Thanksgivind

ay of November, Americans gather around tables covered with turkey, potatoes, cranberries,
stuffing, and more. Over the feast, they share what they’re most thankful for from the
previous year. Some also celebrate the day by watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade or
a football game or even by running a 5K race.
But that’s not how Thanksgiving has always been celebrated. The holiday and the traditions
behind it have evolved—from a much-mythologized 1621 harvest feast shared by the pilgrims
and the Wampanoag, to a post-Civil-War era patriotic and religious gathering, to the modern
holiday focused on good food and spending time with family.
The real history of the first Thanksgiving
Historians long considered the first Thanksgiving to have taken place in 1621, when the
Mayflower pilgrims who founded the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts sat down for a three-
day meal with the Wampanoag. However, the meal wasn’t the meaningful symbol of peace
that it was later portrayed to be—rather, it was likely just a routine English harvest
celebration.
An illustration depicting the first Thanksgiving meal in 1621
Early illustrations of the first Thanksgiving show a friendly meal between the Pilgrims and the
Wampanoag in 1621. But that rosy depiction masks a violent history: Within years, the
colonists launched a war on their neighboring tribes and ultimately massacred them.
ILLUSTRATION VIA PHOTO12/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY
In 1841, Boston publisher Alexander Young printed a book containing a letter by pilgrim
Edward Winslow, which described the feast:
“[O]ur harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a
more special manner rejoice together … [There were] many of the Indians coming amongst us,
and among the rest their greatest King Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days
we entertained and feasted.”
Winslow didn’t describe the feast as a “Thanksgiving,” which at the time was considered a
period of prayerful fasting. But when Young published the letter, he dubbed the meal the “first
Thanksgiving” in a footnote, and the name stuck.
But the reason for that first feast was not a happy one—and the relationship between the
Pilgrims and the Wampanoag was fraught. When the pilgrims first arrived in 1620, they were
unprepared and had little food, so they robbed corn from Native Americans graves and
storehouses.
In November 1621, the Wampanoag heard the pilgrims shooting off guns—which historians
believe worried the Wampanoag that war was underway. King Massasoit sent 90 men to
investigate, before realizing the pilgrims were mid-celebration. The Wampanoag then hunted
deer meat and joined the festivities.
The newfound peace between the pilgrims and Wampanoag was driven largely by tribe and
trade rivalries, according to Ann McMullen, curator at the National Museum of the American
Indian, who says that the Wampanoag realized an alliance with the pilgrims “could fortify their
strength.”
But food historian Sarah Wassberg Johnson says that peace didn’t last long: By 1637, the
detente between the pilgrims and Wampanoag had disintegrated and the pilgrims started a
decades-long war with their Indigenous neighbors. Ultimately, the colonists massacred the
local tribes, including the Wampanoag.
How Thanksgiving became a modern holiday
Over the years, the word “thanksgiving” has changed in meaning. Originally an English
tradition, days of thanksgiving typically were marked by religious services to give thanks to
God, or to celebrate a bountiful harvest.
The first recorded religious thanksgiving day in Plymouth took place a full two years after the
1621 feast. It celebrated the end of a two-month drought, according to 1621: A New Look at
Thanksgiving. Later thanksgivings celebrated military victories over Native Americans.
At the time, thanksgiving days were usually declared by governors or priests. George
Washington frequently declared days of thanksgiving during his tenure as general of the
Continental Army. Once he became president, Washington proclaimed the first national day of
Thanksgiving in 1789.
But many subsequent presidents ignored the tradition, until President Abraham Lincoln again
established Thanksgiving as a national holiday during the Civil War, cementing the feast as an
American tradition. Johnson says that declaration marked the switch from random feast days,
some marking the fall harvest, to a national holiday.
Lincoln was partially convinced by Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of the magazine Godey’s Lady
Book, who wrote a letter campaigning for an annual Thanksgiving holiday. He was also looking
for a way to gloss over the schism created by the Civil War and homogenize an American
identity, Johnson says. But the holiday wasn’t celebrated universally—particularly not in the
Southern states that saw it as a Yankee holiday.
After the Civil War, however, the holiday became imbued with nostalgia for the mythological
founding of America at Plymouth Rock. The true story of the pilgrims and Native Americans
was not widely recorded or even accessible, so stories of benevolent pilgrims conquering and
founding the country were being passed off as history, Johnson says.

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ay of November, Americans gather around tables covered with turkey, potatoes, cranberries,

The real history of the first Thanksgiving

An illustration depicting the first Thanksgiving meal in 1621

ILLUSTRATION VIA PHOTO12/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY

How Thanksgiving became a modern holiday

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