 a.m. to noon. 

The town has about 756 residents, but the Star zip code of 27356 serves about 3,205 postal customers in portions of Montgomery and Moore counties. 

USPS now has 104 “Christmas Towns” across America, ranging from A to W – Angels Camp, Calif., to Wiseman, Ariz. 

Other towns named Star are in Idaho, Mississippi and Texas. A USPS spokesperson said Star, N.C., stands out because it has offered “a different cancellation every year, creating a high demand among collectors. Artists compete to have their drawing selected as the winning design.” 

Star started out as Hunsucker’s Store. Historian Tony L. Crumbley of Charlotte said that Martin Hunsucker established a trading post, called Hunsucker’s Store, in 1858. That became the name of the community as well. 

“Following the Civil War,” Crumbley said, “Angus Leach found his way to Hunsucker’s Store. He later married Deborah Hunsucker and became associated with his father-in-law (Martin Hunsucker) in business enterprises.” 

While serving as postmaster in 1866, Angus Leach grew “weary of writing the long name ‘Hunsucker’s Store’ over and over again on letters and post office records. Leach lobbied postal officials to rename the town. He said: ‘Let’s name her Star and let her shine.’” 

“The post office department officials approved the change of name and Star became a reality on Feb. 11, 1887,” Crumbley said. 

“If it was possible for a man to be the nucleus of a town that grew up around him, then Angus Leach was that man. His endeavors, his business success and his generosity run like a thread through the early history of this town,” Crumbley concluded.

Tracing the trail of St. Nick takes us to the Netherlands

Santa Claus is a direct derivation from Sinterklaas of the Netherlands. Well, sort of.

According to the Expatica online news and information portal, “the traditional image of Sinterklaas is one of a bishop, clothed in a white garment and wrapped in a red cloak. He wears a tall red and gold hop’smiter (head dress) that covers his long white curly hair.”

“He usually wears white gloves. In one hand, he carries a long metal staff and in the other, a book of names (also known as the ‘naughty or nice’ list).”

 

“Like the North American concept of Santa Claus, Sinterklass has a long white beard; however, unlike his North American cousin, he’s austere and elegant rather than fat and jolly.” 

Other sources said that while Santa Claus is extremely punctual and knows and remembers every child, the elder Sinterklass is a bit senile. 

Mounted on a white steed, Sinterklaas arrives in the saddle, not in a sleigh hitched to eight reindeer. 

In their homes, the Dutch children leave tasty carrots in their wooden shoes that have been placed next to the radiator. These treats are for the horse not for Sinterklaas. 

Expatica reported that the real Nicholas Sinterklaas was born in the 4th century in Myra, Asia Minor (on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in what is now Turkey), and there he became a bishop who loved children. 

“When the early Dutch settlers came to America, they dedicated their first church on the island of Manhattan, in 1642, to Sinterklaas.” 

“When the British took control of New Amsterdam in 1664, and changed the name of the place to New York, they merged Sinterklaas with their ‘Father Christmas’ – the merry, roly-poly, Falstaffian figure in high boots,” Expatica said. 

Sinterklass is a bachelor, whereas Santa is happily married to…what’s-her-name?

 

The identity of Mrs. Santa is a mystery – even to the researchers at Wikipedia. 

Clues from literature, film and television offer subtle “hints or clues.” Some of the Mrs. Claus names dropped over time have been Amelia, Anna, Annette, Carol, Gertrude, Jessica, Nancy, Nellie and Ruth.

None of those are clicking for me, but only Santa knows! 

U.S. Postal Service delivers the mail to Santa

Let’s hope the longstanding tradition of handwritten children’s letters to Santa Claus doesn’t disappear.

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) needs the business…in order for its “Operation Santa” enterprise to have maximum impact. 

Although there’s been a marked decline in the amount of school classroom time devoted to learning cursive writing, it’s perfectly OK with Santa for children to print their letters or produce their wish list documents using a keyboard.

 

Please spare Santa and his elves the agony of decoding digital messages. Operation Santa needs the “hard copy.”

Frank Harris Hitchcock officially launched Operation Santa in 1912, when he was serving as U.S. Postmaster General, appointed by President William Howard Taft. 

