HISTORY65 - Thanksgiving

With the holidays approaching, I realized that I didn’t know all that much about the origin and history of the season’s principal holidays - Thanksgiving and Christmas.  So, this article will cover the history of Thanksgiving, and the next article, the history of Christmas. 

After a short introduction, I will cover the history of celebrations to give thanks - from ancient times to the initial colonization of America.  Next, I’ll cover the birth and evolution of America’s Thanksgiving holiday.  Then I’ll discuss some of the lingering criticisms and controversies of Thanksgiving, and will conclude with a few interesting facts about our modern Thanksgiving.

My principal resources include “Thanksgiving (United States), Wikipedia; “Thanksgiving 2022,” history.com; “Thanksgiving Day,” britannica.com; “The Invention of Thanksgiving,” newyorker.com; “The True, Dark History Behind Thanksgiving,” goodhousekeeping.com; “Thanksgiving in America:  the Spanish, the Pilgrims, and the Presidents; electioncollege.com; “The Lesser-Known History of Thanksgiving in America,” fee.org; “35 Fun Thanksgiving Trivial Facts,” goodhousekeeping.com; “Thanksgiving Data [2022],” financebuzz.com; and numerous other online sources.

Introduction

Thanksgiving is an annual American national holiday, celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November.   It originated as days of thanks for a bountiful harvest; the theme of the modern holiday revolves around giving thanks for our blessings of the past year - the centerpiece of Thanksgiving celebrations being an elaborate Thanksgiving dinner.  Other Thanksgiving customs include charitable organizations offering Thanksgiving dinner for the poor, attending religious services, gathering of family and friends, watching parades, and viewing football games.  Thanksgiving is regarded as the beginning of the fall-winter holiday season, which includes Christmas and the New Year.

The popularly-accepted first Thanksgiving observance in America is the October 1621 celebration, at Plymouth Colony, the first permanent English colony in New England, where English Separatist settlers (called Pilgrims) who were passengers on the Mayflower, held a harvest feast after their first successful growing season.

Early Celebrations to Give Thanks

Although the American popular concept of Thanksgiving developed in New England, its roots can be traced back to the other side of the Atlantic.  Both the Separatists who came to the New World on the Mayflower and the Puritans who arrived soon after, brought with them a tradition of providential holidays - days of fasting during difficult or pivotal moments, and days of feasting and celebration to thank God in times of plenty.

Moreover, as an annual celebration of the harvest and its bounty, these celebrations fall under a category of festivals that spans cultures, continents, and millennia.  In ancient times, the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans feasted and paid tribute to their gods after the fall harvest.  Celebrations to give thanks also bear a resemblance to the ancient Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot.  Finally, historians have noted that Native Americans had a rich tradition of commemorating the fall harvest with feasting and merrymaking, long before Europeans set foot on America's shores.

In addition, historians have recorded ceremonies of thanks among European settlers in America that predate the Pilgrims’ celebration.

In 1565, for instance, the Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilé invited members of the local Timucua tribe to a dinner in St. Augustine, Florida, after holding a mass to thank God for his crew’s safe arrival. 

In 1598, another Spanish Explorer, Juan de Onate, held a festival in San Elizario, Texas to give thanks for safely crossing over 350 miles of Mexican desert.

And on December 4, 1619, when 38 British settlers reached a site known as Berkeley Hundred on the banks of Virginia’s James River, they read a proclamation designating the date as “a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”  The settlement’s charter called for the celebration to be held annually.

Note:  The 1619 codification and celebration of an annual event of thanks, according to the Berkeley Hundred charter in Virginia, prompted President John F. Kennedy to acknowledge the claims of both Massachusetts and Virginia to America's earliest Thanksgiving celebration.   He issued Proclamation 3560 on November 5, 1963, saying: "Over three centuries ago, our forefathers in Virginia and in Massachusetts, far from home in a lonely wilderness, set aside a time of thanksgiving.  On the appointed day, they gave reverent thanks for their safety, for the health of their children, for the fertility of their fields, for the love which bound them together, and for the faith which united them with their God.”

First Thanksgiving at Plymouth Colony

In the fall of 1621, after the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast.  (The exact date of the harvest feast is not known, but thought to be between September 21 and November 11.)

The celebrants included 50 Pilgrims who were on the Mayflower (all who remained of the 100 who had landed) and 90 of the fledgling colony’s Native Americans allies, the Wampanoag, including their chief Massasoit.  

