In 1620, the ship "Mayflower" brought the Pilgrims from Plymouth, England to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. It was a 4-masted ship. It was 25 feet wide, and 100 feet long, and weighed around 180 tons. It had three main decks: upper, lower, and cargo. Steering was done from below deck in the Steering Room.
The passengers lived in the lower deck and rarely went topside. The "Mayflower"' was built to transport cargo and supplies, not people. But on September 6, 1620, 102 passengers and 26 crew members left Plymouth, England bound for America. There were 51 men, 21 boys, 20 women, and 10 girls onboard. The average age onboard was 32 years old. The oldest passenger was 64 years old, and the youngest passenger was a baby boy who was born onboard the ship during its voyage; they named the little boy Oceanus.
The Pilgrims were originally headed for the Hudson River in New York, but they were blown off course by storms. On November 11, the ship dropped anchor. It took 66 days to complete their 2,750 mile journey to Cape Cod, MA. Their average speed during the trip was less than 2 mph. They spent their first winter onboard "Mayflower" while they built their homes. The Pilgrims later settled near Plymouth Harbor.
Only 53 passengers and half the crew survived the first winter. When the weather improved, they established Plymouth. On April 5, 1621, the Mayflower sailed back to England. The colony grew from less than 100 to over 3,000 people over the next 70 years. John Adams, FDR, and Clint Eastwood are all direct descendants of the Mayflower passengers.
To most Americans, the Pilgrims of Plymouth, MA, are the inspiration for today's Thanksgiving feast. After the winter of 1620 killed almost half of their people, the colonists formed a relationship with the neighboring Wappanog tribe who taught them about fishing, planting, and hunting. By autumn of 1621, the colonists had collected enough food to feed the community for the coming winter. The Wappanog tribe joined the colonists for a three-day feast in honor of their bounty. The feast probably did not include our traditional turkey, more than likely the colonists and Wappanogs dined on roast goose and venison, along with corn, squash, pumpkin, nuts, carrots, codfish, clams and lobster. The Indians killed five deer as gifts for the colonists, so venison was on menu as well.
The first Thanksgiving dinner took place in Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts, in October (not November) of 1621. Fifty English colonists and 90 Wappanog Indian men attended the dinner. Very few women, if any, were present. The meeting lasted for three days. It was the harvest season in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and the Puritans threw a harvest festival to celebrate. The men went ‘fowling,’ that is, hunting wild birds. A large group of Wappanogs brought five deer to the feast. They ate and shot guns.
This 1621 harvest meal is now commonly thought of as the first Thanksgiving. The colonists did not repeat this festival every November. George Washington advocated for Thanksgiving to be an official holiday on October 3, 1789, and the first National Thanksgiving holiday took place on Thursday, November 26, 1789. Thanksgiving did not become an annual tradition nationwide until the 19th century.
Yet for later generations of colonists, New England days of Thanksgiving had little to do with the 1621 harvest festival. Theirs was a religious holiday descending from Puritan days of fasting, prayer, and giving thanks to God. Every autumn, the governor of each colony would declare days of Thanksgiving for bountiful harvests, victorious battles, or drought ending rains.
In 1777, the Continental Congress decreed that all thirteen of America's colonies celebrate a national day of thanksgiving that year in celebration of their victory over the British at Saratoga. By the mid-nineteenth century, many states celebrated the holiday; however, the date could vary by weeks or even months. The modern Thanksgiving holiday would not exist if it were not for a young lady name Sarah Josepha Hale. She was a determined magazine editor who set about establishing the national Thanksgiving Day where all Americans could collectively give thanks to God. She was inspired to do so after reading a diary of early Pilgrim life and wanted to recreate that first Thanksgiving feast.
Sarah Hale passionately believed that such a day would help unite a nation headed towards civil war. Hale began a one-woman letter writing campaign urging politicians to establish an annual day of thanksgiving. Beginning in 1827, Hale waged a nearly 30-year campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. She also published recipes for pumpkin pie, turkey, and stuffing. These are now main parts of today's Thanksgiving Day meals.
The holiday didn’t become official until Abraham Lincoln declared it so in 1863. He might have been inspired to do so by magazine editor Sarah Josephna Hale, who suggested that Thanksgiving become a holiday. Sarah Hale's efforts were finally rewarded by Abraham Lincoln who saw the unifying potential of the holiday. In 1863, four months after the victory at Gettysburg, President Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November to be "Thanksgiving Day". By the way, Sarah Hale was America's first female magazine editor, and she also authored of the famous poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb."
By the 20th century, Thanksgiving was a welcome day of leisure from a six-day work week. In the 1920's, the National Football League was formed. In an effort to boost attendance, the fledgling Detroit Lions devised the concept of a Thanksgiving Day game and the rest as they say is history.
Parades also became a Turkey Day tradition and department stores quickly saw their value as a kickoff to Christmas shopping season. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade began in 1924 and year after year millions of New Yorkers brave the cold to watch the festivities. Thanksgiving Day is now the traditional start to the Christmas shopping season. This month-long shopping spree is crucial to American businesses. So crucial that in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the Thanksgiving holiday up a week to increase the shopping season and boost the economy. The people did not like this, so in 1941, Congress declared the official Thanksgiving holiday to be the fourth Thursday of November.
One of the strangest traditions of Thanksgiving began in 1989 when President George H.W. Bush granted the first official pardon to a turkey. So every November since then, the President has granted a pardon to one or two turkeys sending them into a safe retirement at Mount Vernon.
In case you were wondering, an average of 650 million pounds of turkey is eaten in the U.S. during Thanksgiving. Minnesota leads turkey production, followed by North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri, Virginia, and Indiana. The Detroit Lions have been playing football on Thanksgiving since 1934, and the Dallas Cowboys since 1966. The total average caloric intake on Thanksgiving Day including snacking, main event, dessert and drinks — is about 4,500. For a 180-pound man to burn off the roughly 2,000 extra calories consumed, he would need to walk for five hours, so you better get moving on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
It is a good thing to give thanks unto the
Lord Jesus Christ,
and to sing praises unto Thy name, O Most High.
