The Real History of Thanksgiving

This post was written by Monica Smith, Chief of Informal Learning at the Library of Congress. 

As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving on November 28 during Native American Heritage Month, I thought it would be interesting to dig into a brief, hopefully fascinating history of this uniquely American holiday. Have fun as you enlighten family and friends with interesting factoids and myth busters at your Thanksgiving feast.

Most of us associate “the first Thanksgiving” with dour English Puritan settlers who had recently landed in Plymouth Colony (what is now Massachusetts) and shared an autumn celebration with the local indigenous people in 1621. However, hosting community “days of thanksgiving” featuring entertainment and feasting as well as religious rites was a long-held tradition among both Europeans and native Americans (such as the Green Corn Dance). And the British colonial “Pilgrims” weren’t the first Europeans to hold Thanksgiving in North America.

Possibly the first European Thanksgiving service on this continent was hosted by Spanish colonists in what is now Florida. According to the National Park Service, “On September 8, 1565, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (pictured above and 800 Spanish settlers founded the city of St. Augustine in Spanish La Florida. As soon as they were ashore, the landing party celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving. Afterward, Menéndez laid out a meal to which he invited as guests the native Seloy tribe who occupied the site.”

A decade later, another European Thanksgiving was recorded in North America on May 27, 1578, when English explorer Martin Frobisher and about 400 men finally landed safely in what is now Newfoundland, Canada, in their quest to find the Northwest Passage.

For British New England, some historians believe that the Popham Colony in what is now Maine conducted a Thanksgiving service in 1607. [The colony was abandoned a year later and has been overlooked as a predecessor to Plymouth in the New England region]. Also in 1607, British colonists in Jamestown, Virginia, gave thanks for their safe arrival that year, and held another service three years later when a supply ship arrived after a harsh winter.

Other early Virginia colonists known as the “Berkeley Hundred” settlers held a Thanksgiving service in accordance with their colonial charter, which stated that the day of their arrival in 1619 “shall be yearly and perputualy keept [sic] holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty god.” Unfortunately, anger and distrust between European colonists and indigenous people led to violence—all of the Berkeley Hundred settlers were killed during a massacre in 1622.

Not surprisingly, this continent has seen a fraught history from the earliest days of Europeans’ arrivals on what had been Native American lands. Within 40 years, only a quarter of the indigenous population in the American colonies remained due to war and disease brought by Europeans.  [Note that the Library of Congress’ Jefferson, Adams, and Madison buildings in Washington, DC, are located on the ancestral lands of the Nacotchtank (Anacostan), Piscataway Conoy, Pamunkey, and Manahoac people.]

So, with that historical introduction, let’s return to the Thanksgiving holiday most Americans learn about in school. Each year we are reminded that the brave Pilgrims landed in the colony of Massachusetts in 1620 at “Plymouth Rock,” and the following year held the first Thanksgiving with local Native Americans to celebrate their survival.  While you may envision the Pilgrims holding a somber, religious-focused Thanksgiving in 1621, this is far from the truth. The Pilgrims actually rejected the idea of public religious displays. Not only did they host a non-religious Thanksgiving feast (aside from saying grace), but records also indicate they spent three days with their Wampanoag visitors playing games, feasting on a wide range of food, and, yes, even drinking beer.

Sound similar to any of your family’s traditions?

Festivals of Thanksgiving—usually autumn harvest celebrations—continued to be observed sporadically in communities across the British colonies for more than 150 years. Then, after the American Revolution and founding of the United States, Congressman Elias Boudinot of New Jersey proposed in 1789 that the new nation should hold an official “day of public thanks-giving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.” On October 7, 1789, President George Washington proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving for Thursday, November 26, of that year.

Subsequent Presidents proclaimed occasional Thanksgiving Days during their terms of office, either on their own initiative or at the request of Congress. One exception was Thomas Jefferson, who believed it was a conflict of Church and State to require the American people to hold a national day of prayer and thanksgiving.  James Madison announced a national day of Thanksgiving to be held on April 13, 1815—the last such official proclamation until the American Civil War.

Credit for the establishment of an annual national Thanksgiving holiday often goes partially to Sarah Josepha Hale, the so-called “Godmother of Thanksgiving.” Starting in 1827, in her influential role as the editor of Ladies Magazine and Godey’s Lady’s Book, she began printing articles, stories, and recipes about Thanksgiving. She also wrote many letters to governors, senators, and presidents urging them to make it an annual national holiday. Finally, Hale got her wish during the American Civil War. Inspired in part by the recent Union army victory at Gettysburg in July 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a “Day of National Thanksgiving Proclamation” for November 26 of that year and then to continue being observed annually on the fourth Thursday of November.

This schedule lasted until just before World War II. To give merchants more selling days before Christmas, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tinkered with the schedule—assigning Thanksgiving Day to the third Thursday in November in 1939 and 1940. This move met popular resistance, largely because the change required rescheduling annual Thanksgiving Day events such as football games and parades. (Again, sound familiar?) The first American collegiate Thanksgiving Day football game was between Princeton and Yale in 1876. Reportedly the first official Thanksgiving Day Parade was held in Philadelphia in 1920, followed shortly by annual parades in Detroit and New York City.

Finally, in 1941, a Congressional Joint Resolution (77 H. J. Res. 41) returned to Lincoln’s precedent by officially setting the fourth Thursday of November as a Federal holiday for Thanksgiving in the United States. That tradition continues today.

Wishing everyone a very happy, healthy, and peaceful Thanksgiving!