Thanksgiving Customs And Traditions
How It All Began...
Thanksgiving is America's most typical, most distinctively American holiday. It's a day for family and feasting, and for giving thanks for all of our blessings.
Thanksgiving is a day set aside for us to give thanks to God for all of the blessings we received during the year.
Contrary to popular beliefs, the Pilgrims were not the first to have feasts of thanksgiving. Harvest Feasts were practiced by the Indians many, many years before settlers arrived on our shores. Also, they were held by earlier settlers in Virginia and by Spanish settlers in the Southwest.
Still, a feast of Thanksgiving was a harvest festival held by the Pilgrims to give thanks for surviving their first year in America, and for their crops. The Indians had given them seed, and their twenty acres of Indian corn had grown abundantly. For this reason, Thanksgiving still takes place after all of the crops have been harvested. This first day of celebration wasn't called "Thanksgiving", back then, but two years later, they set apart a day of thanksgiving to give thanks for rain that ended a long, dry period. Thereafter, thanksgiving days were celebrated irregularly. In 1636, the General Court of Massachusetts enacted a law empowering the governor and council to proclaim days of feasting or thanksgiving whenever the occasion was offered.
The first Thanksgiving was held in the American Colonies sometime between September 21 and November 9, 1621. The exact date is not known; however, it was less than a year after the Pilgrims had arrived on the Mayflower in New England on December 21, 1620. They were tired and sick after their long voyage -- only half of the thirty-eight who crossed the Atlantic from England had survived the harsh winter, including only four women.
The early Pilgrims of Plymouth had come to America to escape religious persecution. They were poor, and largely illiterate. Most of them had always lived in towns and knew nothing of how to survive in this new country. They had intended to land in Virginia, but the Mayflower's skipper made a miscalculation and landed in Massachusetts. As the Mayflower stayed at anchor during the winter, the men who survived cut down trees, dragged them by hand, and built houses and a fort for protection.
They were not good at hunting - most had never fired a gun or shot a crossbow. Although there were plenty of fish, their hooks were too large for bay fish. Their supply of food was soon gone. They would have all perished in the bitter winter except for two Indians, Samoset and Squanto. Squanto showed the colonists how to hunt and how to catch fish.
He taught them how to plant Indian corn and squash. The men had to sit up at night to prevent wolves from digging up the fish that they planted along with the corn seed for fertilizer.
Despite poor crops of peas, wheat and barley, their corn crop was bountiful. Governor William Bradford arranged a harvest festival to give thanks to God for the progress the colony had made. They invited the Indians to come and help them celebrate, and ninety of the friendly savages came. The Indians brought five deer for all to eat. Their harvest celebration of thanks lasted three days.
For their first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims and Indians ate cod, sea bass, wild fowl such as geese, ducks and swans, wild turkeys, clams, eel and other fish. They had cranberries, wild plums, leeks and watercress. Some of their vegetables were eaten raw, but most were boiled, as was most of their meat. The turkeys, which were wild, were tough and stringy. Among the desserts served were pudding and ashcakes (cornmeal cakes baked in ashes). Beer was the beverage of choice, even for children, because the water was considered unreliable. Everyone ate outdoors at large tables, and enjoyed games and a military review.
After this first celebration of Thanksgiving, the next two years were hard, with draught almost ruining their crops. When rain finally came, they held another day of thanksgiving. The custom of having Thanksgiving Day spread from Plymouth to other New England Colonies, and Thanksgiving came to be celebrated following harvests throughout the colonies. It wasn't until the third year of the Civil War, on October 3, 1863, that Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving. . After the war, in 1864, the last Thursday in November was proclaimed the national Thanksgiving day. For 75 years, the President formally declared that Thanksgiving would be celebrated on the last Thursday of November. In 1939 and 1940, it was celebrated on the third Thursday because of a directive by Franklin D. Roosevelt in order to lengthen the shopping period between Thanksgiving and Christmas to help businesses. But in 1951, because of public outcry, the US Congress named the fourth Thursday of November as the official Thanksgiving Day, and it has remained so. Thanksgiving is now a legal holiday, celebrated by all Americans everywhere.
Famous Thanksgiving Quotes:
"Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor... Now therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the twenty-sixth day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the Beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind care and protection of the people of this country."
...George Washington
Thanksgiving Day does not mark merely a specific festival. It marks a continuity of life and all that is in or of it.
....Edward Elwell Whiting
Thanksgiving is the holiday of peace, the celebration of work and the simple life... a true folk-festival that speaks the poetry of the turn of the seasons, the beauty of seed time and harvest, the ripe product of the year-- and the deep, deep connection of all these things with God.
...Ray Stannard Baker
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