On Thanksgiving Day, American Families gather around tables laden with food and give thanks for the blessing of the past year. In kitchens across the continent women bustle about, preparing turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. This American holiday has been celebrated since the Pilgrims first set aside an occasion to thank God for a plentiful harvest.
The pilgrims held the first Thanksgiving festival at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in October, 1621. The bitter winter of 1620, when the ship "Mayflower" had brought them to a new country, was over. They had known hunger, and sickness had carried away half the band of about 100 settlers.
But life was better now. The seeds sown early in 1621 had produced a harvest that allowed them to increase their scanty rations. The settlers were enjoying good health. Work was going ahead on the houses they were building along Town Brook. They walked peacefully and safely in the woods, for they had made friends with the Indians and signed a long-lasting peace treaty with Massasoit, head chief of the Wampanoags.
Because of their good fortune, the Pilgrims decreed a holiday on which all might, "after a more special manner, rejoice together."
Governor Bradford sent four men to shoot waterfowl and wild turkeys. The women worked hard cooking the food. Chief Massasoit was invited to the feast, and he brought with him 90 brightly painted braves--about four times the number of Pilgrim men. Some of Massasoit's men made themselves useful, going into the forest and bagging five deer.
It was a gay open-air festival, held in the field along the north bank of Town Brook. There were games of skill and chance. The Indians entertained with some of their dances. Captain Miles Standish staged a military review of his tiny force. There was target shooting with bows and arrows and firearms.
For 3 days the festivities went on, with the Pilgrims and their guests gorging themselves on venison cooked on a spit over a blazing open fire, roast ducks and geese, clams and other shellfish, smoked eel, groundnuts (a kind of potatolike root) baked in hot ashes, peas, salad greens, herbs, corn pones, and Injun (corn-rye) bread. The pilgrims served wine made from wild grapes.
There were cranberries by the bushel in neighboring bogs. But it is doubtful that the Pilgrims had yet found a tasty way of using them. It is also doubtful that the feast included another tasty invention - pumpkin pie. If such pie was served, it is certain that it was not topped with rich whipped cream, for the Pilgrims had no cows as yet and would not have any for another 3 years.
After the first New England Thanksgiving the custom spread throughout the colonies, but each region chose its own date. In 1789 George Washington, the first president of the United States, proclaimed November 26 a day of Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving day continued to be celebrated in the United States on different days in different states until Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book, decided to do something about it. For more than 30 years she wrote letters to the governors and presidents asking them to make Thanksgiving Day a national holiday.
Finally, in 1863, President Lincoln issued a White House proclamation calling on the "whole American people" wherever they lived to unite "with one heart and one voice" in observing a special day of thanksgiving.
Setting apart the last Thursday of November for the purpose, the President urged prayers in the churches and in the homes to "implore the interposition of the almighty had to heal the wounds of the nations and to restore it...to full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and union." He also states that they express heartfeld thanks for the "blessing of fruitful fields and healthful skies."
In 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt advanced Thanksgiving Day one week. However, since some states used the new date and others the old, it was changed again 2 years later. Thanksgiving Day is now celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November.
The theme of Thanksgiving has always been peace and plenty, health and happiness. To be truly observed, it involves not merely "thanks" but "giving", too. It is a time for special generosity in remembering and helping the less fortunate.
By George F. Willison, Author, Saints and Strangers; Lives of Pilgrim Fathers and Their Families
Noteworth information: ***It has been pointed out that George Washington did this as a "one time only" thing in 1789, and it was to celebrate the new Constitution. It was not an annual event since Washington's successors let it drop completely.
Additional Side Note : ***The reason Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving from the last Thursday of November..was commercialism. He hoped to woo retailers, who complained that they needed more time to "make proper provision for the Christmas Rush." This move of the date outraged a few folks, notable Republicans, who claimed Roosevelt was trampling sacred traditions. For two years, people celebrated Thanksgiving on one of two different days, depending on their political inclinations!