The attendance of the Wampanoag has been variously described as “by invitation,” and a “surprise appearance,” in reaction to gunfire from celebrating colonists.  Nevertheless, the two groups socialized together amicably.

As later recorded by a participating colonist, Plymouth’s Thanksgiving began with a few colonists going out “fowling,” possibly for turkeys, but more probably for the easier prey of geese and ducks.

The Wampanoag contributed venison to the feast, which included the fowl and probably local dishes including the newly harvested corn, fish, eels, shellfish, and a Wampanoag dish called nasaump, which the Pilgrims had adopted: boiled cornmeal mixed with vegetables and meats.  There were no potatoes (an indigenous South American food not yet introduced into the global food system) and no pies (because there was no butter, wheat flour, or sugar).

Historians have suggested that many of the dishes were likely prepared using traditional Native American spices and cooking methods.  

Since Plymouth had few buildings and manufactured goods, most people ate outside while sitting on the ground or on barrels with plates on their laps.  The men fired guns and ran races. 

Now remembered as America’s “first Thanksgiving” - although the Pilgrims themselves may not have used the term at the time - the harvest festival lasted for three days.

The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth Colony, oil on canvas, by Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, 1914.

 

The First Thanksgiving and Native Americans

The peaceful harvest festival that brought the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag together at the “first Thanksgiving” wasn't as lasting as is popularly reported. 

Wampanoag leader, Massasoit, first negotiated a treaty between the Plymouth settlers and the Wampanoag tribe in 1620, which included an agreement that no one from either group would harm anyone from the other.  They also agreed to leave their weapons at home when trading, to further ensure peaceful commerce.  For about 10 years, Massasoit and the Pilgrims remained allies, trading English goods for Wampanoag land, access to natural resources, and other assets.

In the years between 1630 - 1642, about 25,000 European colonizers arrived in New England, while a devastating plague cut the Native population by more than half.  (Native Americans had little resistance to European diseases like bubonic plague, measles, smallpox, mumps, chickenpox, influenza, cholera, diphtheria, typhus, malaria, leprosy, and yellow fever.)

The Wampanoag feared that they would lose more land to their new neighbors, and put together a coalition of Native tribes to protect themselves and their resources.  By the fall of 1675, in reaction to depredations by the English colonists, the Native coalition members began to clash with settlers, attacking settlements in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

What became known as King Philip’s War (1675 - 1676) ensued, so named after the Native leader’s English moniker.  The subsequent conflicts decimated both the Native tribes and the colonies.  Natives abducted settlers and held them in ransom, and colonial militia pillaged and destroyed Native villages.  Much of the colonies were burned and looted, taking decades to fully recover.

An article in The Historical Journal of Massachusetts says the war could have claimed as many as 30% of the English population and half of the Native Americans then living in New England.  It ended when the Native leader was killed.

That wasn’t the last, or only, conflict between Native peoples and the colonizers.  Other wars raged in Virginia, Connecticut, New York and elsewhere, and the Native American population has never really recovered.  For the thriving societies that were already living in what's now the United States when the Europeans arrived, the settlers’ arrival wasn’t the beginning of a new world, but the end of one.

The Early Republic

More than a century and a half after the “first Thanksgiving” at Plymouth Colony, in 1789, president George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation by the national government of the new United States of America; he called upon Americans to express their gratitude for the happy conclusion to the country’s war of independence and the successful ratification of the U.S. Constitution. This Thanksgiving was not, however, established as a federal holiday; Washington issued the proclamation to the state governors asking them to observe Thanksgiving in their states.

George Washington’s 1789 Proclamation for Thanksgiving.

 

Washington’s presidential successors, John Adams and James Madison, also designated Thanksgiving days during their presidencies.

After 1798, the new U.S. Congress left Thanksgiving declarations to the states.   In 1817, New York became the first of several states to officially adopt an annual Thanksgiving holiday; each celebrated it on a different day.  Some states objected to the national government’s involvement in a religious observance, Southerners were slow to adopt a New England custom, and others took offense over the day’s being used to hold partisan speeches and parades.  A national Thanksgiving Day seemed more like a lightning rod for controversy than a unifying force.

Road to a National Holiday

Pilgrim Edward Winslow, who participated in the original Plymouth Colony harvest feast with Native Americans, took his account to London, where it was published in 1622.

Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of the popular magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book, and best known for writing “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” learned about Winslow’s account of the 1621 feast, and was inspired to action.

