We Are Thankful!
Giving Thanks for Thanksgiving
Each year, millions of Americans gather around the television in their living rooms to watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade, with massive floats and marching bands. Mothers, grandmothers, and aunts often gather in the kitchen to cook, share recipe secrets, and prepare a feast. Children set the tables, and snack on unattended dishes. Fathers and uncles collectively discuss the football games they will watch after the banquet. Everyone gathers in front of the fire place for a family photo just before saying a prayer, and sitting down to eat.
These images often come to mind whenever we think of Thanksgiving Day, a holiday where turkey takes place as the cornerstone of the main meal, and families make warm memories supplemented by photos. But few people know the real origin of the celebration we call Thanksgiving. It is not just about Native Americans and pilgrims exchanging foods. More history is involved in the heart of Thanksgiving than most of us realize. Join us on this historical journey into the past to learn the real reasons we give thanks.
The Genesis of Giving Thanks
The very first celebration of Thanksgiving differed greatly from what we celebrate today. We are all familiar with the theme of Native Americans and pilgrims coming together to share food at the same table, and many of us participated in school activities in which we learned a few things about this holiday’s origins. But Thanksgiving in the past versus Thanksgiving now holds some great differences, and we probably would not recognize the first celebration as Thanksgiving if we we saw it in front of us
The original Thanksgiving took place at Plymouth, Massachusetts, a Puritan-created village near Plymouth rock on the coast of New England. There, the pilgrims and their Native American counterparts, the Wampanoag tribe, participated in a celebration lasting at least three days. The year was 1621, and the land was uncultivated at the time, with the Puritan pilgrims looking to find a place where they could worship freely without punishment.
The foods the attendees ate included many dishes that we are unfamiliar with today, and would not consider traditional Thanksgiving foods. No available records discuss whether they ate turkey or not. But some documentation provides us with details about what they may have eaten. The Wampanoag tribe contributed five deer to the feast, along with waterfowl as the meat dishes. They also may have eaten fruits and vegetables that grew native to the land, including plums, cranberries, squash, melons, leeks, grapes, and wild onions. They may have caught fish and harvested shellfish to further supplement the banquet.
As far as drinks were concerned, there were not many options for the participants to select from. Chances are they all just drank water from a creek or spring nearby to wash down three days worth of feasting. Thus, Thanksgiving was born as a tradition into the United States before it became the widely celebrated holiday that we recognize today. It took several decades before it would be recognized as an official holiday in America.
The Thanksgiving Transformation
After America won its independence from Britain, few national holidays existed outside of Independence Day and George Washington’s birthday. While many presidents, including Jefferson, Washington, Adams, and Madison, advocated the celebration of Thanksgiving, it often fell on a different day for each celebration, and was neither officiated nor celebrated every year. This trend continued into the 19th century.
A woman named Sarah Hale, the editor of New England-based Gody’s, supported the officiation of Thanksgiving, as she felt it would provide America with an enriching extension to American culture, centered around celebrating the Christian home. She made the suggestion that Thanksgiving should be celebrated the last Thursday of each November.
Eventually, a few northern states began to sanction the official celebration of Thanksgiving Day, New York among the first to do so in 1817. During that year, New York declared it as an annual holiday. By 1830, New York sanctioned Thanksgiving as a governmentally supported holiday. Most southern states did not celebrate Thanksgiving at this point in time, as the culture did not support such a ‘Yankee‘ holiday.
Finally, in 1863, Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving Day an official holiday for all of America to celebrate, setting the date for the fourth Thursday of each November, as per Sarah Hale’s suggestion so many years ago. Thus, this was the birth of Thanksgiving as an American celebration – the holiday we are all familiar with.
We Are Thankful!
We are thankful for you – our wonderful supporters! Without you, we would not be able to continue our healthy mission. So… Thank You, to everyone – we truly appreciate you more than you know! We are Thankful for the spirit of giving and to helping those in need. We are thankful for our freedoms. We are thankful for family. We are thankful for health. We are thankful for life and all the many blessings that come with this life.
Enjoy This Thanksgiving Season of Rest, Peace, and Love
This year, while you tell stories with family members in a warm living room, or carve up turkey with your grandfather, and watch the Thanksgiving football game with your kids, think about all the things you have to be thankful for. And remember the roots and origins of this popular and widely celebrated holiday. Your face naturals family gives thanks for your support this holiday season, and looks forward to further serving your organic skin-care needs in the year to come.
Comment below to tell us about your favorite Thanksgiving traditions, or provide some historical details about the holiday’s origins that we may have missed. Strike up a conversation with your face naturals family by contacting our friendly staff members! Thank you for your support in the past, in the future, and now. We look forward to hearing more from you soon.
References
- 19th Century Origins of Our Modern Day Thanksgiving
- The First Thanksgiving
- How Thanksgiving Became a National Holiday
