Thanksgiving Day Origins

Thanksgiving Day Origins

 The first recorded day of thanksgiving in our part of the New World occurred on August 9, 1607 in Phippsburg, Maine, by colonists who had arrived on The Gift of God and the Mary and John under the leadership of George Popham. They had landed at St. George’s Island “gyvinge God thanks for our happy meetinge & safe aryval into the country.”” But this was a one-time event because late in the summer of 1608, on the pinnace, Virginia of Sagadahoc, probably the first ocean-going ship built in the New World, the ones who had survived the harsh winter, packed up and headed back home.

Historians have also recorded ceremonies of thanks among other groups of European settlers in North America, including British colonists in Virginia in 1619.

A century and a half later, President George Washington proclaimed that November 26, 1789, should be a national day of thanksgiving for the adoption of the Constitution. But this was also a one-time event.

 Our current national Thanksgiving Day dates to President Abraham Lincoln’s time. On October 3, 1863, he proclaimed an annual holiday on the fourth Thursday in November, to be a national day of thanksgiving.

Sarah Josepha Hale, a 74-year-old magazine editor, had written a letter to Lincoln on September 28, 1863, urging him to have the "day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival." She explained, "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 authoritative fixation, only, to become permanently, an American custom and institution."

He did that, but over time, just as Armistice Day (the celebration of the end of World War I) lost its significance and was transformed into a generic Veterans Day, Lincoln’s day of thanksgiving lost its relevance. To preserve the substance of the celebration, a tradition grew up--mostly in the public schools--linking our national day of thanksgiving to the feast at Plimouth Plantation, when pilgrims and Indians gathered in the fall of 1621 to celebrate the harvest and the newcomers’ survival through the first difficult year in the New World.  But it was probably not in late November, a chilling prospect even for those hearty souls. The feast in 1621 that Edward Winslow described in a letter to an acquaintance in England probably occurred earlier in the fall—closer to the harvest time in southern New England.

 According to information provided to visitors at Plimoth Plantation today, the so-called first thanksgiving at Plimoth was, in fact, a state visit by Massasoit, the sachem of the Wampanoag tribe, who was checking up on these worrisome recent arrivals. He was accompanied by 90 warriors--no women or children, in case of trouble. The Wampanoag outnumbered the English almost two to one. It is believed that the Puritans (most, but not all were Puritan) would never have shared a religious feast with the heathen native Americans, but it is recorded that the heathen and the Puritan did sit down together for a feast of thanksgiving. 

 Venison was the featured entree. Winslow reported that five deer were killed and brought to the feast. He also mentions wild fowl, so turkey is a definite possibility. The English had learned about cranberries from the native Americans and also made a stewed pumpkin dish called "pompion." It is served today at reenactment feasts at Plimoth Plantation and reported to be quite tasty.”They also ate lobster. So it was a surf and turf banquet!

 Regardless of your historical views, we wish you a happy Thanksgiving, or as one anxious native who recently crossed my back yard in Arlington Heights put it, “Gobble, gobble!””