Thanksgiving is this country’s greatest holiday. Invented by Americans and celebrated by Americans all over the world, it is a time for family reunions, gatherings of friends, and feasting. The statistics are astonishing. In the week of Thanksgiving, 20 million travelers take to the air, and 36 million take to the roads. During Thanksgiving, Americans cook and eat 45 million turkeys—which is to say that over the holiday they consume 535 million pounds of turkey meat. Reliable statistics do not exist for the consumption of stuffing, cranberry sauce, or pumpkin pie. It is a time of celebration and a time to give thanks.
When the Mayflower landed at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts, on December 26, 1620, its 102 passengers were very poorly equipped to face the hardships of survival. Two people had died on the voyage to the New World, and that first hard winter of 1620–1621 reduced their numbers by half. It was through the help of two Native Americans that they learned to cultivate corn and other new vegetables, catch fish, dig and cook clams, draw sap from maple trees, and hunt. These helpful men were Squanto and Samoset. Squanto, a Wampanoag, had traveled to England as a servant of the English adventurer and explorer Captain John Weymouth. In England he had met Samoset, a Wabanake, who had also left his village to serve an English adventurer. Both could speak English fluently, and through them the new arrivals established friendly relations with local indigenous groups.
1621 saw a fine first harvest and the pilgrims invited ninety of the local population to celebrate with them. The feasting lasted for three days. The pilgrims had been delivered from the threat of extinction. Their Governor, William Bradford, proclaimed November 29 as a time for pilgrims to gather and to “listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.”
The custom of an annually celebrated thanksgiving, held after the harvest, continued through the years. A day of national thanksgiving was suggested by the Continental Congress in the late 1770s, and in 1789 George Washington proclaimed a National Thanksgiving Day to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November, in honor of the new United States Constitution. Thomas Jefferson, the third President, later discontinued it, calling it “a kingly practice.”
In 1817 New York State adopted Thanksgiving Day as an annual custom. By the middle of the nineteenth century, many other states also celebrated a Thanksgiving Day. In 1863 Sarah Josepha Hale, the author of the poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb," called upon President Abraham Lincoln to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, and on October 3, 1863, Lincoln issued a proclamation calling upon his fellow citizens “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.” Since then each President has issued a Thanksgiving Day proclamation. In 1941 a subtle change was made to the national calendar when the date of Thanksgiving was changed from the last Thursday to the fourth Thursday in November.