Hitchcock directed local postmasters to open letters to Santa and allow postal employees to read and respond.

Newspaper publishers had railed on the postmasters general who preceded Hitchcock, for they had largely deemed letters to Santa as “undeliverable,” dumping them into the dreaded DLOs (Dead Letter Offices) where they were often burned to a crisp. 

Nowadays, the USPS has replaced the DLOs with a kinder and gentler MRC (Mail Recovery Center), a facility in Atlanta that functions more like a “lost and found” department. 

Holly, who is the USPS Christmas elf and liaison to Santa Claus, said: “The mission of today’s Operation Santa is to “encourage individuals, groups and organizations to ‘adopt a letter’ and help a child or family have a happy holiday when they otherwise might not.”

 

Operation Santa posts the letters online that it receives from kids who need a boost. All the details for parents and for volunteers who want to participate as super-elves are contained on the USPS Operation Santa website at uspsoperationsanta.com. 

Look for the instructional video, starring Holly. She said the deadline for children to mail their letters to Santa this year is Dec. 10.

 

Letters will be available for adoption from Nov. 29 through Dec. 22. 

Santa has his own zip code. It’s 88888. Address your envelope to Santa at 123 Elf Road, North Pole 88888.

“Last year was a difficult year for many families,” Holly reported. “Some lost loved ones to COVID-19. Others struggled to pay their bills. And many suffered loneliness and despair, being stuck in their homes.” 

She said the USPS was unsure if people would be willing and able to help others, but “we were overjoyed by the number of people who wanted to participate and adopt letters. The generosity of people all around the world truly humbled us. So many people reached out and asked how they could help.” 

“Joshua wrote to Santa and thanked him for sacrificing his social life to help others,” Holly said. “He also told Santa, ‘If I have to choose a gift, it would be a donation to a charity, a homeless shelter, a public library, anything is fine. Because what’s a better gift than peace and joy on earth?’” 

“In a similar letter, Isabella asked Santa for a big favor: ‘I wish you can give toys to the kids in the hospital, and the ones who live on the streets.’” 

The team at BestLifeOnline.com has assembled its own collection of “best letters” to Santa. 

“My name is Ella and I am 9. I have a question to ask you. What happens if you get sick on Christmas eve? Would you have a backup Santa if that happened?” 

Sarah had a special request: “Please leave before 6 a.m. My alarm goes off at 6. P.S.: My stocking is on the left.”

Pass the Thanksgiving dressing/stuffing, please!

Volumes have been written about the essential foods of Thanksgiving feasting – turkey and dressing. Or is it turkey and stuffing? 

Freelance journalist Michelle Darrisaw, a native of south Georgia, said the word “dressing” is southern in nature, while “stuffing” is the term that is used mainly in the northeastern states. 

A scientific study, commissioned by Butterball in 2015, validated Darrisaw’s observations, so yes, we can declare that “Dressing is a Southern Food.” 

In the Midwest, you’ll find a blend, as the terms dressing and stuffing are used interchangeably” Darrisaw wrote.

 

But if you want to get into “the nitty-gritty debate of factual accuracy with your second cousins” at the grown-ups table, she said “the important thing to remember is that stuffing is stuffed inside of an animal before cooking, and dressing is simply stuffed into your mouth from a separate dish.”

Turkey’s “trusty sidekick” is also sometimes called “filling,” especially in Pennsylvania, where Mennonite families “added their own twist, using leftover mashed potatoes to create ‘filling,’” said Charlotte Walsh, a contributor to The Pioneer Woman website.

 

The really important issue here, is not what you call the dressing/stuffing/filling, but that the dish be there on the table. 

Chris Fuhrmeister of the Atlanta Business Chronicle asked award-winning chef John Currence of Oxford, Miss.: “Is dressing essential for a proper Thanksgiving meal? 

“‘Well, I don’t know,’ Currence said with a not-so-subtle tone of sarcasm. ‘Do you have to have peanut butter on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?’”

 

Chef John Currence

“Yes, it’s essential. Go to 10 different houses serving classic Thanksgiving meals, and you might find 10 different menus of side dishes to go with the main attraction. But every table will include some sort of dressing,” Fuhrmeister reported. 

