## Thanksgiving: An American Holiday, An American History

by Diana Karter Appelbaum

Facts on File Publications 1984

CHAPTERS 1 THROUGH 3: THANKSGIVING IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

# **The Plymouth Thanksgiving**

Page 7

Alas for the glories of uplifting myth and heroic legend, history does
not flow in so smooth a channel. Certain as it is that the Plymouth
colonists held a gay and grateful feast in the early autumn of 1621, it
is unclear that the celebration can be labeled a "thanksgiving."
America's Thanksgiving Day, as we know it, did not originate in one
place and year.

Page 9

Governor Bradford, with one eye on the divine Providence, proclaimed a
day of thanksgiving to God, and with the other eye on the local
political situation, extended an invitation to neighboring Indians to
share in the harvest feast. In order to guarantee that the feast served
to cement a peaceful relationship, the three-day long meal was
punctuated by displays of the power of English muskets for the benefit
of suitably impressed Indian guests.

This "first Thanksgiving" was a feast called to suit the needs of the
hour, which were to celebrate the harvest, thank the Lord for His
goodness, and regale and impress the Indians.

# **A Spanish-American Thanksgiving**

Page 14

In 1540, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, a daring young Spaniard, left
his home in Mexico City to march north at the head of 1,500 men
searching for gold and the legendary city of Quivara. He found, instead,
Indians, buffalo, the Grand Canyon, and what are no Arizona, New Mexico,
Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. In May 1541, Coronado and his men were
camped for 14 days along the Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas Panhandle,
which offered abundant food, fresh water and pasture for their horses.
On May 23, they held a service of thanksgiving. Then, after marching
through Kansas and Oklahoma for several more months, Coronado gave up
the idea of finding riches in the Southwest and returned to Mexico City.
Claiming this as the first Thanksgiving is a fine example of Texas
braggadocio.

# **Florida's First Thanksgiving**

Pages 14-15

Half a century before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, a small colony of
French Huguenots established a settlement near present-day Jacksonville,
Florida. On June 30, 1564, their leader, Rene de Laudonniere, recorded
that "We sang a psalm of Thanksgiving unto God, beseeching Him that it
would please Him to continue His accustomed goodness towards us."
Unfortunately, the fledgling colony was wiped out in 1565 by a Spanish
raiding party under the leadership of Pedro Menendez de Aviles. The site
of Florida's "first Thanksgiving" is marked by the Fort Caroline
Memorial, a replica of the original fort on the St. Johns River.

# **Thanksgiving in Maine**

Page 15

Maine's claim to the first Thanksgiving derives from an early attempt at
settlement under the charter of the Plymouth Company, led by George
Popham in 1607. The Popham colonists arrived at the mouth of the
Kennebec River in Maine on August 9, 1607, and held a service of
thanksgiving in gratitude for a safe voyage and landing. Such
spontaneous thanksgiving services for deliverance from danger were
common in that pious age. However, since the attempt at colonization was
abandoned within the year, the only tradition the Popham service spawned
was that of Maine historians laying claim to still another "first
Thanksgiving."

### Thanksgiving in Virginia: Jamestown and Berkeley Hundred

Pages 15-17

Irrefutably first among permanent English settlements on the North
American mainland was Jamestown, in Virginia. The early years were spent
in struggle against disease, Indian attacks and hunger: at Jamestown, in
the fall of 1609, 490 settlers were reduced to 60 by a winter of famine
known as the "starving time." When Lord De la Warr sailed up the James
River in the spring of 1610 carrying supplies from England, the
beleaguered settlement greeted him with a service of thanksgiving that
some modern Virginians have labeled the "first Thanksgiving." Such a
label is pure hyperbole. Far from establishing a national holiday for a
nation not yet dreamed of, Jamestown colonists held a simple prayer
service in gratitude for their providential rescue from starvation.

### A Holiday is Born

Page 19

The newborn Thanksgiving holiday had a Puritan "mother" from
Connecticut, a Pilgrim "father" from Plymouth and, for "grandparents,"
four traditions from the Old World.

### Harvest Home

Page 20

The Harvest Home was a holiday on which the villagers joined together to
bring the last loads of grain from the fields and share a merry feast
when the work was done. . . .There was sufficient taint of idol worship
and evidence of licentious behavior in the old English Harvest Home for
Puritans to reject the custom summarily. They recoiled from these
remnants of the pagan customs that predated Christianity in England, but
memories of the harvest feast lingered all the same . . . . \[T\]he
Puritans had disapproved so many causes for celebration that a holiday
vacuum existed in the young colonies.

### Christmas

Page 24

Like the Harvest Home, Christmas . . . was remembered but not celebrated
by the Puritans . . . . The spirit of Christmas, however, was sorely
missed, and during the 1600s, when Thanksgiving was becoming a popular
festival, small pieces of the English Christmas crept into the
celebration of the Yankee Thanksgiving. Those quintessential English
Christmas dishes, plum pudding and mince pie, became as indispensable a
part of the Thanksgiving menu as turkey and pumpkin pie itself.

