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Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the US. This gives a nice account of the origin of the day:

The harvest in October was very successful and the Pilgrims found themselves with enough food to put away for the winter. There was corn, fruits and vegetables, fish to be packed in salt, and meat to be cured over smoky fires.

The Pilgrims had much to celebrate, they had built homes in the wilderness, they had raised enough crops to keep them alive during the long coming winter, they were at peace with their Indian neighbors. They had beaten the odds and it was time to celebrate.

The Pilgrim Governor William Bradford proclaimed a day of thanksgiving to be shared by all the colonists and the neighboring Native Americans. They invited Squanto and the other Indians to join them in their celebration. Their chief, Massasoit, and 90 braves came to the celebration which lasted for 3 days. They played games, ran races, marched and played drums. The Indians demonstrated their skills with the bow and arrow and the Pilgrims demonstrated their musket skills. Exactly when the festival took place is uncertain, but it is believed the celebration took place in mid-October.

But it was Abraham Lincoln who made it official:

The custom of an annually celebrated thanksgiving, held after the harvest, continued through the years. During the American Revolution (late 1770's) a day of national thanksgiving was suggested by the Continental Congress.

In 1817 New York State had adopted Thanksgiving Day as an annual custom. By the middle of the 19th century many other states also celebrated a Thanksgiving Day. In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln appointed a national day of thanksgiving. Since then each president has issued a Thanksgiving Day proclamation, usually designating the fourth Thursday of each November as the holiday.

The Pilgrims were deeply religious Christians, and it is likely that they were inspired by the Jewish holiday of Sukot:

Many Americans, upon seeing a decorated sukkah for the first time, remark on how much the sukkah (and the holiday generally) reminds them of Thanksgiving. The American pilgrims, who originated the Thanksgiving holiday, were deeply religious people. As they were trying to find a way to express their thanks for their survival and for the harvest, it is quite possible that they looked to the Bible (Leviticus 23:39) for an appropriate way of celebrating and based their holiday in part on the Feast of Tabernacles.

In fact, Judaism has three harvest festivals: Pesah, and Shavu`ot, usually around April and May, correspond to the barley, and wheat harvests. But Sukot, occurring in September or October, is the main harvest festival, in which a wide variety of crops are gathered. These three holidays are hagim - pilgrimage holidays (in modern usage, hag can refer to any holiday, not just pilgrimage holidays). An appropriate celebration for the Pilgrims!

UPDATE: Original document describing the first Thanksgiving.

Posted by David Boxenhorn at November 25, 2004 08:37 PM