The soup people actually. From Wikipedia, “The green bean casserole was first created in 1955 by the Campbell Soup Company. Dorcas Reilly led the team that created the recipe while working as a staff member in the home economics department. The inspiration for the dish was ‘to create a quick and easy recipe around two things most Americans always had on hand in the 1950s: green beans and Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup.’”
It’s been continuously celebrated in California since the 1860s.
Pizza was introduced to the U.S. around 1940. No pizza chains existed until 1958. Even mom and pop stores were rare in most places. I never had a slice until I was in college.
It’s probably become a tradition, but It’s a Wonderful Life was never shown around Christmas when I was growing up. I had to be alert to when it would be broadcast – I’d read the short story it was based on and wanted to see the movie – and finally saw it at 11 pm in August in 1972 or 73, so I never thought of it as a Christmas movie.
Ashokan Farewell comes to mind. A lot of people seem to assume this is a very old waltz, not unjustly since it was used repeatedly on the soundtrack of Ken Burns’ miniseries The Civil War, but it was composed in 1982.
If a classic is synonymous with “tradition” then a lot of these entries are indeed almost or are traditions, since tradition is anything your grandparents did more than once.
Right. I remember it from the 1950s-1960s when I was growing up. Usually someone will bring a version to Thanksgiving dinner at our house. (Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup itself dates to 1934.)
The link says it’s particularly characteristic of the Midwest, although it’s pretty ubiquitous in New York, where I’m from. I’m surprised you’ve never encountered it. There are always some people who will turn up there nose at almost anything (de gustibus non est disputandum), but there’s no question that a large number of people really like it considering how popular and widespread it is. At our house it always disappears.
The whole Yellow Ribbon phenomenon is interesting to me. Tying yellow ribbons around trees and poles to welcome home military service people got started in 1981 when the Iranian hostages were released, and I think that also influenced the wearing of various colored ribbons to support this cause or that.
Does anyone even remember the really cheesy song this practice sprang from? Or that the song is about a guy getting out of prison? Does anybody even think about Tony Orlando and Dawn? Whatever happened to them?
I’m not sure I follow you… The yellow ribbon thing got started in 1981, and nobody remembers the song from the 40s that started it?
Cecil wrote a column about it. Search “yellow ribbon” on the main page. It predates Tony Orlando and Dawn by quite a stretch.
Same thing with “Edelweiss” from “Sound of Music”. The characters in the movie say it’s an old folk song, and it sounds like one, and people think it is. But it was written by Rogers and Hammerstein in 1959 for the movie.
The song from She Wore A Yellow Ribbon might have helped inspire the Tony Orlando song, but it didn’t have anything to do with using a yellow ribbon to welcome anyone home.
Actually, Cecil found that it didn’t really. Two Many Cats is basically correct.
…Wait, it’s not from the 40s?
OK, I guess it got me, then.
Not by Anglos it hasn’t. This California Anglo native never even heard of it until I took a Mexican history class, in 1975 or thereabouts. And it wasn’t a marketing scheme until maybe fifteen twenty years ago.
I was a kid and a huge fan of E.T. when it came out, and they had E.T. glasses at Pizza Hut. Going there for the glasses in (in 1982) was the first time that my mother and grandmother had ever had pizza.
Well, the difference between wearing a yellow ribbon to show that a loved one is absent and hanging a yellow ribbon to celebrate their return is a small one, but no matter.
Perhaps it was introduced to most Americans around 1940 (perhaps as the G.I.s returned from Europe with a familiarity with and fondness for pizza). But Frank Pepe was making the Best Pizza in the World in New Haven since 1925, and Lombardi’s in NYC since 1905.
If something that’s been a familiar part of the American cuisine for only the latter half of the 20th Century is a “Johnny-Come-Lately”, what about the hamburger? It’s considered an American classic but Louis’ Lunch only invented it and started serving it, also in New Haven, in 1900. And we can definitively date the green bean casserole to 1955.
In a country as young as this one, all three foods can well be considered classics.
Yes, I meant “popularized” when I said introduced. Cheese and tomato pies are ethnic cuisine and certainly precede even Lombari’s. The St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 popularized the hamburger, the hot dog, peanut butter, iced tea, the club sandwich, cotton candy, the ice cream cone, and other stuff that we take for granted today. They weren’t invented there and if you run across one of the million Internet sites that says they were just roll your eyes, but the power of a cultural dispersal machine like a World’s Fair is immense.
I like the phrase “in living memory.” Nobody alive today remembers a world without hamburgs and ice cream cones. But some of us remember when ethnic restaurants were rare outside of “Little Europes” and “Chinatowns.” I never had Chinese food until I was in college, either. A cuisine first encountered as an adult will always be a new discovery rather than an old tradition, which pretty much by definition is first encountered in childhood.
On ngramspizza doesn’t register until 1940. I’ve seen some research that puts it out around the country prewar, but I’m sure the big boost came later.
Some of that is also just eating out in general. In our quite progressive DC Suburb in the 1970’s we were the rare family who ate out fairly regularly. Even then it was often the grill at the country club because we were all there already and too worn out from sports to cook.
But I had friends in 3rd and 4th grade who ate at restaurants for the first time at one of my birthday parties or sleepovers. Stay-at-home Moms cooked, and families routinely bought more house than they could really afford. Cash-poor was a very common state, and restaurants were seen as a luxury for lazy people.
I dunno about “lazy” but I can vouch for “luxury.” When I was growing up, except when we were on a trip, we rarely ate out – no fast food, no coffee shops, no restaurants, no nuthin’. I remember passing by local restaurants and wondering what they were like on the inside, specifically one called the Black Swan. Went back to the old neighborhood and, of course, it’s gone so I’ll never know.