Mary Johnson: The overlooked history, lessons of Thanksgiving

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Much of the history of our nation’s Thanksgiving Day holiday has been largely overlooked, yet it has important lessons to teach us.

In fact, the custom of setting aside a special day to give thanks for blessings is ancient and widespread. For example, ancient rulers sometimes set aside a day of gratitude in observance of a military victory or a bountiful harvest.

In the Americas, the Cahokia people, who resided just east of what is now St. Louis, observed a harvest-time thanksgiving feast in the late 11th century. