Thanksgiving: A Tradition Started 390 Years Ago

Everyone has a favorite holiday.  For most it is probably Christmas.  For me, it is Thanksgiving.  I love the fall weather, football in the air, fireplace smoke, family, friends, and the food.  Wow, nothing like a Thanksgiving feast.
 

This preference for Thanksgiving as my favorite holiday started as a very young boy of probably 7 when we would travel from Kansas City to Bartlesville to spend time with Dad's family for the long weekend.  Some of my most fond childhood holiday memories are from that weekend, and the time spent with my Aunt Meda, with Grandma, and with Uncle Hurley.

The story though of Thanksgiving starts with the Pilgrims and the Indians that took place in 1621.  It was a 3-day feast to celebrate the harvest of fall crops.  This 1st Thanksgiving was not a holiday, merely a simple gathering to give thanks to God for His provision in the new land.

Pilgrims sailed to this country aboard the Mayflower, and were originally members of the English Puritan Church.  They had left their homes in England and sailed to The Netherlands to escape religious persecution.  While there, they enjoyed more religious tolerance, but they became disenchanted with the Dutch way of life, thinking it ungodly.

Seeking a better life, the Puritans negotiated with a London company to finance a ‘pilgrimage’ to America.  Most of the ones making the trip aboard the Mayflower were non-Puritans, and were hired to protect the company's interests.  About one-third of the original colonists were Puritans.

The Pilgrims set ground at Plymouth Rock on December 11, 1620.  Their first winter was devastating and 46 of the original 102 who sailed on the Mayflower had died in this new land, either by starvation or disease.

The harvest of 1621 was bountiful and the remaining colonists decided to celebrate with a feast; including 91 Indians who had helped the Pilgrims survive their first year.  It is believed that the Pilgrims would not have made it through the year without the help of the Indians.

The feast was more of a traditional English harvest.  Gov. Bradford sent our four men to hunt for wild ducks, geese, wild turkey, and deer.  At the time, the word "turkey" meant any type wild fowl. 

A staple at almost every Thanksgiving is pumpkin pie (I don't like it though ~ never have).  It is unlikely though that the first feast included pumpkin.  The supply of flour had been long diminished, so there was no bread or pastry of any kind.  However, they did eat boiled pumpkin, that produced a type of Indian fry bread from their corn crop.  

There was no milk, cider, potatoes, or butter.  There were no cows for dairy products, and the newly discovered potato was still considered by many Europeans to be poisonous.  The feast also included fish, berries, watercress, lobster, dried fruit, clams, and plums.

This Thanksgiving feast was not repeated the following year.  Many years passed before the event was repeated.  It wasn't until June of 1676 that another Day of thanksgiving was proclaimed.  On June 20 of that year the governing council of Charlestown, Massachusetts, held a meeting to determine how best to express thanks for the good fortune that had seen their community securely established.  By unanimous vote they proclaimed June 29 as a day of thanksgiving.  

It is notable that this thanksgiving celebration did not include Indians, as the celebration was meant to be in recognition of the colonists' recent war victory over the Indians.  By then, it had become apparent to the settlers that the Indians were a hindrance to their quest for more land, so the goodwill they shared at the first feast 55 years earlier had long been lost.

A hundred years later, in October of 1777, all 13 colonies joined in a thanksgiving celebration.  It also commemorated the victory in war over the British at Saratoga.  But it too was a one-time celebration.

George Washington proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1789, although some were opposed to it.  There was discord among the colonies, many feeling the hardships of a few pilgrims did not warrant a national holiday.  And later, President Thomas Jefferson opposed the idea of having a day of thanksgiving at all.

History notes that it was Sarah Hale’s efforts that eventually led to what we recognize as Thanksgiving.  Hale wrote many editorials in her two magazines; Boston Ladies, and Godly Ladies.  Finally, after a 40-year campaign of writing editorials and letters to governors and presidents, Hale's dream became a reality in 1863, when President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a national day of Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving has been proclaimed by every president since Lincoln.  The date was changed a couple of times, most recently by Franklin Roosevelt, who set it up one week to the next-to-last Thursday in order to create a longer Christmas shopping season.  Public uproar against this decision caused the president to move Thanksgiving back to its original date two years later (which certainly wouldn’t happen today since Christmas season officially starts now on Nov. 1^st).  

Finally, in 1941, Thanksgiving was sanctioned by Congress as a legal holiday, as the fourth Thursday in November, and nothing has changed in the last 70 years; though Thanksgiving itself is still best known started as a tradition 390 years ago.  Happy Thanksgiving!