Currence said he believes that turkey and dressing are “the one-two of the Thanksgiving meal. He said: “You can’t have Thanksgiving without it (dressing).” 

There are a plethora of dressing recipes floating about, but Ni’Kesia Pannell, a food writer based in Atlanta, is partial to cornbread as the primary ingredient, “instead of baguettes or plain ol’ white bread.”

She prefers dressing as a “casserole dish” used to “dress up” your meal up. “Though stuffing has gone a little out of style due to the increased risk of food-borne illnesses, the added turkey juices do make the dish more delicious. If you're set on stuffing your turkey, everything inside the bird should be cooked to at least 165 degrees.” 

Dietitian Maxine Smith of Cleveland Clinic in Ohio said: “If you put stuffing in the turkey, do so just before cooking. Avoid pre-stuffing. Insert a food thermometer into the center of the stuffing to make sure it reaches 165 degrees. Bacteria can survive in stuffing that has not reached 165 degrees that could then cause food poisoning.”

“After removing the bird from the oven, wait for 20 minutes before taking the stuffing out of the turkey’s cavity; it will cook a little more this way,” Smith added. 

Chef Currence advises: “Don’t even think about using store-bought bread crumbs. To make a real good cornbread dressing, you’ve got to make your cornbread from scratch.” 

“It needs lots of celery, lots of onion and lots and lots of sage to make a plain, traditional turkey dressing,” he said. “Without sage it falls flat. That’s the headliner for me.”

 

On the other hand, some dressing perfectionists (like my mother) prefer to avoid using sage, because sage can overpower the dish, especially when Uncle Herb was doing the cooking. 

Let’s give thanks to America’s cranberry pioneers

Cranberry growers in America regard Abel Denison Makepeace as the “Grandfather” of their industry.

He was born in 1832 in Plymouth County, Mass., and hung out a sign in 1854 in nearby Barnstable County to announce that “A.D. Makepeace offers his services as a harness-maker and saddler.”

Makepeace soon discovered his affinity for agriculture and purchased a farm to grow potatoes, turnips and strawberries. He began experimenting with cranberries. It took a while, but Makepeace finally got the hang of it.

 

By 1890, Makepeace was “recognized by all New Englanders as the foremost man in the cranberry business, cultivating more acres and producing, by far, larger results than any other farm in the world,” according to Barnstable’s historian. 

The family business he created – A.D. Makepeace Company – continues to prosper today. It is still the largest grower of cranberries in the world, owning 2,000 acres of cranberry bogs in several Massachusetts communities. 

A.D.’s grandson, John C. Makepeace, was one of three founders of a unique grower-owner cooperative in 1930. His partners in this venture were Marcus Libby Urann and Elizabeth F. Lee. The cooperative took the name Cranberry Canners, Inc. (It would become Ocean Spray in 1959.)

 Marcus Urann came from Holden, Maine. He gave up lawyering to revolutionize the cranberry industry, relocating to Plymouth County. At the time, cranberries were only available fresh for two months out of the year (typically harvested from mid-September until mid-November). 

In 1912, Urann figured out a canning method to preserve cooked cranberries, making cranberries a year-round product. He also was the first to “juice” cranberries, creating a whole new product line. 

Storyteller Sahil Bloom said Urann’s cranberry operations “were an immediate success. People began calling him the ‘Cranberry King.’” 

Elizabeth Lee and her brother, Enoch Bills, owned cranberry bogs in New Egypt, N.J. They had a cranberry surplus in 1917, so Elizabeth took some of the unsold cranberries into her kitchen. She cooked them on the stovetop, adding sugar and “secret ingredients.” 

“She was so impressed with her creation that she took a few cases of her special sauce to Philadelphia to find an investor to buy and sell her sauce,” reported Geocaching.com. “However, no investors saw her, and because she didn’t want to lug the crates back to New Egypt, she just left them there.” 

“By the time she returned to New Egypt, a telephone call was waiting for her to inform her that ‘an investor’ tasted her sauce, loved it and made an order of 500 cases.” 

