Where Did the Participation Trophy Come From?

People talk about participation trophies as if they were a very new thing, and therefore that they shaped a new generation in a new and dangerous way. But that is not true. The participation trophy has been around for generations. It happened because of a whole mix of big, complicated social changes. Industrialization had come to america, and people were starting to leave their agricultural routes and join the urban corps. New technologies started to break america's puritanical culture, which had frowned upon a lot of sports and child's play. This opened the door for a very different philosophy, something called muscular christianity.