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Thanksgiving
is a traditional, one-day holiday in autumn, celebrated in America since the early 1600s. In the United States, Thanksgiving is held on the fourth Thursday of November. It is also celebrated in Canada on the second Monday of October. Thought of as a “harvest festival,” the holiday centers on the gathering of family and friends around a large meal, generally with a large roasted turkey as the centerpiece. Alexander Hamilton was the one who proclaimed “No citizen of the United States should refrain from turkey on Thanksgiving Day,” but eating turkey was uncommon on Thanksgiving until after 1800. By 1857, it had become part of the traditional harvest festival dinner in New England. Many of the other traditional foods eaten at Thanksgiving are thought to be foods the Pilgrims received from the American Wampanoag Indians at the first Thanksgiving in 1621. However, many of these traditions are actually myths. It‘s uncertain which foods were actually on the menu of the first Thanksgiving, but historians agree that it likely contained venison and wild fowl, seafood, dried corn, nuts, peas, beans and carrots. Pumpkin is one contemporary traditional Thanksgiving food that was also probably at the first Thanksgiving, although it was likely served stewed. The pilgrims and Indians didn‘t have pies or anything sweet. They had brought some sugar with them on the Mayflower, but by the time of the fall feast, the supplies had likely dwindled. They also did not have ovens in which to bake cakes, pies or breads.
Native Americans throughout the Americas, including the Pueblo, Cherokee, Creek and many others held annual harvest festivals, ceremonial dances, and other celebrations of thanks for centuries before the arrival of Europeans in North America. Other ceremonies of thanks among the European settlers in the New World have also been recorded prior to the feast of 1621. At the site of Berkeley Plantation near the Charles River in December, 1619, a group of British settlers led by Captain John Woodlief knelt in prayer and pledged "Thanksgiving" to God for their healthy arrival after a long voyage across the Atlantic. Some scholars consider this the first “real” Thanksgiving in the Americas. President Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, and ever since it has been marked by the gathering of family and friends and enormous amounts of food. In the United States, many cities hold parades on Thanksgiving Day and for some, it also marks the beginning of the Christmas holiday season. The following paragraph is from “A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth” by Edward Winslow in 1621, which is considered one of the most detailed descriptions of the “First Thanksgiving” on record:
"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after 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, among 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 upon our governor, and upon the captain, and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.”
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