Generations of school children have heard the story of the “First Thanksgiving.” What is the history?
- by Jennie A. Brownscombe
The Legend of Thanksgiving
After a harsh winter in the New
World a sturdy band of Pilgrims
met with their Wampanoag
neighbors to celebrate the harvest.
The menu may have included
turkey and other native birds.
Wampanoag hunters brought five
deer for the festival. It is possible
that cranberries and pumpkin
dishes were prepared but not
sugary sauce. There were no
mashed potatoes or apple pies.
Those foods arrived later.
Origins of a Holiday
The Pilgrims did not realize that they were starting
a holiday, although a 1623 Plimoth feast was called a
“Thanksgiving.” Thanksgiving religious observances
exist in many cultures. Harvest festivals are also
common. No one has a monopoly on the holiday
although the traditional foods and customs of
Thanksgiving in America do have their origins in
colonial Massachusetts.
- Massachusetts Archives
That Holiday Feeling: Banning
Christmas
Christmas was banned in Plimoth and in the
Massachusetts Bay colony. The date December
25th did not appear in the Bible and the Puritans
associated Christmas with “Mad Mirth…Long
Eating…Hard Drinking…and Rude Reveling.”
They also associated it with the Catholic and
Anglican Churches. It is possible that many
colonists missed
having a holiday
and some towns
began to substitute
Thanksgiving feasts
in the fall.
Rediscovering the Pilgrims
Although Thanksgiving
was celebrated in colonial
Massachusetts it was not
associated with the Pilgrims until
writings about the Plimoth colony
were rediscovered in the midnineteenth
century. As descendants
of Massachusetts colonists
moved west,
Thanksgiving
spread with them
to the northern
colonies and states. Abraham Lincoln
declared it a national holiday.
By 1900 New England
style Thanksgiving
customs—Pilgrims
and all—were spread
by new national
circulation magazines.
Sarah Josepha Hale
Advocated a national Thanksgiving holiday.
- James Reid Lambdin
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
- Painting by George Peter Alexander Healy in 1869
Why is Thanksgiving on Thursday?
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about the “great
and Thursday lecture” given by many Puritan
ministers. Thursday was market day in some towns
and ministers took advantage
of a gathering crowd to provide
more enlightenment. Because it
was a special day, some towns
may have selected Thursday for
Thanksgiving.
- Courtesy of Peabody Essex Museum