Starting in 1846, while sectional tensions prevailed in the mid-19th century, Hale campaigned for a national Thanksgiving Day to promote unity.  Hale hoped that Thanksgiving, as a national holiday, would foster the “moral and social reunion of Americans.” 

Hale campaigned for 17 years to get Thanksgiving to be a national holiday.  She lobbied congressmen, wrote letters every year to every governor in the U.S., and sent regular mail to presidents trying to get Thanksgiving to be a federal holiday - as well as popularizing Thanksgiving in her books and editorials.  Her efforts spanned five presidencies.

Sarah Josepha Hale (1788-1879) earned her nickname the “Mother of Thanksgiving.”

 

By 1860, proclamations appointing a day of thanksgiving were issued by the governors of 30 states (of 33 states at the time) and three territories.

On October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln, at the height of the Civil War, declared the last Thursday of November that year to be a national holiday for Thanksgiving.  (Until 1863, the only Federal holidays were Independence Day and Washington’s Birthday - so, to add another national holiday was a big deal!)  In his proclamation, Lincoln entreated all Americans to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.” 

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that the last Thursday of November should be a national Thanksgiving holiday.

 

A Permanent Day for Thanksgiving

Abraham Lincoln's presidential successors followed his example of annually declaring the final Thursday in November to be Thanksgiving.  

But in 1939, breaking with tradition, with five Thursdays in November, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving one week earlier than normal, believing that doing so would help bolster retail sales (for Christmas) during one of the final years of the Great Depression.  (His action meant that Thanksgiving would be celebrated on the third Thursday of November in years in which November had four Thursdays.)

This led to much upheaval and passionate protest, causing some to deride the holiday as “Franksgiving.”   Overall, Americans opposed the change in date 62% to 38%.

Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia recognized FDR’s dates, while 22 states observed the traditional date on the last Thursday of November.  Colorado, Mississippi, and Texas celebrated both weeks.

In 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving one week earlier to spur retail sales at the end of the Great Depression.

 

The U.S. Congress then got into the act, trying to avoid confusion on the matter of four or five Thursdays in a given November.  On December 26, 1941, President Roosevelt signed a Congressional bill, for the first time making the date of Thanksgiving a matter of federal law, and fixing the day as the fourth Thursday of November, where it remains today.

For several years, some states continued to observe the last-Thursday date in years with five November Thursdays (the next such year being 1944), with Texas doing so as late as 1956.  

Since being fixed on the fourth Thursday in November by law in 1941, the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States can occur on any date from November 22 to 28. 

Because Thanksgiving is a federal holiday, all United States government offices are closed and all employees are paid for that day. It is also a holiday for the New York Stock Exchange and most other financial markets and financial services companies.

 The Changing Nature of Thanksgiving

After the Civil War, our mostly religious Thanksgiving celebration evolved to include a special feast, with themes of faith, family and friends’ togetherness, and sharing - absorbing and expanding the holiday’s popular narrative around the 1621 harmonious Pilgrim-Wampanoag harvest feast.  The traditional fare of the modern Thanksgiving meal typically includes turkey, bread stuffing, potatoes, cranberries, and pumpkin pie.  With respect to vehicular travel, the holiday is often the busiest of the year, as family members gather with one another.

In 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving one week earlier to spur retail sales at the end of the Great Depression.

Thanksgiving Day football games, beginning with Yale versus Princeton in 1876, enabled fans to add some rowdiness to the holiday.  In the late 1800s, parades of costumed revelers became common.  In 1920, Gimbel’s department store in Philadelphia staged a parade of about 50 people with Santa Claus at the rear of the procession.  Since 1924, the annual Macy’s parade in New York City has continued the tradition, with huge balloons since 1927. 

Since the 1940s, the National Turkey Federation has presented the United States presidents a live domestic turkey.  On occasion, the President has decided to spare the bird.  The pardoning of the turkey became an annual tradition in 1989 with President George H. W. Bush.

President George H. W. Bush pardoning a turkey in 1989.

Criticism and Controversy

Some Native Americans and many others take issue with how the Thanksgiving story is presented to the American public, and especially to schoolchildren. In their view, the traditional narrative paints a deceptively sunny portrait of relations between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people, masking the long and bloody history of conflict between Native Americans and European settlers that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands.

Since 1970, protesters have gathered on the day designated as Thanksgiving at the top of Cole’s Hill, which overlooks Plymouth Rock, to commemorate a “National Day of Mourning.”  Similar events are held in other parts of the country.

