A Long and Winding Road
As Americans recover from all the Thanksgiving celebrations, including eating and watching five different football games, Americans face Black Friday shopping, watching fourteen more football games, and eating leftovers. Whatever you might be doing today, you might want to think about this holiday and how it evolved.
There is not much documentation about the evolution of Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims left England due to the fighting between the Catholics and Protestants. Initially, they stayed briefly in Holland but then decided to travel to the New World. The Mayflower intended to sail to the mouth of the Hudson River and settle around what we call today New York City. However, the winter winds along the East Coast forced the ship northeast to Cape Cod Bay. It arrived in mid-December 1620, which wasn’t the best time to begin a new colony. They struggled through the winter while constructing their new village and, during that process, lived aboard the Mayflower. In the spring, they planted corn and other vegetables in the fields. By the time of the harvest in 1621, only 52 of the 102 colonists survived.
We have very few documents that remain about that first Thanksgiving. Edward Winslow wrote about the celebration in which he never used the term Thanksgiving. It was merely a harvest feast.
Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after have a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the company almost a week, at which time amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest King Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain, and others.
Winslow mentioned King Massasoit was the leader of the Wampanoag Confederacy. The term Wampanoag means People of the First Light. However, prior to the Mayflower’s arrival, Europeans brought diseases, wars, and slavery to the New World. That epidemic was called the Great Dying. Enter Squanto.
Squanto was born around 1580 in the same area of Plymouth. Sometime in the early 1600s, Squanto was captured and taken back to Europe and sold into slavery. The details of his enslavement agree only that he was to be sold as a slave. How Squanto escaped and returned from Europe is also a matter of debate. Nonetheless, he wasn’t in North America during the Great Dying.
Squanto learned English apparently on the slave ship that had captured him. Therefore, he could speak to them when the English arrived in 1620. He assisted the colonists with farming, fishing, and hunting, which helped the colonists as they acclimated to the New World.
Therefore, the first Thanksgiving wasn’t called by that name. Additionally, they didn’t have turkey, pumpkin pie, or cranberry relish. The Native Americans supplied venison, fowl, barley, and seafood. Even more fascinating was that the first Thanksgiving wasn’t repeated for decades.
It wasn’t until George Washington became president of the United States. He declared Thursday, November 26, 1789, as a day of Thanksgiving for winning our independence from Britain and the ratification of the Constitution. Nonetheless, Thanksgiving didn’t get off the ground. When Thomas Jefferson became president, he didn’t like the notion of Thanksgiving due to the church-state issue.
Sara Josepha Hale, the poem’s author, Mary Had a Little Lamb, started a three-decade quest to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. Hale wrote to Abraham Lincoln requesting an “annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival...You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day, in all the States; it now needs National recognition and authoritive fixation, only, to become permanently, an American custom and institution.” Lincoln responded by declaring in 1863 that Thanksgiving be observed on the 4th Thursday of November.
Thanksgiving remained unchanged until 1939. America was still feeling the effects of the Great Depression. Therefore, FDR moved it to the 3rd Thursday of November, which gave merchants an extra week of shopping before Christmas.
Finally, turkeys were often given to presidents recently at Thanksgiving. However, President H. W. Bush said after receiving his turkey, “But let me assure you, and this fine tom turkey, that he will not end up on anyone’s dinner table, not this guy -- he’s granted a Presidential pardon as of right now -- and allow him to live out his days on a children’s farm not far from here.”
As Thanksgiving has evolved for over four centuries, a former president may be pardoned next Thanksgiving.
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11/24/23