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What the heck is Thanksgiving anyway?

By Ida Seitter

It is weird to think that without the help of the “people of the first light,” or Wampanoag native people, we might not celebrate the biggest feast of the year. It is even more unsettling to think that Thanksgiving is not in any way an American creation. Here it is, one of the most popular American holidays of the whole year, and it is, in fact, stolen. But alas, like many of America’s historic truths, it’s not quite what we learned in elementary school. It is just another holiday that has been mashed together, exploiting those we took advantage of, while stealing ideas from other cultures and making it our own. Alright, this is not a completely fair rundown, because Thanksgiving is not really an authentic holiday; it is more like a tradition that we (Americans) value as important. When we celebrate Thanksgiving, most of us are not necessarily giving thanks to the Wampanoag tribe, or, for that matter, the pilgrims. Instead, it is one of the few days every year that we can take pause in our busy lives to spend time with our loved ones and eat a surplus of 2,000 calories in one sitting. Despite this, it is interesting and actually pretty important that we at least know a little bit about the history of this obscure tradition.

As young children, we all learn that the roots of this famous turkey day begin on the wintry shores of Massachusetts, in 1621. This is a falsehood. The first Thanksgiving is actually almost impossible to give a definite beginning because, according to the Plymouth Plantation, “people all across the world from every culture have been celebrating and giving thanks for thousands of years.” A Thanksgiving is, in fact, just a feast that many would hold to celebrate good harvests, weather, and religious events. But if we had to give it a real beginning (in America), we wouldn’t even use the popular 1621; we would instead recognize its birth as September 8, 1565. On this day, the Spanish first landed on the shores of what is now known as St. Augustine, Florida (i.e. nowhere near Massachusetts). On September 8, Spanish sailors had America’s first Thanksgiving, giving thanks for their safe arrival to the “new” world.

Now that we know that Thanksgiving is not our idea, and that technically it did not even start in America where we thought it did, we can examine the traditional historic roots of the American Thanksgiving. The pilgrims and Native Americans did meet in the autumn of 1621, but it really was because the pilgrims (unadjusted to their new land) were starving, and the Wampanoags helped them out. But although this feast had every aspect of what we would consider necessary elements for a typical Thanksgiving (food, alcohol, and dancing), the pilgrims would have never called it a Thanksgiving. For the pilgrims, a Thanksgiving was entirely religious; a particularly somber occasion that focused on fasting, intense reflection and prayer. For all of those who watch the History Channel, the 1621 “Thanksgiving” would not have been considered a real Thanksgiving, because it was secular (non-religious).

After 1621, it became a tradition that every autumn, each state’s governor would designate certain days for feasts as a result of good harvests, and successful military battles. The most popular battle occurred in 1777, when the Continental Congress declared that all of the colonists should celebrate the victory over the British in the form of a feast, a Thanksgiving. Events like this kept occurring enough that, according to the Plymouth Plantation, by the “mid-19th century [Thanksgiving] was officially celebrated in many states, but varied on the dates.” The non-cohesiveness of the holiday was finally changed by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, at the persistent demands of the editor Sarah Hale, who thought that an official national holiday would “unite a nation during civil war.” Overworked factory employees of the industrial revolution couldn’t complain; an extra day off was like gold.

Over the next hundred and fifty years, Thanksgiving became the day identified by turkeys and parades, with department stores treating it as the perfect day to “kick off the Christmas season.” It is not surprising, then, to discover that the day after Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the entire year, affectionately nicknamed “Black Friday.”

Other myths and facts surrounding Thanksgiving are also pretty interesting, such as what types of food the Pilgrims ate at their feasts. When we think of Thanksgiving dinner, we think of turkey, pumpkin pie, and mashed potatoes. These are all incorrect, for Kathleen Curtin, a food historian, claims that the new settlers had no turkeys, no recipe for pumpkin pie or sugar, and no potatoes. They instead feasted on seafood, venison, nuts, vegetables (no squash!), and seal. Even the idea of corn on the cob is wrong, for at the time of these feasts, corn was rare. Another interesting tidbit is that in 1947 it became White House tradition for the National Turkey Foundation to present the national live turkey to the president. The president, in accordance with tradition, always pardons the turkey (from death), and it returns to the farm it came from, after meandering on the White House lawn.

Just because we have now found out that Thanksgiving is not some day that commemorates any important event in American history, or even any religious holiday, doesn’t mean that it is not important. On the contrary, this day is extremely important, because it is the one day we can give thanks; thanks for our families, our lives, and our country. I just would like to see the pilgrim hats and Native American feathers left out of the equation, because who are we kidding? It has nothing to do with that.

Originally Published: November 19, 2008

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