History of thanksgiving:

The United States celebrates Thanksgiving Day as a national holiday, and Thanksgiving 2022 takes place on November 24. One of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies was the autumn harvest feast that the Wampanoag and Plymouth colonists shared in 1621. Days of thanksgiving have been observed by various colonies and states for more than 200 years. President Abraham Lincoln did not declare a national until 1863, during the American Civil War. Every November, Thanksgiving Day will be observed.

Plymouth Thanksgiving

Religious separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith and other people drawn by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the “New World” sailed from Plymouth, England, in September 1620 aboard the small ship known as the Mayflower. They dropped anchor close to Cape Cod’s tip, far north of where they were supposed to be at the mouth of the Hudson River, after a perilous and uncomfortable 66-day crossing. A month later, the Mayflower sailed across Massachusetts Bay, where the Plymouth Pilgrims— as they are now known— started their village construction.

You knew, right? The Pilgrims’ menu included swans, seal, and lobster.

The majority of the colonists stayed on board the ship during that first harsh winter, where they experienced exposure, scurvy, and contagious disease outbreaks. The Mayflower’s original crew and passengers only made it to the first New England spring alive. The last of the settlers arrived on land in March, where they were greeted in English by an astonishing Abenaki tribe member.

A few days later, he returned with Squanto, another Pawtuxet tribe member who had been kidnapped by an English sea captain and sold into slavery before fleeing to London and embarking on an exploratory expedition. Squanto instructed the sick and malnourished Pilgrims on how to grow corn, harvest maple tree sap, catch fish in rivers, and stay away from poisonous plants.

After the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest was successful in November 1621, Governor William Bradford hosted a celebratory feast and invited some of the colony’s Native American allies, including Wampanoag chief Massasoit. Although the Pilgrims may not have used the term at the time, the three-day festival is now known as “first “Thanksgiving” in America. Although the exact menu for the first Thanksgiving is unknown, Pilgrim chronicler Edward Winslow, who wrote:

our labors, they four in one day wiped out as much fowl, as with a little help beside, offered the Company almost each week, where time passed between other Recreations, we exercised our Arms, the majority of the Indians coming between us, and between the rest their finest king Massasoit, which includes 90 men, whom for 3 x we entertained and feasted, and so they recently damaged five Deer, that they helped bring to the Plantation and presented on our Governor, and after the Captain while some. And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of Our god, we are so far from want, that people often wish you partakers of the plenty “.

Thanksgiving is declared a national holiday

In 1623, pilgrims celebrated Thanksgiving for the second time after a protracted drought that had threatened the year’s harvest and prompted Governor Bradford to issue an order to observe fasting. Other New England settlements also started to observe annual or sporadic days of fasting and thanksgiving.

In 1789, George Washington issued the country’s first Thanksgiving proclamation, in which he urged people to thank God for the successful ratification of the U.S. Constitution and the happy conclusion of their war of independence.

Rituals and traditions for Thanksgiving

The American South was largely unaware of the tradition until New York, the first of several states to formally adopt an annual Thanksgiving holiday in 1817, celebrated it on a different day.

A campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday was started in 1827 by renowned magazine editor and prolific writer Sarah Josepha Hale, who is best known for her work on the nursery rhyme “Mary Had A Little Lamb.” She earned the moniker “Mother of Thanksgiving” for her 36 years of publishing numerous editorials and writing countless letters to politicians, governors, and senators.

In American cities and towns, parades have also started to play a significant role in the holiday season. The largest and most well-known Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City has been hosted by Macy’s department store since 1924. It draws a sizable television audience and draws between 2 and 3 million spectators along its 2.5-mile route. Typically, it includes performers, marching bands, elaborate floats transporting different celebrities, and enormous balloons with cartoon-like shapes.

One or two Thanksgiving turkeys have been “pardoned” annually by the president of the United States since the mid-20th century, possibly even earlier. This practice spares the birds from slaughter and allows them to retire to a farm. The yearly ritual of pardoning turkey is also carried out by several U.S. governors.

Controversies surrounding Thanksgiving

Some academics are still debating whether the Plymouth feast actually served as the country’s first Thanksgiving. In fact, before the Pilgrims’ celebration, historians have documented other expressions of gratitude among European settlers in North America. After holding a mass in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565 to express gratitude to God for his crew’s safe arrival, the Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilé invited members of the nearby Timucua tribe to dinner. 38 British settlers arrived at Berkeley Hundred on the banks of Virginia’s James River on December 4, 1619, and read a proclamation designating it as “a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”

Ancient Origins of Thanksgiving

Although the American idea of Thanksgiving originated in the New England colonies, Native Americans and people from the other side of the Atlantic are both responsible for its origins.

A tradition of providential holidays— days of fasting during trying or crucial times and days of feasting and celebration to thank God in times of plenty— was brought over by both the Separatists who arrived on the Mayflower and the Puritans who followed shortly after.

Thanksgiving is one of many festivals that spans cultures, continents, and millennia because it is an annual celebration of the harvest and its bounty. After the fall harvest, ancient peoples like the Egyptians, Greece, and Rome feasted and offered sacrifices to their gods.

Finally, historians have noted that long before European settlers arrived in America, Native Americans had a rich tradition of feasting and having fun to celebrate the fall harvest.

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