HISTORY
OF THANKSGIVING
This story doesn’t necessarily
start with Pilgrims. 😊
Evidence shows that Spanish
explorers and settlers held thanksgiving services during the late 1500s in what
is now Florida and New Mexico. Thanksgivings also took place in what became the
Commonwealth of Virginia as early as 1607, with the first permanent settlement
of Jamestown holding a Thanksgiving in 1610.
The
‘First’ Thanksgiving
It wasn’t until a decade later
that the Plymouth settlers, known as Pilgrims, arrived in the New World. They
celebrated at Plymouth for three days after their first harvest in 1621. The
gathering included 50 people who were on the Mayflower (all who remained of the
100 who had landed) and 90 Native Americans. The feast was cooked by the four
adult Pilgrim women who survived their first winter in the New World, along
with young daughters and other servants.
Revolutionary
Times
During the war, the Continental
Congress appointed one or more thanksgiving days each year, each time
recommending to the executives of the various states the observance of these
days in their states. George Washington, leader of the revolutionary forces,
proclaimed a Thanksgiving in December 1777 as a victory celebration honoring
the defeat of the British at Saratoga.
The Continental-Confederation
Congress, the legislative body that governed the United States from 1774 to
1789, issued several “national days of prayer, humiliation, and thanksgiving.”
This would eventually manifest itself in the established American observances
of Thanksgiving and the National Day of Prayer today.
In 1789, New Jersey congressman
Elias Boudinot proposed that the House and Senate jointly ask President
Washington to proclaim a day of thanksgiving for “the many signal favors of
Almighty God.” Washington then created the first U.S. government-mandated
Thanksgiving Day. It read in part: “Now therefore I do recommend and assign
Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of thee
States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent
Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.”
The holiday would remain
inconsistent for decades.
Civil
War Era
President Lincoln proclaimed a
national Thanksgiving Day in 1863, to be celebrated on November 26 — the final
Thursday of the month. Secretary of State William H. Seward wrote the
proclamation that read in part:
“In the midst of a civil war of
unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States
to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all
nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed,
and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military
conflict.
I do therefore invite my fellow
citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and
those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last
Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our
beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”
The U.S. has observed
Thanksgiving ever since.
Future presidents followed
Lincoln’s example of annually declaring the final Thursday in November to be
Thanksgiving. But in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared November’s
fourth Thursday as Thanksgiving rather than the fifth one. FDR thought an
earlier Thanksgiving would give merchants a longer period to sell goods before
Christmas — and help bring the country out of the Depression. A 1942 law —
making the fourth Thursday a federal holiday — has stood ever since.
May
you celebrate Thanksgiving Day with love in your heart, prosperous vision in
your mind, and gratitude in your being.
Thanksgiving
wishes to everyone!
