by Sara Story
Thanksgiving, now a national holiday in the United States, was celebrated independently by individual colonies and states for over two centuries, after the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Natives shared a harvest feast in 1621. It wasn’t until 1863 that Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the Civil War, proclaimed a National Thanksgiving Day to be held each November. The Pilgrims left Plymouth, England in 1620 on The Mayflower, seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith. After a hazardous and strenuous trip lasting sixty-six days, they landed north of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination. One month later, the Pilgrims crossed the Massachusetts Bay and began to establish a village at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Most of the colonists stayed aboard the ship during that first vicious winter, where they suffered from contagious diseases. Only half of the Pilgrims lived past that initial winter, making it to their first Spring in New England. In March, the remaining settlers went ashore and received a visit from an Abenaki Native, who greeted them in English. He returned several days later with Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe. Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers, and avoid poisonous plants. He also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag tribe, an alliance that would last fifty years and become the sole example of harmony between Native American tribes and European colonists.
In November 1621, after the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of their Native American allies, including the Wampanoag chief, Massasoit. This feast lasted for three days, and is now remembered as America’s “first Thanksgiving.” No record exists of the historic festival’s menu, but some accounts from Pilgrims noted that Governor Bradford sent four men on a mission in preparation for the event, and that the Wampanoag guests came bearing five deer. Historians have suggested that the food was likely prepared using traditional Native American spices and cooking methods. Because the Pilgrims did not possess ovens and their sugar supply had diminished by the fall of 1621, the meal did not incorporate pies, cakes, or other desserts, which have become a trademark of modern traditions.
Contemporary Thanksgiving traditions have evolved into parades, turkeys, elementary school handprints (cut out and taped to parents’ fridges), and 4:30 p.m. meals that your family likes to call “dinner” once a year. Before Thanksgiving was made into a national holiday, its casual, and sometimes annual, celebration became a common practice among the New England colonists. During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress designated one or more days of thanksgiving a year. In 1789 George Washington declared the first Thanksgiving proclamation by the national government of the United States; in it, he called upon Americans to express their gratitude for the happy conclusion to the country’s war of independence and the successful ratification of the U.S constitution.
In 1817, New York became the first of several states to adopt an annual Thanksgiving holiday; each state celebrated the holiday on a different day, however, and the tradition went largely unrecognized in the South. In 1827, Sarah Josepha Hale, a noted magazine editor and prolific writer, launched a 36-year long campaign to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. She published a number of editorials and sent countless letters to governors, senators, presidents, and other politicians. Abraham Lincoln finally heeded her request in 1863, at the height of the Civil War, in a proclamation entreating all Americans to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.” He scheduled Thanksgiving for the final Thursday in November, and it was celebrated on that day every year until 1939, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday up a week, in an attempt to spur retail sales during the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s plan was met with opposition, and in 1941, the president reluctantly signed a bill making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November.
In the past, Thanksgiving has been used as a tactic, sometimes backed by religious efforts, to distract citizens from their present problems and give them hope that their faith would guide them through turmoil. In many American households, the Thanksgiving celebration has lost much of its religious significance; instead, it now centers on cooking and sharing an abundant meal with family and friends. Over the years, turkey has become a synonymous symbol of the holiday. This Thanksgiving staple may or may not have been on the guests’ plates at the inaugural feast in 1621. Today, nearly ninety percent of Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving, according to the National Turkey Federation. Other traditional foods include mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Parades have also become an integral part of the holiday in cities and towns across the United States. Presented by Macy’s department store since 1924, New York City’s Thanksgiving Day parade is the largest and most famous, attracting some two to three million spectators along its two-and-a-half-mile route and drawing an enormous television audience. It typically features marching bands, performers, elaborate floats conveying various celebrities and giant balloons shaped like cartoon characters.
In my version of the Thanksgiving holiday, my family convenes, and eats, at my Grandma Bonnie’s house. The family files in throughout the day, while I help her prep for our family dinner. I’m always the first to arrive, followed by my Aunt Karen, who also helps with cooking the four-course meal. Every year when I walk into my grandmother’s house, she greets me with a bear hug and a smile. Her kitchen smells sweet: she bakes pumpkin pie, apple pie, and also makes “chocolate delight” (a delicious graham cracker and chocolate pudding dessert, topped with whipped cream). We get out the kitchen aprons and the book that contains our Thanksgiving recipes. She always has the QVC channel playing in the background of the kitchen while we cook. We call her “the QVC Queen” since she watches the show every day, year-round. She not only enjoys its segments, but acquires a lot of her gift ideas from the show. She is notorious within our family for texting us questions around holidays and birthdays about presents we would like to receive. (She texted me about the Alexa Echo three weeks ago, asking if I could see myself using something like that in my dorm room, and then proceeded to describe for me situations in which I could use the item.)
