The United States recently celebrated a national day of Thanksgiving. This holiday in the U.S. has a history that goes back to the 1600’s. A number of other nations also celebrate (officially and unofficially) a day of giving thanks. Of course, many people give thanks every day for various things in their lives. Over time, this holiday has acquired a special meaning in the U.S.
Observing a time to give thanks for one’s blessings, as well as holding feasts to celebrate a harvest, are both practices that certainly began well before the European settlement of North America. Although primarily observed in a religious context, the enjoyment of a bountiful harvest often meant a good chance of survival until the next harvest.
Thanksgiving services in what became the Commonwealth of Virginia started as early as 1607 and the first permanent settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, held a thanksgiving in 1610. In 1619, the “Berkeley Hundred” began following the direction in their charter to celebrate “the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantation in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God”. The most famous celebration in U.S. colonial history was the 1621 three day harvest feast of the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1621. Contemporary accounts do not identify this as a specific Thanksgiving observance, rather that it followed the harvest. It included 50 people who were on the Mayflower (all who remained of the 100 who had landed) and 90 Native Americans.
Several proclamations of “national days of prayer, humiliation, and thanksgiving” were issued by the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War. As President, George Washington proclaimed on October 3, 1789, the first Thanksgiving Day designated by the national government of the United States of America. In the middle of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, prompted by a series of articles and editorials written by Sarah Josepha Hale (editor of Ladies Magazine and Godey’s Lady’s Book), proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be celebrated on the final Thursday of November 1863. The document was written by Secretary of State William H. Seward. Thanksgiving has been observed annually in the United States since 1863. In 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt signed a Congressional bill fixing the fourth Thursday of November as the date for Thanksgiving.
In many (but not all) households, the Thanksgiving celebration has lost much of its original religious significance and now centers on cooking and sharing a bountiful meal with family and friends. The traditional modern meal consists of Indigenous cuisine of the Americas: turkey, potatoes (usually mashed and/or sweet), squash, corn (maize), green beans, cranberries, and pumpkin pie. However, as an annual celebration of the harvest and its bounty, Thanksgiving falls under a category of festivals that spans cultures, continents and millennia.