Today, the fourth Thursday in November, is celebrated in the United States as a day of thanksgiving. On this day, many will travel across town or across the country to be with their families, eat a celebratory meal, and give thanks for their blessings, whatever they may be. I'm thankful for my family, the roof over our heads, and the job that allows me to provide for both.
The short-form story of the US Thanksgiving Holiday is this: "In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states. It wasn't until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November"
As with most things historical, there is some disagreement about when the first Thanksgiving was held in the new world, and by whom.
The claim of where the first Thanksgiving was held in the United States, and even the Americas, has often been a subject of debate. Author and teacher Robyn Gioia and Michael Gannon of the University of Florida have argued that the earliest attested "Thanksgiving" celebration in what is now the United States was celebrated by the Spanish on September 8, 1565, in what is now Saint Augustine, Florida. Similarly, many historians point out that the first thanksgiving celebration in the United States was held in Virginia, and not in Plymouth. Thanksgiving services were routine in what was to become the Commonwealth of Virginia as early as 1607. A day of Thanksgiving was codified in the founding charter of Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia in 1619.
In Canada, the multiple, parallel origins of the Thanksgiving holiday are similar, yet different. The origin of the first Thanksgiving in Canada goes back to the explorer Martin Frobisher, who had been trying to find a northern passage to the Pacific Ocean. Frobisher's Thanksgiving celebration was not for harvest, but in thanks for surviving the long journey from England through the perils of storms and icebergs. On his third and final voyage to these regions in 1578 Frobisher held a formal ceremony in Frobisher Bay in Baffin Island in present Day Nunavut to give thanks to God and in a service ministered by the preacher Robert Wolfall they celebrated Communion, the first ever service in these regions. Years later, the tradition of a feast would continue as more settlers began to arrive in the Canadian colonies.
The origins of Canadian Thanksgiving can also be traced to the French settlers who came to New France with explorer Samuel de Champlain in the early 17th century, who also took to celebrating their successful harvests. The French settlers in the area typically had feasts at the end of the harvest season and continued throughout the winter season, even sharing their food with the indigenous peoples of the area. Champlain had also proposed for the creation of the Order of Good Cheer in 1606. As many more settlers arrived in Canada, more celebrations of good harvest became common. New immigrants into the country, such as the Irish, Scottish and Germans, would also add their own traditions to the harvest celebrations. Most of the U.S. aspects of Thanksgiving (such as the turkey or what were called Guineafowls originating from Madagascar), were incorporated when United Empire Loyalists began to flee from the United States during the American Revolution and settled in Canada.
In 1817, New York became the first of several US states to officially adopt an annual Thanksgiving holiday; each celebrated it on a different day, however, and the American South remained largely unfamiliar with the tradition. In 1827, the noted magazine editor and prolific writer Sarah Josepha Hale—author, among countless other things, of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb”—launched a campaign to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. For 36 years, she published numerous editorials and sent scores of letters to governors, senators, presidents and other politicians. Abraham Lincoln finally heeded her request in 1863, at the height of the Civil War, in a proclamation entreating all Americans to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.” He scheduled Thanksgiving for the final Thursday in November, and it was celebrated on that day almost every year since. Thanksgiving was subsequently proclaimed by every president after Lincoln. The date was changed a couple of times, most recently by Franklin Roosevelt, who set it up one week to the next-to-last Thursday in order to create a longer Christmas shopping season. Public uproar against this decision caused the president to move Thanksgiving back to its original date two years later. And in 1941, Thanksgiving was finally sanctioned by Congress as a legal holiday, as the fourth Thursday in November.
Regardless of who started the tradition, it's one that I've enjoyed every year. Among the things I am thankful for is the circumstances that have allowed me to come to know so many interesting people here at AutoPuzzles. The blessing of your friendship and camaraderie are something I enjoy greatly.
I will be traveling (cross-town) today to enjoy a Thanksgiving feast with my wife's family. Tomorrow, I will be cooking the traditional Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, stuffing, sweat potatoes, cranberries and more, for those family members who will be elsewhere today.
I'd love to hear about your stories of Thanksgiving - holiday or otherwise.
