Thanksgiving

November 24th is Thanksgiving this year. Family, food, festivities (parades), and football will mark the day. As has become tradition here in the USA, it will be the fourth Thursday of November—but the holiday has not always been on this Thursday. For more than half of our history, we either did without an annual Thanksgiving celebration or celebrated at the whim of some politician.

We have all heard the tale of the Pilgrims under Governor William Bradford celebrating the first Thanksgiving in 1621. They celebrated in the tradition of an English harvest festival with a three-day feast.

Yet, this was not the first thanksgiving to be celebrated in North America. Native Americans had celebrated the harvest in different forms for thousands of years before Europeans arrived. Back in 1578 Martin Forbisher held a formal celebration in New Foundland giving thanks for surviving a long Atlantic crossing. Additionally, Spanish, French and Dutch settlements probably held harvest celebrations in the European tradition.

Even the Pilgrims’ 1621 Thanksgiving was not repeated in 1622. After several days of prayer brought about a long, steady rain to end a severe dry spell that threatened their crops, Governor Bradford again proclaimed a Thanksgiving Day. That was it until June 1676. On June 29th of that year the governing council of Charleston, Massachusetts held a thanksgiving celebration in part in recognition of their recent victory over the “heathen natives.” (Bet there were no Indians at that one!)

October of 1777 was the first time all 13 colonies joined in a thanksgiving celebration. What were they celebrating? The victory of the Americans over the British at Saratoga was the first major success in the Revolution.

The first National Day of Thanksgiving celebrated by the USA was in 1789 and many were opposed to it. President Washington’s proclamation referenced the hardships of the Pilgrims and that rubbed those in the other states the wrong way. President Thomas Jefferson (from Virginia) disliked the idea enough that it was dropped for decades.

Magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale championed the idea of an annual day of Thanksgiving for 40 years before President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a national day of Thanksgiving in 1863. Every president after Lincoln continued to proclaim a Thanksgiving Day. Usually it was the last Thursday in November, but not always.

In the mid 1930s, President Roosevelt tried to increase the Christmas shopping season by moving the holiday to an earlier date—the next-to-last Thursday of the month—but this didn’t go over well with the public and the holiday was moved back to the last Thursday of November just two years later. All this time, Thanksgiving was still not an official National Holiday. Then in 1941 President Roosevelt and Congress finally declared Thanksgiving to be a legal holiday to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November.

Wilstar’s Thanksgiving Page

Thanksgiving Traditions

President George Washington’s proclamation

President Lincoln’s proclamation

The History Channel on Thanksgiving

Annie’s Thanksgiving History page

Australia’s Thanksgiving—3rd of June 2006 (the first Saturday in June)

Canadian Thanksgiving Day—Second Monday in October

Thanksgiving Around the World