Thanksgiving
Day
Do You Really know What
This
Thanksgiving will be celebrated in the US on Thursday, November 23, 2006.
Like a slow-roasted turkey, the American holiday of Thanksgiving was a long time in the making.
In autumn 1621, about a year after the Mayflower Pilgrims made landfall at Plymouth, they put together a feast and broke bread with their Native American neighbors, the Wampanoag, who were celebrating Keepunumuk, the time of the harvest. The menu featured fowl, venison and fish, along with wheat and corn products. A contemporary account written by colonist Edward Winslow showed the assembled to be content with their lot:
And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us [when we were back in England], yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you [our English brethren] partakers of our plenty.
Sporadic national, regional and individual Thanksgivings followed, but the day did not become an annual, national holiday until 1863. Americans were waging the Civil War, and in the midst of it President Abraham Lincoln, spurred on by the lobbying efforts of writer Sarah Josepha Hale, proclaimed a national day in which to express thanks for the many blessings enjoyed by Americans, e.g., natural resources and population growth, despite the military conflict:
They are the gracious gifts
of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our
sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly,
reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice
by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow
citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are
at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart
and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of
Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in
the Heavens.
It wasn't till later in the 19th century, though, that the popular image of the "First Thanksgiving" took root. Earlier, while the Indian wars were still raging, scenes of settlers and natives engaging in joint revelry seemed inconceivable.
In 1939, during the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously modified Lincoln's chosen date of the last Thursday of November to the second-to-last Thursday of November in order to extend the post-Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas shopping season. The move was met with confusion and criticism, and in 1942 FDR signed a law making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday of November, a law which is still in effect today.
Nowadays, Thanksgiving is one of the few truly secular, nondenominational holidays on the US calendar (the Fourth of July is another). Americans celebrate with a long weekend, a big meal with family and friends (on the menu: foods that reflect the tastes and colors of the autumn harvest, such as roast turkey, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce and candied yams), and football.