Participants in the National Day of Mourning honor Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today.  It’s a day of remembrance, spiritual connection, and protest against the racism and oppression that Native Americans have suffered and continue to experience today.

Interesting Facts about Thanksgiving

Here are 11 interesting facts about Thanksgiving that you might not be aware of:

1.   Thomas Jefferson refused to declare Thanksgiving a holiday.  Presidents originally had to declare Thanksgiving a holiday every year, up until Lincoln made it a national holiday during his tenure.  However, Jefferson refused to recognize the event, because he believed so firmly in the separation of church and state.  Since Thanksgiving involved prayer and reflection, he thought designating it a national holiday would violate the First Amendment.  He also thought it was better suited as a state holiday, not a federal one.

2.   Americans eat 704 million pounds of turkey every Thanksgiving.  According to the National Turkey Federation, around 44 million turkeys were served at Thanksgiving in the United States in 2017.  The average weight of each was 16 pounds.

3.   Turkeys are (kind of) named after the country.  The turkey (bird) does not really hail from the country Turkey.  During the reign of the Ottoman Empire, a bird called the guinea fowl - which bears a striking resemblance to the American turkey - was imported to Europe from its native North Africa.  Because the birds came from Turkish lands, Europeans called them the turkey-cock and turkey-hen. When settlers in the Americas began sending similar-looking birds back to Europe, the name had already stuck.

4.   How much pumpkin pie do Americans eat every Thanksgiving?  Answer: An estimated 50 million pumpkin pies are devoured every November.  Some of us consider pumpkin pie a vehicle for whipped topping and could take it or leave it. If you'd also rather leave your pumpkins for Halloween and dig into another Thanksgiving dessert, you're not alone. According to The American Pie Council, more Americans prefer apple pie overall - pumpkin pie only comes in second place.

5.  80 million pounds of cranberries are purchased at Thanksgiving. This represents 20% of all cranberries sold in the U.S. each year. These 40 tons of cranberries are in canned jellied form, with 5 million gallons of cranberry sauce purchased for Thanksgiving tables.  The rest of the year, cranberries are primarily consumed in the U.S. as processed juice.

6.  According to Americans, what's the best part of Thanksgiving?  Answer: The leftovers.  Most Americans prefer Thanksgiving leftovers to the actual meal.  Almost eight in 10 Americans agree that the second helpings of stuffing, mashed potatoes and of course pie beat out the big dinner itself, according to a 2015 Harris Poll. 

7.   First TV dinner was Thanksgiving leftovers.   In 1953, someone at Swanson severely overestimated the amount of turkey Americans would consume that Thanksgiving.  With 260 tons of frozen birds to get rid of, a company salesman named Gerry Thomas’ ordered 5,000 aluminum trays, recruited an assembly line of women armed with spatulas and ice-cream scoops, and began creating mini-feasts of turkey, corn-bread dressing, peas, and sweet potatoes - creating the first-ever TV dinner.  Thomas later said he got the idea from neatly packaged airplane food.

8.   The Detroit Lions always play on Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving is ruled by two very powerful words: "food" and "football."  1934 marked the first NFL game held on Thanksgiving when the Detroit Lions took on the Chicago Bears. The Lions have played on Thanksgiving ever since – except when some team members were called away to serve during World War II.

9. Thanksgiving is not just an American holiday.  Even some European countries celebrate Thanksgiving. The best example is Germany, which celebrates Erntedankfest ('harvest thanks festival') on the first Sunday of October.  Similar celebrations take place all around the world -from Canada to Japan, and even Liberia.

10. "Jingle Bells" was originally a Thanksgiving Day song.  Before becoming a Christmas anthem, "Jingle Bells" was an 1857 song titled "One Horse Open Sleigh," and its composer, James Pierpont, intended it to be a Thanksgiving Day song.  But it became so popular around December 25, that in 1859 the title was changed to "Jingle Bells" and the rest is history!

11.   Thanksgiving is the most popular holiday in the United States.   According to a survey conducted in the third quarter of 2021, Thanksgiving had a popularity rating of 81 percent, followed by Christmas with 77 percent.  The spirit of Thanksgiving is one of family, friends, love, inclusiveness, being grateful and, last but not least, fabulous food. The holiday is a favorite for so many people because it isn't focused on presents or extravagant decorations - it's about sitting down for a delicious meal, surrounded by friends and family.  Thanksgiving is certainly my and Pat’s favorite holiday!

I’ll conclude with this heartfelt salutation.