On This Day: Thanksgiving

On This Day, for Thanksgiving, by Britannica.

Today we’re looking at the fourth Thursday in November that brings Americans together in harmony—and often well-fed bliss—to talk about Thanksgiving remembered, and we'll talk about Thanksgiving forgotten.

Today, we’re exploring the time-honored American tradition of stuffing your face with stuffing on this day in November—Thanksgiving.

The story of Thanksgiving that’s taught in most primary schools is a short and sweet tale of peace between early pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe. In this version of the story, the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 on a boat named the Mayflower, where they established the colony of New Plymouth. They encountered the kind Native American Squanto, who acted as a translator and guide to the newcomers. He taught the Europeans how to fish and grow crops, and the bountiful harvest they collected in the fall of 1621 was shared with Squanto and his companions in a tradition we now know as Thanksgiving.

Now, you almost certainly know this is an incomplete tale. The pilgrims had a second ship, the Speedwell, that couldn’t complete the voyage. So those who could, boarded the Mayflower. When they landed in America, they found themselves outside the English king’s jurisdiction, so they wrote the Mayflower Compact and committed themselves to law on their own. That missing part of the story relates to nothing less than the founding of the United States, and it’s well worth looking up on Britannica.com. Which brings us to the Thanksgiving holiday itself. How did it really begin? How did it become what it is today?

Before the pilgrims arrived—and, by the way, they actually landed at Cape Cod and may or may not have set foot on Plymouth Rock. The Eastern Seaboard of the present-day United States was then home to several confederations of Native American peoples—the Wampanoag, the Narragansett, the Nauset, and the Massachusett were four tribes that occupied present-day New England, where the colonists would arrive in 1620. But in 1616 a foreign disease was introduced by European traders that killed much of the native population—leaving much of this land empty and ripe for colonization.

While we now call the first English settlers Pilgrims, they themselves never used that name. Of the 102 colonists, 35 were members of the English Separatist Church. They had earlier fled to Leiden in the Netherlands to escape persecution at home and then sailed from Plymouth, England, to America. Seeking a more abundant life with religious freedom, the Separatists had negotiated with a London stock company to finance passage to America. But when they arrived, the settlers found themselves completely unequipped for the harsh winters and humid summers, and they did not have the skills to hunt, farm, or fish on the new land. From December of 1620 to March of 1621, 44 of the original 102 died from starvation, exposure, and scurvy.

Tisquantum, or, as we now know him, Squanto, was a member of the Pawtuxet people, whose village was wiped out by the disease. Squanto had been kidnapped, taken to Europe, and sold into slavery, where he learned English. When he returned to his home in 1619, he found his village of Pawtuxet had been wiped out by the epidemic. When the pilgrims arrived a year later, they built New Plymouth atop what had once been his home.

During the spring of 1621, Squanto was brought to New Plymouth by Samoset, a native chief who had been befriended by the English settlers. Squanto soon became a member of the Plymouth colony and a valuable part of their survival. Squanto taught the settlers effective farming and hunting practices, and he served as emissary and interpreter for Pilgrim representatives during negotiations with Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoag.

Massasoit had seen the damage caused by early European travelers, who spread disease and trapped and enslaved members of his tribe. The Wampanoag were surrounded by enemies, and a peace deal between the natives and the colonists was drawn up to ensure mutual protection.

When the fall harvest came, the Pilgrims found themselves with a bounty of food they had never seen, thanks to Squanto’s teaching and experience. Men were sent to hunt game birds, such as turkey and waterfowl. Massasoit brought 90 members of his tribe, along with five deer to share. The feast that followed lasted three days—this is the harvest festival we now recognize as the First Thanksgiving.

And so, this is the story that we celebrate: a moment of harmony between colonizer and colonized. But peace and harmony did not last for long.

