Read this story and dazzle your family and friends with some cool facts while you tuck into your turkey and pumpkin pie.
- The Betty Editors, BettyConfidential.com
That First Thanksgiving
Yes, the Pilgrims did celebrate a harvest festival in 1621 that we
tend to think of as the first Thanksgiving. It was a year after
they had landed at Plymouth Rock. And that first year was a tough
one. They lost 46 of the original 102 who sailed on the Mayflower.
But in the fall they had a bountiful harvest and invited the local
Wampanoag Indians who had helped them survive the first difficult
winter to the feast.
The Wampanoags brought venison, which was probably the main course. The Pilgrims also served wild ducks and geese and washed it down with beer. But pumpkin pie, stuffing and bread rolls were not on the menu. The Pilgrims had no ovens for baking and very little flour or sugar. And they didn’t use forks, so it was knives, spoons and fingers for scarfing down the big spread.
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George Washington’s Thanksgiving
In New England, there were various other Thanksgiving Days
proclaimed during the last part of the 17th century and the early
18th century. Some were held in June, others — harvest festivals —
in October and November. After the Constitution was signed, George
Washington proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving on November
26, 1789, exactly 220 years ago.
Who Was Against Thanksgiving?
Some thought of it as a local New England remembrance not worth
celebrating. President Thomas Jefferson, a Virginian, was against a
national Thanksgiving Day.
The Woman Who Made the Day
Sarah Josepha Hale, one of those remarkable Victorian women, is
really responsible for establishing Thanksgiving Day as we know it.
Sarah was a writer and an editor of Godey’s Lady Book, the biggest
women’s magazine of the time and the author of the poem “Mary Had A
Little Lamb,” which we all probably can recite. Feisty and
determined, she felt a day of thanks might help unite the country.
She lobbied for the holiday for years and wrote, “We have too few
holidays… Thanksgiving like the Fourth of July should be considered
a national festival and observed by all our people. There is a deep
moral influence in these periodical seasons of rejoicing, in which
whole communities participate. They bring out… the best sympathies
in our natures.”
Lincoln finally gave into Sarah’s 40-year campaign and proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1863, during the darkest days of the Civil War. In his proclamation he was surprisingly positive about the state of the nation, noting that even in the “midst of a war of unequaled magnitude and severity” America’s population and wealth had grown, its boundaries had increased and “except in the theater of military conflict, laws have been respected and harmony has prevailed.”
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Day and Dates: Why is Thanksgiving on a Thursday? Good question. Nobody seems to know exactly but in all the early proclamations establishing the holiday, it is always on a Thursday. Considering that beer, and lots of it, was always the drink of choice maybe they realized it would take a couple of days to sober up after the feast to be ready for church on Sunday. Lincoln established Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November. President Roosevelt changed it to the third Thursday to lengthen the Christmas shopping season. But there was a public outcry, and in 1941 Thanksgiving was sanctioned by Congress as a legal holiday on the fourth Thursday.
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