Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving originated as celebration for giving thanks to God for a good harvest.

Until recent times, hunger was a very real problem and people were thankful when harvests were good and an adequate food supply was assured for another year.

Because food is both necessary to life and enjoyable we have ritualized it and made dining the focus of many social occasions – we serve food at parties, couples have romantic dinners, birthdays, weddings and other holidays usually include a festive meal as the main part of the celebration.

Even though food is now plentiful (too plentiful for many as obesity, rather than starvation, is now our main food related problem) we continue to value its social as much as its nutritional features.

Today we continue, along with most other people in the world, to observe the tradition, which goes back thousands of years, of periodically giving thanks for bountiful harvests and other good things in our lives.

The Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy, in its list of rules for the ancient Israelites to live by once they occupied the promised land of Israel, is one for a Thanksgiving type celebration which the Israelites were instructed to observe in the new land:

"Therefore, I have now brought you the first fruits of the products of the soil which you, O Lord, have given me. And having set them before the Lord, your God you shall bow down in his presence. Then you and your family, together with the Levite and the aliens who live among you, shall make merry over all these good things which the Lord, your God, has given you." (Deuteronomy 26:10-11)

Everyone has heard the story of the Pilgrims in the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts celebrating Thanksgiving in the fall of 1621 following a successful harvest.

One of the two surviving contemporary accounts of the fall 1621 celebration, a letter from colonist Edward Winslow to a friend in England, in which he describes the event saying:

"...our harvest being gotten in, our Governour sent foure men on fowling, that so we might after a more speciall manner reioyce together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labors; they foure in one day killed as much fowle, as with a little helpe beside, served the Company almost a weeke, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Armes, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest King Massasoyt, with some nintie men, whom for three dayes we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed fiue Deere, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed upon our Governour, and upon the Captaine, and others. And although it be not alwayes so plentifull, as it was at this time with vs, yet by the goodneses of God, we are so farre from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."

The tradition of Thanksgiving continued in America during the colonial period.

Then, on October 3, 1789, George Washington issued the first Presidential proclamation proclaiming a national day of Thanksgiving on Thursday November 26, 1789.

The tradition was observed by his successors sporadically until the mid-nineteenth century when Presidents began to issue proclamations proclaiming a day of Thanksgiving on a Thursday in November every year.

The tradition has continued to the present day as each President issues a proclamation every year proclaiming the Thanksgiving Holiday.