The treaty between the New Plymouth colony and Massasoit lasted until the chief’s death in 1661, and in that time, more English colonies took root across the East Coast. In New England, the settlers lived in relative peace until King Philip’s War in 1675. You may remember King Philip’s War was not in Europe. Rather, "King Philip" was the English name of a Wampanoag chief. His people and the Narragansett tribe became embroiled in a conflict with settlers across New England that brought the issues between the English and Native Americans to a head and made the settlers and the Wampanoag and Narragansett lethal adversaries.

There is no question that the Puritans had a deep, abiding faith in God, or they wouldn’t have come to America in defense of their faith as they did. As we’ve seen, numbers of them died in the process. And yet, the Puritans saw others—even other Christians—as sinful and considered the Church of England corrupt because it had lingering traces of Roman Catholicism. In the New World, they tried to build a society based on their own strict interpretation of the Gospels and to spread their religion to the Native Americans they encountered. The Puritans viewed non-English speakers as savage and, thus, in need of subjugation, conversion, and (if those measures did not work) elimination. By the end of King Philip’s War, the colonists and their Native allies had destroyed much of the Native American opposition in southern New England, killing thousands of Native Americans and selling many into slavery and indentured servitude.

The story of New Plymouth’s earliest days, when viewed alone, is one of struggle surmounted by cooperation and peaceful exchange of knowledge. However, in greater context, the First Thanksgiving becomes a distraction from the land grab that English settlers conducted in the Americas. The lack of religious tolerance in the Puritans’ experience pointed them to New England, but in their own expressions it contributed King Philip’s War. The stage was set for the slave trade, theocracy in the colonies, and the decimation of the Native American population—all of which are linked to European colonization, including the migration of Puritan settlers in the 17th century. One may say American society conveniently forgot this matter, so to speak. But one can also say that we choose to remember the First Thanksgiving for its very best virtues, and take stock of the civility, religious liberty and bounties we should enjoy today.

And indeed, there are bounties. The Thanksgiving that we celebrate today is a far cry from the traditional harvest festival of yore. Our modern celebration not only acts as a moment for families to come together but also marks the beginning of the holiday season. How did we transform this tale into a marker of economic stimulation? How did the Pilgrims know it was Thanksgiving without massive Snoopy balloons marching down city boulevards and cans of cranberry sauce on sale at the grocery store?

There are definitely lighter sides to Thanksgiving, though they, too, may be diversions from the holiday’s deeper meaning. Let’s take a closer look at how Thanksgiving became the modern holiday we mark with stuffed faces, stuffed turkey, and stuffed shopping bags.

The New England colonists were accustomed to regularly celebrating “thanksgivings,” and that word - thanksgiving - is all in lower case. These were days of prayer thanking God for blessings such as military victory or the end of a drought. Beginning in 1668, the holiday was celebrated on November 25 in the Plymouth colony, but that lasted only a few years. After the American Revolution, the U.S. Continental Congress proclaimed a national Thanksgiving upon the enactment of the Constitution. In 1789 President George Washington decreed Thursday, November 26, as a day of public thanksgiving, but, in the years that followed, the holiday bounced informally from month to month and date to date.

After 1798, the U.S. Congress left Thanksgiving declarations to the states. Some objected to the national government’s involvement in what they considered a religious observance. Southerners were slow to adopt a New England custom, and others took offense over the day being used to hold partisan speeches and parades. In the early United States, a national Thanksgiving Day seemed more like a lightning rod for controversy than a unifying force.
That all changed when the editor of the popular magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book, Sarah Josepha Hale, campaigned for a national Thanksgiving Day to promote unity. She finally won the support of President Abraham Lincoln. On October 3, 1863, during the Civil War, Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated on Thursday, November 26.

The holiday was proclaimed by every president thereafter, and the date chosen, with few exceptions, was the last Thursday in November. This was customary until Franklin D. Roosevelt became president. Roosevelt faced the effects of the Great Depression, and so he attempted to extend the Christmas shopping season, which in the U.S. customarily began with the Thanksgiving holiday. He sought to boost the economy by moving the date back a week, to the third week in November, but not all states complied. After a joint resolution of Congress in 1941, Roosevelt issued a proclamation in 1942 designating the fourth Thursday in November—which is not always the last Thursday—as Thanksgiving Day in the United States.

