Thanksgiving Day: What do we know about it?

Thanksgiving Day: What do we know about it?

According to the National Archives, the first Congress before recessing in November 1789 passed a resolution asking President George Washington to recommend a national day of public thanksgiving. He evidently liked the idea and declared Thursday, November 26 “A Day of publick thanksgivin”. It was not about the Pilgrims but more likely due to the passage of the U.S. Constitution marking the beginning our federal government. 

Subsequent presidents followed Washington’s lead but the day of the week and sometimes month were different. It was not until 1863 Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving. In North Hampton sixteen year old Samuel A. Dow noted in his diary that it was Thanksgiving Day, a pleasant day (weather-wise), and he had spent it in the woods a gaming.  

On Thursday, November 28,1878 Simon Howard Leavitt wrote in his diary that he went to Greenland and then he, wife Grace and son Fred had dinner at George Berry’s house.

In 1939 when Thanksgiving would have fallen on the last day of November, leaving only four short weeks til Christmas, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a Proclamation changing Thanksgiving to the second to last Thursday of November. 32 states followed his lead but 16 states stuck with the last Thursday of the month. It was not resolved until 1941 when Congress came up with a compromise – establishing the holiday on the fourth Thursday of November which took into account those times there were five Thursdays in the month. It became a Federal holiday the following year. 

What about what most Americans consider the first Thanksgiving – the Pilgrims and Wampanoag feast in 1621? As described by historian Andrew Lipman in his award-winning history Squanto: A Native Odyssey, the Indians brought five deer whose carcasses had been prepared for roasting. The settlers, after a good harvest, provided beans and corn. There also was fowl – ducks, geese, and perhaps turkey -- and lots of shellfish. Plymouth was by the water, after all. 

It was a days-long cook-out style feast where settlers sat on stools or the ground and there were bowls of cornmeal stew as well as the handheld spits of cooked venison and fish. There were target-shooting contests, dancing and singing. Miles Standish had his men fire off muskets and fowling pieces in volleys.  

According to Lipman, there’s not much evidence that either colonists or the Wampanoag gave the feast much thought afterwards. It was not until 1841 that Thanksgiving became associated with the Pilgrims. Alexander Young in his 1841 book Chronicle of the Pilgrim Fathers referred to their 1621 feast as the first Thanksgiving. And nineteenth century America made it a legend. 

The day is now considered by some a National Day of Mourning for Native Americans in protest against Thanksgiving’s traditional narrative and in remembrance of the suffering of indigenous peoples since the Europeans’ arrival.