Mission
Freedom's Feast helps families to 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.
Citizenship begins at home. Freedom’s Feast provides easy to use, short, fun ceremonies and activities for six major American holidays. We help parents and grandparents to turn holiday time off into memorable time on for the whole family. Most importantly, making these memories can be a joyful adventure for everyone!
Freedom's Feast Background
Overview
Freedom's Feast is the combined vision of a noted philanthropist and author, leading scholars, educators, designers, and a host of "pioneer" participants who helped create the civic on-line experience that exists today. It began as a flexible Thanksgiving ceremony first published in November, 2001 and distributed to over 4800 families. Today, Freedom's Feast, in addition to the original, signature Thanksgiving ceremony, is a series of ten-minute on-line ceremonies and enrichment exercises designed to help families get the most out of their American holiday celebrations.
History from 1991 to 2010
During the Gulf War of 1991, friends Lawrence Neinstein, MD, and Dr. Ron Wolfson saw the need to add greater substance to the outpouring of patriotism surrounding the war effort. Larry and Ron began to consider how Thanksgiving could give families a way to celebrate our country's history and principles.
A decade later, the tragic events of September 11, 2001 gave new urgency to the concept of gathering together and giving thanks for America's freedoms. With the help of Ron's friend, philanthropist and author Lee Meyerhoff Hendler, Freedom's Feast began to take shape.
Lee and others believed that the ceremony should spring from America's foundational texts: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They also agreed that it should be engaging and fun, with opportunities for sharing, singing and learning together. The result, first published in November, 2001, is a customizable experience relevant to all families regardless of political party, ethnic background or religious beliefs.
Comprised of entertaining facts, informative readings, and timeless songs, this highly engaging program is free, takes as little as 10 minutes, and can be downloaded at www.freedomsfeast.us.
Freedom's Feast has quickly become a Thanksgiving tradition for thousands of families, as well as for civic and religious groups and schools who have made the program their own. Inspired by the program, families now use the holiday as an occasion to tell the story of America, as well as their own American stories.
Over the years, Freedom's Feast has been privileged to work with many talented institutional partners: The Center of the Study of Democracy at St. Mary's College in Maryland, the National Constitution Center and the National Association of Parenting Publications of America.
In November 2008, Freedom's Feast partnered with The Children's Museum of Manhattan (CMOM) for CMOM's annual Thanksgiving programming. The experience inspired CMOM to launch "Dear President Obama," a children's letter writing campaign to the President on the occasion of his inauguration. Family enthusiasm for engagement around moments in the American calendar was so compelling that CMOM and Freedom's Feast decided to expand the partnership to an entire year of holiday programming (beginning with July 4, 2009 and ending with Memorial Day 2010) with Thanksgiving as the cornerstone event. Freedom's Feast is now a series of fun, meaningful on-line ceremonies and exercises to help families get the most out of their American holiday celebrations. The new partnership initiative with CMOM is called "Raising Citizens."
Bios
Lee's Bio: Founder, Project Director, Principal Writer
Larry's Bio: Founder, Executive Editor, Contributing Writer
Lawrence Neinstein, MD, FACP, is a professor of pediatrics and medicine at the USC Keck School of Medicine. A member of the USC faculty since 1979, he is also the executive director of the USC University Park Health Center and senior associate dean of student affairs. Dr. Neinstein received the Society of Adolescent Medicine Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007. He has been author and senior editor of five editions of Adolescent Health Care, A Practical Guide and also developed an online adolescent health curriculum that is accessed annually by almost 250,000 individuals worldwide.
Ron's Bio: Founder, Executive Editor, Contributing Writer
Dr. Ron Wolfson is the Fingerhut Professor of Education at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, author of God's To-Do List and The Seven Questions You're Asked in Heaven (Jewish Lights Publishing), and President of Synagogue 3000, a catalyst for excellence in congregational life.
Dedication
Freedom's Feast: on-line ceremonies to get the most out of your American holiday celebrations was funded in memory of Lyn P. Meyerhoff -- patriot, passionate activist and devoted public servant. She taught her children a deep love of our nation, a commitment to our rule of law, and a life-long appreciation for the liberty we have to improve life on earth.
