The True Origins of Thanksgiving: Myths and Realities
Friends
Every fourth Thursday of November, Americans engage in a peculiar ritual of stuffing turkeys before stuffing themselves, all while pretending to care about football and avoiding political discussions with the father-in-law.
This gravy-soaked celebration supposedly traces back to some peaceful feast between Pilgrims and Native Americans-thought history tells a far messier tale-and has since morphed into a strange amalgamation of gratitude, gluttony, and doorbuster sales that somehow defines our national character.
Back StoryThe traditional American narrative places the first Thanksgiving in 1621, following a devastating winter in which disease and exposure killed approximately half of the English religious refugees who had founded Plymouth Colony in 1620.
History often glosses over how woefully unprepared the Pilgrims were upon arrival—dressed in thin garments better suited for English summers, their food supplies nearly exhausted, and utterly ignorant of how to cultivate the unfamiliar soil. Their famous feast likely commemorated not merely thankfulness, but their astonishment at having survived at all.
Textbooks also often skim over how the Pilgrims would have been toast without the Wampanoag people—these indigenous neighbors who basically ran a crash course in “How Not To Die In New England 101.” While the colonists fumbled with unfamiliar soil, the Wampanoag taught them to plant corn with dead fish as fertilizer (smelly but effective!), showed them which local berries wouldn’t give them explosive diarrhea, and essentially babysat a bunch of city dwellers who arrived woefully unprepared for wilderness survival.
Massasoit, the Wampanoag Indian chief who maintained peaceful relations with the English in the area of Plymouth, Massachusetts, visits the Pilgrims. (Bettman / Getty)November 27,
Dinner featured venison, some prehistoric-looking ocean bugs (shellfish), and whatever birds they could whack with a stick (definitely not our plump, domesticated butterballs). No pumpkin pie in sight—unless you count plain, boiled squash as “dessert.” And nobody was shouting “Happy Thanksgiving!” across the table—this was a Harvest Celebration. Or as I like to call it- a celebration of not starving.
Side Note: For those interested in learning more about the Wampanoag people, the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe—one of only three surviving tribes from what was once a nation of sixty-nine—maintains a comprehensive website detailing their history, culture, and ongoing presence in America. Click here to visit.
Colonial and Early U.S. Period
The proclamation was printed in newspapers, including the October 9, 1789, issue of the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser.Back when America was just a baby in colonial diapers (1600s-1700s), folks would randomly declare “Hey, it’s Thanksgiving!” whenever something good happened. Rain? Thanksgiving! Corn didn’t die? Thanksgiving! Managed to shoot more British soldiers than they shot you? Oh, you better believe that’s a Thanksgiving!
After we kicked King George III to the curb, George Washington (the OG George) decided on November 26, 1789, that the whole country should have one big gratitude party for surviving the Revolutionary War and inventing a new government.
But like that weird uncle who visits only when he feels like it, Thanksgiving didn’t show up regularly yet.
To read the Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789 click here.
A Little Lamb and a Famous Turkey
Press and Sun-BulletinBinghamton, New York • Sun, Nov 24, 1957 Page 9
Poet Sarah Josepha Hale—yes, the woman who unleashed “Mary Had a Little Lamb” upon generations of schoolchildren—had another peculiar obsession: badgering five consecutive U.S. presidents until they finally caved and made Thanksgiving official. From her perch as editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book (think Victorian-era Vogue, but with more corsets and moral instruction), she waged a decades-long turkey crusade that would make modern lobbyists blush.
She pestered five presidents with her turkey-day manifestos—poor Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and finally, the bearded wonder himself, Abraham Lincoln. Her quill never quit!
In 1863, while the nation was busy tearing itself apart, Hale launched her final epistolary assault on Lincoln’s inbox. Perhaps worn down by the relentless barrage of Thanksgiving propaganda (or possibly charmed by her turkey doodles in the margins), Honest Abe finally caved and proclaimed the last Thursday in November as the official day of thanks for Americans.
Hale hoped thanksgiving would serve as America’s emotional hearth—a day when the nation’s varied peoples could gather around common tables to break bread together, bow their heads in shared reverence, and collectively count their blessings, and creating bonds of unity.
Changes, Confusion, and Collective FrustrationIn a quirky Depression-era attempt to boost retail sales, President Franklin D. Roosevelt unilaterally shifted Thanksgiving forward by seven days in 1939—declaring the third Thursday of November as the new turkey day.
The calendar coup sparked nationwide chaos: 23 states refused to budge, creating a bizarre patchwork of dual Thanksgivings where families across state lines couldn’t coordinate dinners. Republicans mockingly dubbed it “Franksgiving,” while Atlantic & Pacific grocery stores printed calendars with both dates marked “Thanksgiving?”
“[S]ome governors declared November 30th as Thanksgiving. And so, depending upon where one lived, Thanksgiving was celebrated on the 23rd and the 30th. This was worse than changing the date in the first place because families that lived in states such as New York did not have the same day off as family members in states such as Connecticut! [And so] family and friends were unable to celebrate the holiday together.” -Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
Congress finally intervened in 1941, permanently anchoring the holiday to November’s fourth Thursday—where it has stubbornly roosted ever since.
To read FDR’s proclamation click here.
Final ThoughtsPoor Thanksgiving—the middle child of holidays, sandwiched awkwardly between Halloween’s sugar high and Christmas’s tinsel tsunami. It’s like that weird uncle nobody invites but who shows up anyway, expecting you to pretend you’re thrilled about his special cranberry-and-stale marshmallow casserole. We all just sit there, wallets already whimpering in anticipation of Black Friday, wondering if we can sneak away to the bathroom long enough to check Facebook or TikTok on our phones.
However, its blood-soaked history screams the vital importance of this day for our nation’s very soul! When we confront the raw, primal reasons for our celebration—the desperate clawing for survival against impossible odds, the life-or-death alliances forged in the wilderness, the revolutionary act of defining our destiny as a sovereign people—we must acknowledge that Thanksgiving isn’t just a holiday, it may be the beating heart of American identity.
Until next time, Keep Reading and Stay Caffeinated.
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“Thanksgiving Proclamation, 3 October 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-04-02-0091. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, vol. 4, 8 September 1789 – 15 January 1790, ed. Dorothy Twohig. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993, pp. 131–132.]
Thanksgiving | George Washington’s Mount Vernon
Thanksgiving Belongs to the Wampanoag Tribe – The Atlantic
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