The Origins of Thanksgiving

Introduction

[[thanksgiving]] is arguably the most distinctively American of all national holidays — a celebration of harvest, community, and gratitude that Americans regard as foundational to their national identity. Yet the holiday's history is far more complicated than the familiar schoolroom story of Pilgrims and Native Americans sharing a feast. It involves competing historical claims, a 19th-century campaign by a magazine editor, a civil war proclamation, and a native perspective that remembers the same period as the beginning of catastrophe.

Harvest Festivals: A Universal Human Tradition

Before examining the specifically American story, it is worth noting that giving thanks after the harvest is among the most universal of human cultural practices. Ancient Egyptians celebrated a harvest festival to the god Min; the Greeks held Thesmophoria; Romans observed Cerelia; the Chinese celebrate the Moon Festival; the Jewish [[sukkot]] (Feast of Tabernacles) is explicitly a harvest feast. The English settlers who came to North America brought with them a Protestant tradition of declaring 'days of thanksgiving' — special prayer days proclaimed by magistrates after providential events such as military victories, recoveries from drought, or safe arrivals.

The 1621 Feast: What Actually Happened

In the autumn of 1621, the English colonists of Plymouth, Massachusetts (later called 'Pilgrims'), held a three-day harvest celebration with members of the Wampanoag Nation. The feast is documented in two primary sources: a letter by Pilgrim colonist Edward Winslow and William Bradford's history Of Plymouth Plantation. Winslow wrote that Governor Bradford sent men out 'fowling' (hunting wild birds) and that the Wampanoag leader Massasoit arrived with ninety men. The Wampanoag contributed five deer to the feast. The menu likely included wildfowl, venison, fish, corn, beans, and squash — not turkey, cranberry sauce, or pumpkin pie, which became associated with the holiday much later. Critically, this was not called 'Thanksgiving' at the time. It was a harvest feast in the English tradition, not a formal thanksgiving proclamation. Relations between the colonists and the Wampanoag would deteriorate sharply within decades, culminating in King Philip's War (1675–76), one of the deadliest per-capita conflicts in American history.

Competing Claims

Plymouth is not the only claimant to 'first Thanksgiving.' The Virginia colonists at Berkeley Hundred held a day of thanksgiving on 4 December 1619, predating Plymouth by two years. Spanish explorers in Florida held Catholic masses of thanksgiving as early as 1565. Texas claims a 1598 celebration. The 'first Thanksgiving' designation is largely a product of New England cultural dominance in 19th-century American historical memory.

Sarah Josepha Hale and the Campaign for a National Holiday

Throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries, American thanksgiving was regional and irregular — New England observed it more consistently than the South, and dates varied by state. The person most responsible for making Thanksgiving a national fixed holiday was Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book, the most influential American magazine of the 19th century. Hale campaigned for a national Thanksgiving holiday for seventeen years, writing letters to five presidents and thousands of editorials. She believed a shared national holiday would strengthen American unity. It was President Abraham Lincoln who finally acted on her campaign.

Lincoln's Proclamation of 1863

In the midst of the Civil War, with the Union suffering enormous casualties, Lincoln issued a presidential proclamation on 3 October 1863 designating the last Thursday of November as a national day of Thanksgiving and Praise. Lincoln's Thanksgiving was explicitly framed as gratitude for divine favour during the war and as an appeal for healing of the national wound. The holiday continued on the last Thursday of November until 1939, when President Franklin Roosevelt moved it to the third Thursday to extend the Christmas shopping season. The change caused public uproar ('Franksgiving'), and Congress passed a law in 1941 fixing Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November — where it remains.

The Wampanoag Perspective and the National Day of Mourning

Since 1970, members of the Wampanoag Nation and their allies have gathered on Cole's Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on Thanksgiving Day to observe a National Day of Mourning, initiated by Wampanoag leader Frank James after he was prevented from delivering a speech critical of the Thanksgiving myth at the 350th anniversary celebration. For many Native Americans, Thanksgiving marks the beginning of centuries of dispossession, disease, and cultural destruction.

Thanksgiving in Canada

Canada observes its own Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October — closer to the harvest season at those northern latitudes. Canadian Thanksgiving traces its roots to the 1578 expedition of Martin Frobisher, who gave thanks for surviving the voyage, and was formally established as a national holiday in 1879.

Conclusion

Thanksgiving is a holiday that carries the full complexity of American history — genuine gratitude and genuine tragedy, mythologised origins and contested meaning, Puritan religious feeling and secular national pageantry. Understanding its real history does not diminish the impulse toward gratitude that animates it at its best; it deepens it.

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