TheFirstAmericanThanksgiving

THE FIRST AMERICAN THANKSGIVING
and the Story of How It Evolved into our Modern Holiday.

The story of Thanksgiving in America is mainly about the Pilgrims
and their thankful community feast at Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The Pilgrims, who set sail from Plymouth, England on a ship called the
Mayflower on September 6, 1620, were fortune hunters, bound for the
resourceful 'New World'. The Mayflower was a small ship crowded
with men, women and children, besides the sailors on board.

Aboard were passengers comprising the 'separatists',
who called themselves the "Saints", and others,
whom the separatists called the "Strangers".

After land was sighted in November following 66 days of a lethal
voyage, a meeting was held and an agreement of truce was
worked out. It was called the Mayflower Compact. The agreement
guaranteed equality among the members of the two groups.
They merged together to be recognized as the "Pilgrims."
They elected John Carver as their first governor.

Pilgrims had first sighted the land off Cape Cod, Massachusetts,
but did not settle until they arrived at a place called Plymouth. It was
Captain John Smith who named the place after the English port-city
in 1614 and had already settled there for over five years.
And it was there that the Pilgrims finally decided to settle.

Plymouth offered an excellent harbor and plenty of resources
and the local Indians were non-hostile. However their happiness
was short-lived because they were unprepared to face the
winter in this strange new place.

They were saved by a group of local Native Americans who
befriended them and helped them with food. The natives
taught the settlers the technique to cultivate corn and grow
native vegetables, and store them for harsh winter season.
By the next year they had raised enough crops to keep them
alive. The winter came and passed by without much harm.
The settlers felt a deep debt of gratitude to God and to
the Indians who taught them survival skills.

They celebrated with a grand community feast wherein the friendly
native Americans were also invited. It was the kind of harvest feast
similar to what the Pilgrims used to have in England. The recipes
include corn , Indian corn, barley, pumpkins and peas, waterfowl,
fish, and the wild turkey.

However, the third year was really ghastly when the corns were
damaged. Pilgrim Governor William Bradford ordered a day of
fasting and prayer, and rain happened to follow soon.
To celebrate - November 29th of that year was proclaimed a
day of thanksgiving. This date is believed to be the real
beginning of the present Thanksgiving Day.

On January 1, 1795, our first United States President,
George Washington, wrote his famed National Thanksgiving
Proclamation, in which he says that it is...

"...our duty as a people, with devout reverence and affectionate
gratitude, to acknowledge our many and great obligations to
Almighty God, and to implore Him to continue is... our duty as a people,
with devout reverence and affectionate gratitude, to acknowledge
our many and great obligations to Almighty God, and to implore
Him to continue and confirm the blessings we experienced..."

Thursday, the 19th day of February, 1795 was thus set aside by
George Washington as a National Day of Thanksgiving

Many years later, on October 3, 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed,
by Act of Congress, an annual National Day of Thanksgiving "on
the last Thursday of November, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise
to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens."

In this Thanksgiving proclamation, our 16th President says that
it is... "...announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by
all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord...

But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand
which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and
strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, by the deceitfulness
of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some
superior wisdom and virtue of our own...

It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly,
reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and
one voice, by the whole American people..."

Some years the last Thursday of November would be the fifth
Thursday of the month. This falls too close to the Christmas holiday,
leaving the businesses even less than a month's time to cope
with the two big festivals.

This date was changed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939
and approved by Congress in 1941. Thanksgiving Day is presently
celebrated on the fourth Thursday of every November.

Pilgrims Eating

Indian Girl

Pilgrim Girl

Timeline of American Thanksgiving Holiday

1541
During Coronado's expedition a Eucharistic thanksgiving,
with the friendly Teya Indians present, occurred in Palo Duro
Canyon in West Texas.

1621
Pilgrims and Native Americans enjoyed a harvest feast in
Plymouth, Massachusetts. This feast may have become
the model for today's American celebration.

1630
Settlers and colonists from many continents brought customs
of days of prayer and thanksgiving, especially in New England,
where the first Thanksgiving of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony was observed on July 8, 1630.

1777
The first Thanksgiving of the new United States of America
occurred in 1777 when General George Washington and
his army, as instructed by the Continental Congress,
stopped in bitter weather in the open fields on their
way to Valley Forge to mark the occasion.

1789
Washington's first proclamation after his inauguration as the
nation's first president in 1789 declared November 26, 1789,
as a national day of "thanksgiving and prayer."

1800's
The annual presidential thanksgiving proclamations
ceased for 45 years in the early 1800s.

1863
President Abraham Lincoln resumed the tradition in 1863.

November 26, 1941
President Roosevelt signed the bill establishing the fourth
Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. Because two
years out of every seven have five Thursdays in November,
some states for the next 15 years celebrated on their own on
the last Thursday. Since 1956, the fourth Thursday in
November has been observed by every state.