Retailers asked Roosevelt to move the date back one week to lengthen the Christmas shopping season. Last Updated August 13, 2020. History. Photo Modified: Flickr/ Steve Johnson/ CCBY-SA4.0. Hale persevered in her campaign to add Thanksgiving as a legal National Holiday akin to Washington’s Birthday (now Presidents’ Day) and the Fourth of July. The history of Thanksgiving is not as simple as a national holiday springing forth from Pilgrims sitting down with Native Americans to enjoy a celebratory feast. He also brokered peace with the local Wampanoag tribe, and the resulting 50-year peace is one of the few examples of harmony between natives and settlers. Modern Thanksgiving is a hodgepodge of traditions and flavors. I am a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 2015. If all that remains of the autumn events of 1621 is a short account in a single letter, how did Thanksgiving actually start in the United States? A Brief History of Thanksgiving. Furthermore, earlier celebrations more akin to a first Thanksgiving occurred in other parts of present-day America including Maine, Virginia, Texas, and Florida. The Pilgrims came over from England and landed at Plymouth Rock, had a bad winter, Squanto taught them to plant crops, they had a harvest festival, and now we celebrate it every year, Cranberries are native to New England, but, if the Puritans ate cranberries, the tart fruit would have been unsweetened due to a lack of sugar and most likely used to sharpen broths and sauces, not in the sweetened cranberry sauce of today. THE DAILY MEAL ® IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF TRIBUNE PUBLISHING. She also wrote personal letters to the governors of every state and territory and to presidents Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Abraham Lincoln. But the road to a national holiday for Thanksgiving was not without bumps. History of Thanksgiving The tradition of Thanksgiving started with the Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Many colonists stayed aboard the ship as the weather turned colder, and about half of them didn’t make it through the winter. Furthermore, little is known for sure about the feast except for the single-paragraph account recorded in a letter dated December 12, 1621 written by Edward Winslow, one of the Separatist leaders of Plymouth Colony: “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 the fruits of our labors. Read 7 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. The biggest fact about Thanksgiving in the nineteenth century is it became an annual holiday in 1863. That part of the history is well, Plymouth Rock solid. Most of the details in the story of the first Thanksgiving of 1621 are embellished at best (and largely made-up), with known details lacking aside from the few sentences Edward Winslow wrote in the only surviving record of the event. A Brief History of Thanksgiving December 1, 2015 June 26, 2016 HSWV Thanksgiving, even before being acknowledged as an official holiday, has been around for centuries. It was about turkey and dressing, love and laughter, a time for the family to gather around a feast and … Not all states accepted the change. Come Thanksgiving Day each year, many of us give the nod to Pilgrims and Indians and talk of making ready for a harsh first winter in the New World. However, the feasting, diplomacy, and recreation described by Winslow were typical of a harvest feast and not of a thanksgiving as the Puritans recognized the term. In 1620, 120 passengers including the English Puritans now referred to as the Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic Ocean and established the Plymouth Colony in the southeastern portion of contemporary Massachusetts. The attendees spent time doing recreational activities including firing weapons. Others pinpoint 1637 as the true origin of Thanksgiving, owing to the fact that the Massachusetts colony governor John Winthrop declared a day to celebrate colonial soldiers who had just slaughtered hundreds of Pequot men, women, and children in what is now Mystic, Connecticut. The First Thanksgiving This holiday has a long history, which started in 1620 when a Protestantreligious group known today as‘Pilgrims’ arrived in the NewWorld on board of the shipcalled Mayflower, and settled inwhat is now known as the stateof Massachusetts. Listen to, or read the story below to refresh your memory a bit and get to know some of the people who were at the very first Thanksgiving table. This culture is shown through the origin, history, old and modern traditions, and food of Thanksgiving. The confusion continued in 1940 and 1941. After Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865, President Andrew Johnson set the first Thursday in December as a day of thanksgiving but moved the annual holiday back to the last Thursday of November the next year. It is a time of turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and love. The History of the First Thanksgiving: http://historyofmassachusetts.org/the-first-thanksgiving/, A Short History of Thanksgiving: From Pilgrim Myth to Modern Celebration: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:N.C._Wyeth_-_Thanksgiving_with_Indians_(detail).jpg {{PD-US}} and https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Turkey_and_gourds_(30885781610).jpg (CC0 1.0). These Thanksgiving stories will remind you about the history and the meaning of Thanksgiving. Since I was the only one who knew what the holiday was all about, they asked me to prepare a short history of Thanksgiving to share with them. Interestingly, nowhere in the text of President Lincoln’s proclamation is any mention of Pilgrims and Indigenous tribes. We all think that we know the history of Thanksgiving. Most do not show off their shooting skills; parades, football, and other sports fill the time before and after eating instead. Likewise, pumpkin would have been served mashed or boiled in the early years of the nation but would eventually form the basis of the ubiquitous pumpkin pie once additional food supplies arrived from Europe on ships. New York: Clarkson Potter/Publishers. The Story of Thanksgiving The Pilgrims, who celebrated the first thanksgiving in America, were fleeing religious persecution in their native England. Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States and the second Monday of October in Canada.It is celebrated as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year. Turkey has been the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving Day table from nearly the beginning and may have been eaten in 1621 as the fowl hunted for the feast.