We’re all familiar with the names of William Bradford, Chief Massasoit, and Squanto; right? The events that made up that famous three day festival in 1621 (probably during the month of October) have been familiar to us ever since we re-enacted them in grammar school pageants. It’s a lovely tale, and there is some truth to it; but there is a grown-up version that most of us have never heard. So, if you want the rest of the story, read on.
“Thanksgiving” for thousands of years has been a meaningful event to peoples all around the world. In ancient times, hunter-gatherers offered “thanksgiving” as a daily event (if the day went well). To land-cultivators, “thanksgiving” was more of a seasonal event offered at the time of harvest (if the crop came in). We give thanks at every meal by saying grace. We say the “Great Thanksgiving” at every Eucharist after all have communed.
So why is the great American Thanksgiving such a big deal? Besides the fact that, as an annual national event, it’s unique in all the world (okay, Canada has one too but it’s just a harvest festival marginally observed on the 2nd Monday in October); the simple answer is that Thanksgiving is a big deal to us because we’re shopaholic gluttons!
In more modern times, most national days of thanksgiving have been one-time declarations in celebration of the defeat of an enemy in time of war. Granted, Governor Bradford’s colonial thanksgiving declarations were of the idealist variety; but he only declared them twice. The second one was a summer-time celebration giving thanks for a rain-storm that broke a long drought. No indigenous people were invited to that one. More than 50 years then passed before another day of thanksgiving was declared. This was to celebrate the Charleston, Massachusetts militia’s victory in a war with the local indigenous peoples.
The next time there was a national day of thanksgiving was 110 years after that. It was declared in celebration of the victory at Saratoga. Another 11 years passed before we had another thanksgiving. Congress asked George Washington to declare a day of thanks for the successful establishment of the U.S. government, and he set the date as Thursday, November 26th, 1789. No other president called for a national day of thanksgiving until after the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln, in his eloquent proclamation of 1863, did not, however, call for a victory celebration. His was an appeal for God’s healing of those who were suffering as a result of the recent “unavoidable” unpleasantness and God’s blessing on those who were striving to move the nation forward out of its despair. Lincoln set the date of Thanksgiving as the last Thursday in November.
Every president for the next 75 years honored that tradition. It was Franklin Roosevelt who, in 1939, moved the date up to the fourth Thursday of November. And he did this, by his own admission, to lengthen the Christmas shopping season! Even though Macy’s had been doing their Thanksgiving Day parade since 1924 to officially kick-off the Christmas shopping season, there were now undertones of a governmental sanctioning of the season.
But let us back-up to Lincoln’s time. This is when then the holiday become a celebration of all-American gluttony; well at least in the north, where the population was not suffering from the privations of reconstruction. Believe it or not, thanksgiving events heretofore had been characterized by prayer and fasting! The harvest festivals, like the pilgrims celebrated, often concluded with a nominal feast but only after a period of prayer and fasting.
The modern eat-until-you-burst American Thanksgiving Feast is the invention of a 19th century lady named Sarah Hale. Some have referred to her as the Martha Stewart of her day. Victorian homemakers eagerly anticipated her columns in popular publications like “Godey’s Lady’s Book” and “The Boston Ladies’ Magazine.” The Victorian ideal of over-decorated homes and over-served meals came to full fruition in her stylized Thanksgiving that set the benchmark for our celebrations of today.
It is also from the Victorian era that we get one of our best known Thanksgiving songs. (I’ll bet you thought we’d never get around to music!) The thoroughly Anglican “Come, ye thankful people, come” was written by the Very Rev. Dr. Henry Alford, who became Dean of Canterbury Cathedral in 1857. The tune, known as “St. George, Windsor,” was written in 1858 by Sir George Elvey who was the organist at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle during Queen Victoria’s reign. This song is a true harvest song; unlike some others, which are actually military victory songs. “We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing,” for example, is a song that the Pilgrims may have actually sung in 1610.
The protestant English colonists had actually come from the Netherlands, where they had fled to escape Anglican discrimination. In the Netherlands they would have likely heard this song being sung, as it was quite popular. It had been written as a “thanksgiving” song in celebration of the victory of the Dutch army over Spanish conquistadors at the Battle of Turnhout in 1597. Another great victory song which we associate with Thanksgiving is “Now thank we all our God.” This was written by a Lutheran Pastor named Martin Rinkart toward the end of the Thirty Years War. It became immensely popular in Germany after the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Its association with our Thanksgiving likely comes from German immigrants in the 19th century who regularly sang it as grace after their meals. (Note the term “after”.)
So there you have it; all the baggage that our modern American Thanksgiving brings with it. It may not all be pretty; but then most baggage isn’t. It’s scarred, beat-up, and reminds us of what we went through to get where we are. Even those who don’t feel they have much for which to be thankful, can at least thank God for having made it this far and thank him even more for the future place he has in mind for us all to go. If we are truly thankful, maybe we’ll demonstrate our thankfulness by finding opportunities to share that good news as we enter the upcoming shopping season. Remember, the gift of God’s love is already paid for and it’s one-size-fits-all. Shop on!