Today many of us in the United States and Canada will be gathering with friends and family to consume copious amounts of turkey and "give thanks" for those things in life we are grateful for. A vast majority of Thanksgiving Day participants probably know very little about the history of this holiday. Allow me to enlighten you!
In 1620 a group of English Separatists, now commonly referred to as "pilgrims," arrived at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts. The original pilgrims were mostly upper class folks who did not know much about farming or life outside of Mother England.
The winter of 1620 was harsh and it devastated the new colony, wiping out about half of their meager population. Following the death of most of their loved ones, the pilgrims decided that they needed some help. So they established a tenuous relationship with the neighboring Wampanoag tribe.
The Wampanoags spent much of the next year teaching the pilgrims how to survive Massachusetts' harsh winters. They taught the newcomers how to hunt, fish, and farm for food. By the autumn of 1621 the pilgrims had learned a great deal, and the colony had harvested enough food to last them through the winter. As a thank you to the native americans who had helped them with this monumental task, the settlers invited the Wampanoag to a three day feast to celebrate their harvest. Though the original participants certainly did not do so, this feast is now commonly referred to as "The first Thanksgiving."
Shortly after this feast relations with the neighboring Wampanoag began to unravel, and many bloody attacks resulted from the pilgrims' attempt to push their colony outward. By the time the 1700s rolled around the Puritans had settled much of the Northeast and unsurprisingly they held feasts of "Thanksgiving to the Lord" throughout the year. These feasts celebrated everything from a good harvest to a battle won against neighboring "indians." These feasts were religious in nature, in large part due to Puritan society itself in which the sacred and the secular were mixed and melded so that each seemed inextricably connected to the other.
In the fall of 1789, following the rousing defeat of the British at Saratoga, George Washington decreed that Thursday November 26th would be "A day of publick thanksgiving and prayer" to commemorate this particular victory. The nation celebrated the battle that year, but the holiday of Thanksgiving did not become an annual event until much later.
In the mid-nineteenth century America was on the brink of Civil War. A young woman named Sarah Hale became convinced that setting aside a national day to give thanks would help unite the country. She began a campaign of letter writing, contacting politicians all over the United States.
By 1863 Hale's idea had reached Abraham Lincoln. Following the Battle of Gettysberg in the same year, Lincoln instituted that a "Day of Thanksgiving" should be set aside and that this day would occur annually on the last Thursday of November. Lincoln believed that Thanksgiving would serve to unite our country and bring a stop to the Civil War.
It didn't. Yet this holiday is still celebrated annually. In 1924 Macy's threw their first Thanksgiving Day parade, and the tradition has continued ever since. So Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