Days of thanksgiving in Canada also originated in the colonial period, arising from the same European traditions, in gratitude for safe journeys, peace, and bountiful harvests. But in Canada the tradition does not connect so much with the Plymouth holiday. That’s because, instead, the earliest celebration was held in 1578, 43 years before the Pilgrims’ three-day harvest fest, when an expedition led by Martin Frobisher held a ceremony in present-day Nunavut to give thanks for the safety of his fleet.

In 1879 Canada’s Parliament established a national Thanksgiving Day on November 6, but, interestingly, the date was uniquely chosen each year—sometimes coinciding with the American holiday, sometimes landing in early October, and sometimes in December. Then there was a distinct secular event that brought all Canadians together in celebration—the end of World War I. In 1921 Thanksgiving and Armistice Day, which takes place on November 11th, were to be celebrated together. However, the Canadian Parliament wanted to return the focus of Armistice Day to veterans, so the first Monday in November was designated as “Remembrance Day,” and Canadian Thanksgiving was moved to the second Monday in October. It’s been there ever since.

The celebration of Canadian Thanksgiving very much parallels that of American Thanksgiving but is a bit less universal. Remember the Puritans’ regard for Catholics in the days of New Plymouth? The province of Quebec, with its French and Catholic roots, does not view a holiday established by Puritans with much reverence. In the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, Thanksgiving is not a statutory holiday at all.

As North America became more urban and family members began to live farther apart, Thanksgiving became a time to gather together. The holiday moved away from its religious roots, and the secularization of the event made it easier for different people to participate.

For example, Thanksgiving Day football games, beginning with the Yale-versus-Princeton competition in 1876, added some rowdiness to the holiday. In 1920 Gimbel’s department store in Philadelphia staged a parade of about 50 people with Santa Claus at the rear of the procession. Since 1924 the annual Macy’s parade in New York City has continued the tradition, with huge balloons since 1927. The wider public availability of free time and the anticipation of Christmas combined to make Thanksgiving a much less somber holiday. And, as you can see by Gimbel’s and Macy’s, merchandising opportunities had the same effect.

And so this holiday associated with Pilgrims and Native Americans—or, if you’re Canadian, with Europeans and the First Nations peoples—has come to symbolize cross-cultural peace, North America’s opportunity for newcomers, and the sanctity of home and family. Religious roots notwithstanding, it is often greeted as an ecumenical or even secular holiday, a day of celebration for all with little or no regard for their religion.

Yet, because of that shift, Thanksgiving today is far more a reason to fill your plate and stuff your face than it is an event of deep observance. So often, the education surrounding the day has left much to be desired, with a strong focus placed on the salvation of New Plymouth from starvation. That emphasis mutes the voices of the native people who were directly impacted by this now-mythical event, overlooking their fate in North America as the significance of the First Thanksgiving faded. It was, after all, their charity and participation that enabled the First Thanksgiving in New Plymouth.

The feasting is fun, and, of course, we hope it never goes away. But as Canadian and U.S. societies come to better grips with their cultural origins, we also hope that everyone will seize the day to recognize the humanity, charity, and grace in the people around them and in their forebears. We also hope they speak a word of thanks to their Creator about it or, at the very least, speak those thanks to the people closest to them, who enable life.

Thanksgiving is a phenomenon without a particular day, a particular faith, or even a particular ethnicity. It’s less of a holiday than a call to express gratitude for well-being in communion with those who matter most. And so, regardless of the day, it’s hard to imagine a higher calling for a holiday than that.

Oh, but we’ll get there with the On This Day podcast… Just listen!

And thank-you for spending a moment with us today. There’s always more to read and discover at Britannica.com. Our special program on Thanksgiving was written by Emily Goldstein and edited by yours truly. For Britannica, I’m Kurt Heintz.

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