A History of Thanksgiving

For those of you who read our newsletter and aren’t living in the United States, or for those of you living here who could use a “refresher” course, we’ve done a little research to help keep you informed on this important American holiday. Here in the States, as well as abroad among the American expatriate societies, Thanksgiving is generally one of the most widely celebrated family oriented holidays which we hold dear.

Originally the pilgrims who sailed to America aboard the Mayflower were members of the English Separatist Church. This church was a Puritan sect and the members had fled England for Holland in an attempt to escape religious persecution and enjoy religious tolerance. The Separatists eventually were thought of as “ungodly” by the Dutch, so they sought a better life elsewhere. Thinking out of the box, they negotiated with a London stock company to finance a pilgrimage to America. The company backing the trip was not about to hand over a ship and some money without some insurance from the travelers. Most of those aboard the Mayflower therefore were non-Separatist but were hired to protect the company’s interests. Only about a third of the original colonists were Separatists.

During their first year in America, as most of us know, the colonists survived a year of disease, hunger and diminishing hopes. Unlike some adventurers that traveled to the New World, the Separatists were lucky and survived.

In the autumn of 1621, 90 Wampanoag Indians and the 52 remaining English colonists gathered for a three-day harvest feast. The Fall had brought a bountiful harvest and was cause for special celebration and thankfulness. No one knows whether the two cultures ever came together again after this first Thanksgiving. Clearly, they didn’t speak the same language, so the extent to which they intermingled remains a mystery.

We do know that the Pilgrims owed their survival in large part to a Native American named Squanto. Squanto had spent 9 years in England, only returning to the New World on John Smith’s 1613 voyage. Luckily for the Separatists, he just happened to be living in the neighborhood that they choose for their new home. Having learned English as a slave in Europe, he was able to serve as an interpreter for the group. He taught the pilgrims practical skills such as how to catch eel and grow corn.

Everything we know today about that first harvest feast, historians have deduced from two slim passages written by colonists. Other than the thankfulness and the amount of food consumed, Americans celebrate a holiday based mainly on the romanticized history of the feast, rather than the historical one.

One of the most significant dissimilarities between the current holiday and the original is that of the feast itself. The modern-day meal consists of turkey and/or ham, stuffing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberries and such, followed by pies of all sorts, particularly pumpkin and apple. Because of the time of year of the original feast, many vegetables were not available. Many moons ago when the pilgrims shared that first meal with the Indians, the dishes served were mainly fish and meat dishes of all sorts: goose, duck, crane, swan, partridge, wild turkey, eagle, venison, seal, cod, eel, lobster and clams. Although there were pigs aboard the Mayflower, there is no evidence to suggest that these pigs were slaughtered for their feast.

Contrary to the picture we hold in our heads of the first Thanksgiving, because of the ingredients available and the methods of cooking at their disposal, the pilgrims did not bake pies. It is highly unlikely that they had any sugar left from the stock they had aboard the Mayflower. Right, no pies! No green bean casserole with fried onions, either.

It is now thought that we have the creative musings of a magazine editor in the mid-1800s to thank for how we spend the fourth Thursday of November each year. That being said, though, we must believe that Thanksgiving today is enjoyed with the same relish, spirit of celebration and overindulgence which the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag Indians shared in 1621.

Please visit www.allabouthistory.org for a very of informative website featuring information about Thanksgiving, the Mayflower and those first Pilgrims to arrive in America.