May each of you celebrate the holiday in your own personal way. Be safe. (Image www.britannica.com)
Images of Thanksgiving include football, family reunions, favorite foods, and Pilgrims. We will certainly enjoy all of the above in the week to come, along with personal reasons dear to each of us.
There are many reasons to celebrate thankfulness, a century-old event in a multitude of cultures around the world. Safe return of warriors and political reconciliation along with personal reconciliations are meaningful for everyone. Successful harvests, rain after a lengthy drought, recovery from dreaded diseases all call for a joyous outflow of gratitude.
Four states, Florida, Texas, Maine and Virginia, claim documented thanksgiving celebrations before 1621 when the “historical birth of the American Thanksgiving” began. In Texas when the Onate expedition crossed the arid Sonora desert and arrived at Rio Grande del Norte in May 1598, the 400 colonists, the small army, and priest and missionaries, feasted, rested, gave thanks for their arrival. Yet, they were not at their final destination. Later that summer the caravan arrived in Santa Fe. Native Americans did not celebrate the disease the newcomers brought, or their cruel ways of dealing with each other.
In 1621 the most famous of all early thanksgiving celebrations took place at Plimoth Plantation near Cape Cod. According to “Plimoth Plantation” at Encyclopedia Britannica.com, about one year after their arrival, a few colonists went out “fowling” for wild turkeys. Most likely they were actually hunting for easier prey such as geese and ducks. Reports indicate the hunters killed in one day enough to feed the settlement of roughly 50 people for almost a week. However, the neighboring Native Americans, some 90 Wampanoags appeared at the settlement gate. Most likely the visitors unnerved the colonists, but they welcomed the guests. The Wampanoags brought venison, fish, eels, and shellfish.
Over the next few days the two groups socialized without incident, but in limited speech. Men played games, ran races, and all drank wine and beer. Plimoth Plantation records described a somewhat disorderly affair, but the socialization sealed a treaty between the two groups that lasted until King Philip’s War in 1676-76. That’s fifty years of neutrality between Anglos and Native Americans, something of a record.
New Englanders continued to celebrate Thanksgiving on such auspicious events as a military victory or the end of a drought. The U. S. Continental Congress proclaimed a national Thanksgiving upon the enactment of the Constitution. However, after 1798 Congress left Thanksgiving declarations to the states. Some objected to the national government’s involvement in religious observance. Southerners were slow to adopt a New England custom, and others took offence over the day’s being used to hold partisan speeches and parades.
While sectional tensions developed more heatedly in the 19th century, the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, Sarah Josepha Hale, campaigned for a national Thanksgiving Day to promote unity. She finally won the support of President Abraham Lincoln. On October 3, 1863, during the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving to be celebrated on Thursday, November 26.
Until 1930 every president proclaimed the holiday, usually on the last Thursday in November. However, in an effort to jumpstart the economy during the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday to the third week in November, allowing more time for Christmas shopping. Not every state complied. Finally, with a joint resolution in Congress, in 1941 Roosevelt proclaimed that the fourth Thursday in November would become Thanksgiving Day in America.