“So, she got to cooking. She bought up all surplus berries from local cranberry bogs and expanded beyond her kitchen into an old chicken coop where her children and neighbors were employed to help Elizabeth Lee make her cranberry sauce.” 

“Glass jars, packed in straw, were shipped in and washed. The label ‘Bog Sweet’ was hand-pasted on the jars, and the cartons were hand-packed and taken to the train depot for shipment.”

 

Elizabeth Lee was ultimately labeled “Cranberry Queen.” She became vice president of the cooperative, while Urann was president and general manager. Makepeace served as secretary-treasurer as well as “Archduke.” 

Alex Manchester, cranberry foreman at A.D. Makepeace, told journalist Aviva Luttrell: “To be a cranberry farmer, you have to wear a lot of different hats.” 

“You have to be a horticulturalist, an amateur mechanic…an advanced mechanic if you have it in you – I don’t. You have to be a meteorologist definitely, and an entomologist, too. There’s plenty of life out here besides cranberries.”

Let’s pay tribute to ‘tiny but mighty’ cranberries

 Give thanks for cranberries. In 1877, a columnist at Harper’s Weekly magazine wrote that he/she couldn’t imagine a Thanksgiving feast without cranberry sauce. 

“The small red spheres of the fruit, crushed, sweetened…bring out all that is good in the bird’s flavor,” said the writer. “No reasonable housekeeper ever thinks of serving it (turkey) without the sauce, which in its ruddiness of color seems to have caught the very exhilaration of autumn.” Cranberry sauce “combines the sweets and sours to perfection.” 

Happy 80th anniversary wishes go out this Thanksgiving season, because it was in 1941 that Ocean Spray gave the public a jellied cranberry sauce “log” – the one that looks like the inside of its tin can container. 

The jiggly, wiggly log has become an American food icon. Can’t you just hear it swoosh-plopping onto its serving plate?

 

Journalist K. Annabelle Smith, writing for The Smithsonian magazine, said Americans will consume in excess of 5 million gallons of jellied cranberry sauce during the 2021 Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. 

Ocean Spray says it puts 200 individual berries into each 14-ounce can. There are all the makings you need for a classic “story problem” to generate turkey table talk. 

Formed as an agricultural cooperative of cranberry growers in 1930, Ocean Spray is based in Plymouth County, Mass. It currently has more than 700 member-growers, mainly in the states of Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington as well as in British Columbia, Canada. Ocean Spray accounts for 70% of North America’s cranberry production. 

Ocean Spray’s consumer educators tell us: “Cranberries didn’t come over on the Mayflower, they were already here. Cranberries are one of only three fruits native to North America, along with Concord grapes and blueberries.” 

“Contrary to popular belief, cranberries do not grow in water. Instead, they grow on vines in beds layered with sand, peat, gravel and clay,” according to the Ocean Spray spokesperson. “These beds are commonly known as bogs or marshes.”

“Today, growers use two methods for harvesting: dry harvesting and wet harvesting. The fresh cranberries that are sold in the produce section of your supermarket are harvested primarily by the dry method. These cranberries are most often used for cooking and baking. 

“Wet harvested cranberries are used mostly for processed foods, juices, sauces and relishes. Wet harvesting actually begins the night before the harvest when the grower floods the bogs with water.” 

“The next day, water reels, nicknamed ‘egg beaters,’ are used to stir up the water in the bogs. The cranberries are loosened from the vine and float to the surface of the water where they are corralled and trucked to a central receiving station.”

 The science of it is that ripe cranberries float. They have pockets of air inside them, so they just bob up to the surface. 

The air pockets also cause ripe cranberries to “bounce.” The person who discovered the “bounce test” during the 1840s was John “Peg-Leg” Webb, a cranberry grower in New Jersey,

Webb sold his lush, bouncing cranberries to captains of sailing ships going out to sea from Philadelphia. Loaded with Vitamin C, cranberries helped prevent scurvy. 

Sam Sifton, the food guru at The New York Times, says: “The two most important factors in any credible Thanksgiving feast are the cranberry sauce and the gravy. They tie every element on the plate together, acting as frame and foundation alike.”

“Cranberry sauce only enhances what is already excellent, and good gravy can cure almost any Thanksgiving ill.”