Display Case Updates: Thanksgiving 2025

Thanksgiving festivities have just passed and Homecoming—the 

subject of the last display case update—is slipping further away. 

For that reason, a display case update is long overdue. 

While the homecoming display focused on both yearbooks and  

physical school archive artifacts, the Thanksgiving display case, and 

future display cases moving forward, will focus exclusively on yearbooks. 

As can be seen in the picture below, the space that the Blue Devil 

Scholars have for displaying artifacts is divided into two sections. The 

right section is the subject of both the homecoming display case update and 

this update. After some discussion between members, we have decided 

that the left section will be used to display a medley of artifacts—three 

dimensional school artifacts, newspapers, yearbooks, etc.—while the right 

side will be used exclusively to give students a glimpse into the expansive 

collection of yearbooks under our care (around 88 unique books and a 

total of around 450 copies and counting).

With that update on our plan for the display case out of the way, let us 

move onto the topic of this display case update. The original plan was to 

find excerpts from yearbooks featuring Thanksgiving related topics; it soon 

became apparent, however, that our yearbooks have rarely, if ever, explicitly 

focused on Thanksgiving itself. What our scholars found interesting while 

flipping through the pages of these yearbooks was the trend of current events 

pages in books from the 2010s. Since Thanksgiving is a holiday that has 

historical significance so far as the first thanksgiving, we saw it as a decent 

enough match of theme to display some of these yearbook pages with 

interesting happenings of their respective times. 

Before moving on, here is one last look at the 

Homecoming Display Case…

Below are pictured each artifact individually as well as a 

short overview of their contents!

Pictured is the Yearbook from 2012. This current events page is labeled

“Music”. Bruno Mars is labeled “The Rising Star”, Adele turns 21, Whitney

Huston dies at age 48, and Maroon 5 wins an AMA Pop/Rock Favorite

 Band Award. It’s an eventful year for music.

On a more historic note, pictured is the Yearbook from 2009. This current

events page is labeled “Obama Wins”. 2008 was an election year, so that

January election results were confirmed. Obama received 365 electoral 

votes beating out Republican party candidate John McCain. This two page 

spread features images such as celebrations, the presidential oath of being 

sworn into office, select cabinet members, and voting maps. This page was 

selected because of the 2008 election’s unique place in history being the first 

election where a person of color was elected President.

Pictured is the Yearbook from 2011. This current events page is labeled 

“Trends”. This spread really hits on the nostalgia factor with the inclusion 

of Silly Bandz and Vera Bradley bags. Some other featured trends include 

plaid shirts, top slides, sequins, energy drinks, pillow pets, military jackets, 

Cliff Bars, over the knee boots, and more.  

Pictured is the Yearbook from 1996 breaking the trend of early 2000s yearbooks. 

This current events page is labeled "Entertainment News”. Featured is the movie 

Batman Forever, the summer's top grossing film; Pocahontas which garnered an 

audience of over 200,00 in New York’s Central Park; and Toy Story reportedly the 

first ever fully computer-animated film ever released.

Pictured is the Yearbook from 1964. This page is not a current events page at 

all; instead, it is a divider page separating the sports section from the 

advertisements section. This page simply holds aesthetic appeal because of 

the photograph of the clock tower in the square. Not to mention it seemed fitting 

to slip in an older artifact as we are curating a display case for a long ago established 

holiday. 

It goes without mentioning the implications of the Thanksgiving holiday. 

This article focuses more on interesting/nostalgic events during the times of 

various yearbooks. For that reason, the history of Thanksgiving was not 

covered. It is very likely that an article covering that very topic, or its relevance 

to Greencastle, will be published in the near future. For now we would be 

remiss not to mention that the grounds upon which Thanksgiving is laid is one 

of extreme mistreatment of Native Americans. Greencastle itself was once Native 

Land, and for that reason, the injustices of the past pertaining to Natives must be 

acknowledged. We invite you to educate yourself on more of the history regarding 

this topic. Click here for an article that we feel does a good job explaining this topic 

in a relatively simple manner.

Keep a look out for our 2025 Christmas display case update!

Contact rhokappa@gcasd.org with any inquires 

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