Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all!  There are so many great things to be thankful about this holiday.  So as you sit at your table and give thanks for your many blessings, reflect on some Thanksgiving history that I will share with you.  Enjoy your history lesson!

Most scholars date the first Thanksgiving circa 1621 at Plymouth, Massachusettes or circa 1619 at Berkley Plantation in Virginia.  This traditional Thanksgiving would have been more of a harvest celebration and held in October or September.  Of the two stories, the more traditional date is autumn of 1621. 

The settlers in Plymouth (pilgrims) had named a time to give thanks for their harvest.  This was an autumn feast that praised God for their bounty.  The traditional story is that the Governor of Plymouth invited Massasoit and the Wampanoag people to join them in appreciation of their help and support.  They feasted with the Wampanoag for three whole days. 

It is interesting to note that one scholar disagrees that this is the first ever Thanksgiving in what is now the United States.  One must remember that while Plymouth colony was yet a youngster, St. Augustine Florida was up for urban renewal already.  On September 8, 1565, Pedro Menendez de Aviles celebrated a meal of thanksgiving with the Timuca indians near present day St. Augustine.  They dined on and were thankful for….bean soup.

Which ever tradition you prefer to follow, the US as a whole has decided to follow one of the “English” pilgrim variants.  George Washington issued a proclaimation in 1789 that read: 

“Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th 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…for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed…and also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions—to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually…To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us—and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.”

Six national Proclamations of Thanksgiving were issued in the first thirty years after the founding of the United States of America as an independent federation of States. President George Washington issued two, President John Adams issued two, President Thomas Jefferson made none and President James Madison issued two. After 1815 there were no more Thanksgiving Proclamations.

If it weren’t for Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, the popular women’s journal of the 19th century, Thanksgiving Day would not have existed beyond that.

She wrote editorials and lobbied “that the LAST THURSDAY IN NOVEMBER shall be the DAY OF NATIONAL THANKSGIVING for the American people.”

President Lincoln succumbed to her pressure and proclaimed the last Thursday in November a “prayerful day of Thanksgiving.”

Since then every U.S. President has always made an official Thanksgiving Proclamation on behalf of the nation.

“I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning 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 interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.” The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume VI, “Proclamation of Thanksgiving” (October 3, 1863), p. 497.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt set the date for Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of November in 1939 (approved by Congress in 1941).  (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving for appropriate references)