Our modern Thanksgiving
holiday is actually a blend of several earlier traditions: the harvest
festival, the Puritan Day of Thanksgiving and Praise, and the
commemoration of the 1620 Pilgrim landing known as Forefathers' Day. As it
developed in New England in the 17th and 18th centuries, Thanksgiving Day
was a special time set apart for church services followed by family or
community dinners that generally occurred at harvest time. Thanksgiving
Day took on its modern form when Abraham Lincoln declared the first of our
modern annual and national Thanksgiving Days in 1863, and when interest
shifted from the Pilgrims' wintry landing to their 1621 harvest
celebration.
The following is
from Duane Cline’s The Pilgrims and
Plymouth Colony 1620 -
http://www.rootsweb.com/~mosmd/#part5
The original account of the first Pilgrim
Thanksgiving is in a letter from Edward Winslow in Plymouth, dated Dec.
21st, 1621 to George Morton in England. It was printed in
Mourt's Relation, London,
1662. Winslow relates the following:
"We set last spring some twenty acres of Indian corn, and sowed some six
acres of barley and peas. According to the manner of the Indians we
manured our ground with herrings (alewives) which we have in great
abundance and take with great ease at our doors. Our corn did prove well,
and God be praised, we had a good increase in Indian corn. Our barley did
indifferent good, but our peas not worth the gathering. We feared they
were too late sown. They came up very well and blossomed, but the sun
parched them in the blossom. Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor
sent four men on fowling, that so we might, after a special manner,
rejoice together, after we had gathered in the fruits of our labors. They
four in one day killed as many fowl as with little help besides, served
the Company for almost a week, at which time, amongst our recreations, we
exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the
rest their great king the Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three
days we entertained and feasted. They went out and killed five deer, which
they brought in to the Plantation, and bestowed on our Governor, and upon
the Captain and others. Although it not always be so plentiful as it was
at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want
that we often wish you partakers of our plenty. -- We have found the
Indians very faithful in their Covenant of Peace with us; very loving and
ready to pleasure us. Some of us have been fifty miles into the country by
land with them. -- There is now great peace amongst us; and we, for our
parts, walk as peaceably and safely in the woods here as in the highways
in England. - I never in my life remember a more seasonable year than we
have enjoyed. -- If we have but once kine, horses and sheep, I make no
question but men might live as contented here, as in any part of the
world. -- The country wanteth only industrious men to employ, for it would
grieve your hearts to see so many miles together with goodly rivers
uninhabited, and withall to consider those parts of the world wherein you
live to be seven greatly burdened with abundance of people."
For three days the Pilgrims and their Indian
guests gorged themselves on venison, roast duck, goose and turkey, clams
and other shell-fish, succulent eels, corn bread, hasty pudding, leeks and
water-cress and other "sallet herbes," with wild plums and dried berries
as dessert, all washed down with wine made of the wild grape. The affair
was more like an out-door barbeque for the entire population, than a
family reunion dinner.
This feasting involved the preparation of
unusually large quantities of food, some of it unfamiliar. Only four of
their married women had survived, and only five teenage girls, three of
those being the sole survivors of their families. They must have been
extremely industrious and efficient, and they must have worn themselves
ragged, trying to fill a hundred and forty demanding stomachs for three
days. Sufficient tribute has never been paid to them for making these
festivities a success, under such trying conditions. Indeed, even the
success of the Colony rested largely in their most capable and devoted
hands.
The gathering was enlivened by contests of
skill and strength: running, jumping, wrestling. Also, there were games of
various kinds. The Indians were probably amazed to learn that the white
men could play games not unlike their own. The Indians performed their
dances and struck up their singing. Standish put his little army of
fourteen men through their military review. Then followed feats of
marksmanship, muskets performing against bows and arrows. The Massasoit
and his braves headed home at last with a warmth of feeling for his white
friends which survived even the harsh tests to which it was soon
subjected.
Thus they elaborately celebrated the
prospect of abundance until their next harvest.
First American National
Thanksgiving -
1777
Declared by the Continental Congress
following Burgoyne's Defeat at Saratoga
November 1, 1777
"Forasmuch as it is the indispensable Duty
of all Men to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God; to
acknowledge with Gratitude their Obligation to him for benefits received,
and to implore such further Blessings as they stand in Need of: And it
having pleased him in his abundant Mercy, not only to continue to us the
innumerable Bounties of his common providence; but also to smile upon us
in the Prosecution of a just and necessary War, for the Defence and
Establishment of our inalienable Rights and Liberties...It is therefore
recommended to the legislative or executive Powers of these UNITED STATES,
to set apart THURSDAY, the eighteenth
Day of December next, for
the Solemn Thanksgiving and Praise: That at one Time and with one voice,
the good People may express themselves to the Service of their Divine
Benefactor... And it is further recommended, That servile labour, and such
Recreations, as, though at other Times innocent, may be unbecoming the
Purpose of this Appointment,
be omitted on so solemn an Occasion."
Thanksgiving 1863
Both
the North and South maintained the tradition of independent state
Thanksgivings into the Civil War period. The Confederate Congress declared
a Sunday thanksgiving service for July 28, 1861 after their victory at
Bull Run, and another for Thursday, September 18, 1862, for the Second
Battle at Bull Run. The first national Thanksgiving
holiday to be declared by the U.S. government since 1815 occurred in 1862
when President Lincoln declared a Thanksgiving holiday for Sunday, April
13, following the Union victory at Shiloh. Lincoln declared another
national Thanksgiving for August 6, 1863, in recognition of the victory at
Gettysburg.
On
October 3, 1863, President Lincoln declared a second national Thanksgiving
that year for the last Thursday in November which followed the Yankee
practice of a general November holiday giving thanks for "general causes"
rather than "special providences" such as wartime victories. This
Thanksgiving became the first in the unbroken series of our modern holiday
tradition. Lincoln declared a national Thanksgiving for the last Thursday
in November, 1864. Andrew Johnson followed with a Thanksgiving on December
7, 1865 (celebrating the Union victory), and each President since then has
declared an annual national Thanksgiving.
It might also be noted that none of the
presidential declarations of Thanksgiving mention the Plymouth Pilgrims or
the "First Thanksgiving" until Herbert Hoover's proclamation of 1931 (with
the possible exception of Roosevelt's 1905 mention of the colonial
custom).
Lincoln's November 1863 Thanksgiving
Proclamation
The
year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings
of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so
constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they
come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that
they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is
habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.
In
the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has
sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their
aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been
maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has
prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while
that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and
navies of the Union.
Needful
diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry
to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the
ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines,
as well as the iron and coal as of our precious metals, have yielded even
more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased
notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and
the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of
augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years
with large increase of freedom.
No
human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great
things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while
dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It
has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently,
and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole
American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of
the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart
and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving
and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I
recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him
for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble
penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His
tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or
sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably
engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal
the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent
with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony,
tranquillity, and union.
In
testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the
United States to be affixed.
Done
at the city of Washington, this 3d day of October, A. D. 1863, and of the
Independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.
Abraham Lincoln
