The tendency of Victorian families to scatter across the country made holiday reunions important. Grown children might be living on prairie homesteads, in eastern cities or in Midwestern towns.

Railroads made it possible for families to travel long distances to be together on Thanksgiving. Thousands of travelers jammed the railroad stations on Thanksgiving Eve, while extra trains were added to the schedules and extra cars to every train.

Steamboats that plied the inland waterways and steamships that carried passengers between seaport towns were full of travelers heading homeward in the pampered luxury of these "floating palaces."

Many families augmented the pleasure they took in being together for Thanksgiving dinner by inviting guests. Visitors to a city, elderly people without families of their own, students and young working people unable to return home for Thanksgiving were among the more popular invitees.

After dinner, while the elders talked or napped, the young folk enjoyed some of the popular parlor games of the era. Charades was always a favorite, but there were also card games, chess, checkers, blind-man's buff and many others. Without benefit of television, radio or even a victola, families devised their own entertainment. Albums and scrapbooks were brought out for guests to admire. Those talented in the fashionable art of elocution might recite a piece of memorized poetry or Declaim some dramatic bit of prose, but music was the most popular form of entertainment.

Every young lady could play the piano, or, if she could not, she had probably wasted years of her life attempting to learn. By evening, family and guests were sure to gather around the piano and ask one of the young women to play. Singing might begin with solos or duets that the young ladies, in expectation of being asked to perform, had practiced ahead of time; and the whole group would soon join in singing popular tunes and old favorites.

Although this peaceful, family Thanksgiving remained the American ideal, it slowly began to change. Playing charades, for example, lost its appeal in cities where holiday merrymakers could attend the theater. Thanksgiving matinees soon achieved such popularity that they became a Thanksgiving tradition. Every large town had its theater or opera house visited by touring players, singers and musicians.

Even more popular than the Thanksgiving matinee was the Thanksgiving ball. Debutantes danced in mansion ballrooms and country girls danced in farmhouse parlors. The Elks had a ball, as did the German Barber's and Hairdresser's Association, the Independent Grocer's Guard, the Masons, the Knights of Macabee and the Steuben Rifle Society.

Banquets replete with pretentious ritual were dear to Victorian hearts and they indulged their love of public display by sponsoring elaborate Thanksgiving feasts for objects of charity. Thanksgiving dinners were given at prisons, hospitals, orphanages, settlement houses and insane asylums amidst great self-congratulation over the fact that on this day no one went hungry.

Prisoners at Sing-Sing prison in New York were regaled with turkey and mince pie and then presented with two cigars each. Inmates of Massachusetts prisons could hope for something even nicer, for governors of the commonwealth traditionally chose Thanksgiving Day to pardon prisoners.

Inmates of public institutions were provided with holiday dinners at public expense, but serving Thanksgiving dinner to poor people at private missions, settlement houses, schools and hospitals was a fashionable form of philanthropy. One year, the ladies of each Episcopal parish in New York undertook to sponsor Thanksgiving dinner for 100 settlement house waifs with food they prepared and served themselves; and Mrs. Grover Cleveland "played the part of waitress to perfection" for the benefit of young charges of the New York Kindergarten Association. The poor often ate their dinners in front of an audience of complacent benefactors, and in many institutions, Thanksgiving Day was the occasion for formal programs in which charity students performed for the institutions' donors.

In 1895, 750 young pupils at New York's Five Points Mission put on a Thanksgiving recital that featured rhythmic calisthenics--the boys waving dumbbells and girls wands tipped with red, white and blue ribbons. The children sang in chorus, solos and duets, then some of the smallest children stood to recite mottoes. Among the more memorable: "Wine is a mocker and strong drink is raging." Following this performance the children filed upstairs to a dinner served from tables marked with the names of each donor.

Self-congratulatory displays were the incentive and prerogative of the philanthropist, but one Chicago department store surely overstepped the bounds of good taste with its 1884 Thanksgiving dinner. Inspired by competition with a rival store across the street, which set wax mannequins in the window arrayed to represent "Thanksgiving Dinner at the White House," the store in question filled its windows with dining tables laden with good food. Street urchins were then invited to come and eat the food--a spectacle that, brilliantly lit up, attracted an audience of hundreds. All charitable enterprise on Thanksgiving Day was approved by the world of fashion, but it was more fashionable than adults and, among children, the most fashionable objects of charity were newsboys. Newsboys were singled out by society because they were perceived to be poor but enterprising, in true Horatio Alger style. In Buffalo, former President Millard Fillmore presided over the newsboys' Thanksgiving banquet. Owners of the Cleveland, Ohio, Leader invited their newsboys to dine at the Bethel restaurant. But in New York City, only the reigning queens of society, Mrs. John Jacob Astor and Mrs. William Waldorf Astor were privileged to donate the annual Thanksgiving dinner at the Newsboys' Lodging House. Not to be outdone, Mrs. Frederick W. Vanderbilt invited the newsboys of the summer resort of Newport, Rhode Island, to dinner.

Charity banquets reflected the affluence of upper-class Americans who could afford to provide ample feasts for the poor as a grand holiday gesture. Traditionally, families had filled baskets with their leftovers to carry to poor neighbors after the feast, and this custom was still widely practiced. In Cleveland, in the 1870s, orphans living in city institutions celebrated Thanksgiving a day late, "so that the crumbs swept up from the bountifully laden tables can fall to the lot of those hungry little ones."

In the Victorian era, Thanksgiving completed its transition from a regional holiday to a national one. From coast to coast, Americans dined on turkey and pumpkin pie, made charitable gifts and enjoyed family reunions.