As we work on dinner, the rest of the family comes in and out during the day. My grandmother likes wax warmers; at Thanksgiving, each room smells of fall scents like Cranberry Mandarin Splash, Spicy Cinnamon Stick, or Bourbon Pumpkin. My uncle Cary and his family are always the late arrivals, an ongoing joke at every family gathering. As my Grandma Bonnie, Aunt Karen, and I fill the freshly made pies, butter the doughy rolls, baste the turkey, mix the mashed potatoes, and stir the brown gravy, the rest of the family takes part in other stereotypical, American Thanksgiving festivities. The adults and older kids watch football all day, the younger children play games outside in the cold, and there is almost always lengthy — and sometimes uncomfortable and annoying — political conversations within the age groups.
Thanksgiving means something different for everybody. To me, it means celebrating my friends and family for their warm-heartedness and embracement of me. Being able to cook alongside my grandmother every year brings me joy. We talk about superficial things — school, work, and friends — but we also break the surface of things and talk more in depth about our lives. I think my contributions to our conversations aren’t that interesting, but I learn more about her with every year. She’s one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met — probably because she has experienced so much in her lifetime {Again, Sara, here is where specificity wins – hands-down – over generality; it would be nice to know some of your grandmother’s experiences — and she manages to make me laugh with every story. She always reports some kind of awkward slip-up — like farting as she walks in front of strangers, or getting rolled in the waves, while her family laughs as she’s tumbled by the gulf coast waves. She also contributes to the family dynamic. She coordinates every family gathering, making sure everyone shows up, and will definitely call you ten times to make sure that you’re on your way and that you haven’t forgotten anything. She might also be the sweetest person I’ve ever met. She cares for and loves everyone, even willing to go past her own efforts to help others. She volunteers at a battered women’s shelter and uses her connections to help find the women jobs and places to live. I gain wisdom and character just listening to her talk.
My version of Thanksgiving revolves around my grandmother and my family, but others, like the Syed family, who immigrated to the United States from Dubai just ten months ago, might revolve around their new cultural experience. In an interview about Thanksgiving with the Chicago Tribune, Ashfaq Hussein Syed, who is originally from India,said, “When you move to a country it is important to embrace the culture,” referring to his family’s plans to celebrate their new holiday. “India is like a swimming pool. The U.S. is an ocean; there is so much more.” Syed is able to convey the cultural differences within America and the many holidays celebrated by many different kinds of families by referring to the clashing of cultures within two countries that couldn’t be more different. India being a “swimming pool” references the lack of cultural differences among its community, and America being “an ocean” refers to the mass amount of differences amongst its communities’ cultures.
In another Chicago Tribune interview, Yash Thakkar, an international college student from India, compared the American Thanksgiving to a Hindu festival — Diwali or “Festival of Lights” — celebrated around the same time in India. Diwali is a sort of “festival of food,” Thakkar said, when family members gather at each other’s houses. Thakkar’s description of the similarities between the two foreign holidays intrigued me enough to do some research. I found, from National Geographic Kids, that, although, Diwali is celebrated with food and family, much like Thanksgiving, the Indian holiday combines elements of America’s Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Independence Day. Hindus in India celebrate Diwali not only by feasting, but by exploding fireworks, similar to the American Fourth of July celebration. Like the Christian Christmas, Diwali also is celebrated by exchanging gifts and lighting candles. And, like Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere, one of Diwali’s focuses is the return of light. The holiday is held during the part of the October-November lunar cycle when the night is the darkest. This year, Sweet Briar College in Amherst, VA, put on a light display, prepared authentic Indian food, and used some Diwali traditions to celebrate the holiday for their Indian foreign exchange students.
Traditions tend to alter over time. Holidays change as new generations grow up and create their own traditions. As the years go on and the world advances, families often become more diverse, with better knowledge of different issues. Many become more aware and accepting of different people, cultures, and faiths, and what they learn helps shape new traditions. The traditional Thanksgiving holiday set a precedent for the modern one known today, but some things have changed throughout the century and a half of its establishment. Many households in America start cooking their massive meals early in the morning, carrying on towards the late afternoon, or early evening. The mothers or grandmothers of the house usually spearhead the meal preparation — baking, cooking, mixing, and basting. Some families partake in watching their football teams play in special Thanksgiving games, while others sit around in their living rooms and watch the Macy’s Day Parade that airs nationwide every year. However, you celebrate the holidays, whether you abide by a strict tradition guideline or you create a new tradition every year, your celebration shows the progress that families across the United States have made from the first Thanksgiving to present day.