### Civil Proclamations

Page 25

Thanksgiving Day, our unique American holiday, ought not to be confused
with still a third "grandparent," the special days of thanksgiving
proclaimed by civil authorities in Europe and throughout the American
colonies. When some stroke of extraordinary good fortune befell a
nation, the civil authorities often declared a day of thanksgiving and
prayer, marked by special services in every church. . . . Coronado,
Popham and the settlers at Jamestown, Plymouth and Boston acted in this
tradition when they held their "first Thanksgivings."

### Religious Proclamations

Page 25

Fourth "grandparent" to the American Thanksgiving Day was the tradition
of individual Puritan congregations declaring days of thanksgiving and
prayer.

### Synthesis of the Traditions

Page 26-30

Although records from the early years are incomplete, a proclamation of
thanksgiving for September18, 1639, survives, as do proclamations for
1644 and for every year from 1649 onward . . . . The entire Western
world shares the custom of special thanksgivings for special causes and
. . . individual Plymouth colony congregations sometimes held harvest
thanksgivings followed by a festive meal. When Connecticut made
Thanksgiving Day an annual festival for general causes, however, a new
holiday was born. Thanksgiving in Connecticut was held every autumn, not
for special reasons, but in gratitude for the ordinary blessings of the
"year past" and for the "fruits of the earth." It was held whether the
harvest was abundant or meager and regardless of events that had
befallen the colony since the previous Thanksgiving Day.

In June 1675, Metacomet, sachem of the Wampanoag Indians, known to
history as King Philip, ended the peaceful coexistence with the Plymouth
Colony begun by his father, Massasoit, in 1621 by attacking the Plymouth
town of Swansea. Total warfare ensued . . . . Surrounded by devastation
and living in dread of attack, the citizens of Connecticut found no
cause to give thanks in 1675. . . . Never again would a governor of
Connecticut omit to declare Thanksgiving Day.

### Thanksgiving Comes of Age in New England

Pages 32-33

An autumn Thanksgiving took root slowly in Massachusetts Bay, being held
most years after 1660 and coexisting with frequent, periodic or
specially declared fasts and thanksgivings. But, by the end of the
century, its roots were so deep that no later governor dared to omit
proclaiming the day.

### Plymouth

Pages 33-34

Thanksgivings were so familiar a part of congregational life that, in
effect, the General Court was regularizing an ongoing custom. It is
noteworthy that whereas the Puritan leaders in Connecticut and
Massachusetts Bay "ordered" or "proclaimed" Thanksgiving Day, Separatist
leaders in Plymouth, more mindful of the principle of congregational
independence from government authority, "proposed," "desired," or
"recommended" the observance in proclamations sent to each congregation.

### Maine, New Hampshire and New Haven

Page 34

Each group followed the customs of its home colony for a time, but as
New Hampshire matured, the governor proclaimed Thanksgiving Day, doing
so for the first time in 1695, and by the first decade of the eighteenth
century, annual proclamations were issued.

### Rhode Island

Page 35

Additional thanksgivings were occasionally set apart by individual
congregations, but a statewide, annual Thanksgiving Day only became
customary in Rhode Island after nationwide days were proclaimed by the
Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War.

### Thanksgiving Becomes Popular

Page 36

Colonial New England in the 1600s was a hotbed of devout, Puritan
conformity. Everyone went to meeting on thanksgiving days, and no one
thought of doing anything livelier afterward than eating dinner at home
with the family.

The rising generation was another story altogether. Massachusetts, in
1692, New Hampshire, in 1700, and Connecticut, in 1750, enacted laws
admonishing the young folk not to "Use any Game, Sport, Play, or
Recreation on . . . Thanksgiving . . . on pain that every Person so
Offending shall for every offence Forfeit the Sum of Ten Shillings." It
was little use. The holy day was becoming a holiday, and the legislation
had little power to alter the forces of social change.

As suggested by these statues, early New England days of thanksgiving,
both those proclaimed in recognition of special beneficences and the
annual autumn Thanksgiving days, were at the outset primarily days of
prayer . . . .

Thanksgiving dinner grew in importance in the late seventeenth century,
adding homecoming relatives, extra pies and platters of roast meat.
Congregations made room for this more elaborate dinner by eliminating
the afternoon service on Thanksgiving Day, first in country districts
where the walk to meeting was long and cold, then in the 1720s in Boston
itself. Soon the feast was as important as the morning prayer service.

### The Custom Prevails

Pages 38-40

\[W\]hen an entire colony shared cause for gratitude, the ministers
would recognize God's graciousness with a decision to hold a
thanksgiving, and the governor and the council would proclaim the day.
This system worked very well while civil and religious authorities were
in close accord, but there arrived the awful day when Charles II was
restored to the throne of England and revoked the self-governing charter
of Massachusetts Bay . . . .

When the eighteenth century dawned, governors of Connecticut,
Massachusetts (incorporating Plymouth) and New Hampshire were in the
annual habit of proclaiming an autumn thanksgiving, which was observed
as a day of both prayer and feasting. No colony west or south of New
England celebrated a New England-style thanksgiving, although every
colony did, on occasion, observe the separate and ancient custom of
appointing special days of thanks. New England pastors and governors
were also ready to declare special days of fasting or thanksgiving as
they had become something more. It was a holiday that could no more be
stopped by a governor's whim than be created by one. It was a holiday
created by the people of New England.