Lyn P. Meyerhoff Fund Baltimore, MD
Acknowledgements
2001
We give special thanks to Dr. Arthur Abramson, Reverend Bill Baxter, Taylor Branch, Bob Carter, Sid Chernick, Dr. Stephen David, Rabbi David Fohrman, Professor Ben Ginsberg, Lisa Goldberg, Dr. David Jackson, Robert Hieronimus, Zoh Hieronimus, Judy Meltzer, Joseph Meyerhoff II, John Roemer, Terry M. Rubenstein and Rabbi Joel H. Zaiman for their invaluable support and encouragement with our initial 2001 pilot edition called We the People Give Thanks. Special thanks goes to Lou Barak, Larry Neinstein's uncle-in-law and high school government teacher who gave him the original inspiration for the project.
2002
We thank John Cooke and Stuart King for their guidance and input on the 2002 edition as we went on line for the first time. We thank Rabbi Jack Moline who shared with us his Interfaith adaptation and allowed us to put it on-line. Appreciation as well to Dr. Chris Nelson, President of St. John's College, who shared his creative adaptation comprised almost completely of We the People Give Thanks margin notes and used at his annual Thanksgiving dinner for students who remained on campus for the holiday.
2003
We are grateful to Zach Messite, Director of the Center of the Study of Democracy at St. Mary's College in Maryland and Anne Fickling Brainard, Assistant Director of the Center for Civic Education for their generous assistance with the third edition as we changed our name to Freedom's Feast. We thanks St. Mary's middle school teacher, Tammy Payne, at Leonardtown Middle School for her enthusiastic embrace of Freedom's Feast as a new way to engage students and their families in learning about Thanksgiving.
2004
We remain indebted to Stuart King for his continued wise counsel and enthusiasm and thank Dana Devon of the National Constitution Center and Sally Bishop of the Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia for their energetic involvement.
2006
We acknowledge with deep gratitude Craig Taubman's untiring efforts to create new marketing opportunities and enable a sponsoring partnership with NAPPA (National Association of Parenting Publications of America) in 2006.
2007
We are grateful to the talented marketing team at Louder than Words for their advocacy on behalf of Freedom's Feast.
2008
We thank the Children's Museum of Manhattan (CMOM) for choosing Freedom's Feast as their featured Thanksgiving Program. It was a privilege to work with such committed, creative educators and administrators. Many thanks to Mark Perlman for making the initial introduction.
We thank Rabbi Ron Shulman, Cantor Manny Perlman and T. Herbert Dimmock, Choir master of Chizuk Amuno Congregation and Pastor John Sabotelli of Christ Lutheran Church for helping to write and pilot a new version of the Freedom's Feast interfaith service.
2009-2010
Thank you to Dr. Chris Nelson, President of St. John's College, who has been using his own custom version of the Thanksgiving Freedom's Feast featured on the website since 2001. His Freedom's Feast celebration has become such a popular institution on campus, he reports that he may use a lottery for invitations this fall.
Appreciation to the clergy of Chizuk Amuno and Christ Lutheran Church for sponsoring a second annual Baltimore Interfaith Freedom's Feast Thanksgiving celebration.
Freedom's Feast thanks CMOM for their unboundingtireless energy and commitment to our Raising Citizens year-long partnership. Special gratitude to Andrew Ackerman, Executive Director of CMOM, for his vision and to Rita London, Director of Public Programming for her inspiration and joyful attention to detail.
Illustration and Design Acknowledgments:
We are especially grateful to Ellen Kahan Zager, our graphic designer since the beginning, for her talent, commitment, and tireless dedication to this project. www.ekzcreative.com
The illustrations featured from 2002-2008 were generously loaned to Freedom's Feast by Kit Hinrichs of Pentagram Design, San Francisco. The images of Mr. Hinrichs extensive collection of flag memorabilia came from Mr. Hinrichs's book, Long May She Wave: A Graphic History of the American Flag available through Amazon.com.
We thank our talented illustrator, Christine Marie Larsen, for the joyful and engaging images that we believe capture the spirit of playful discovery we hope to inspire. To see more of Christine's work, please visit her website at http://christinelarsen.com
And speaking of websites, we thank Will Davis of Right Source Marketing for his caring, patient and skillful web management of this project since 2006. http://www.rightsourcemarketing.com
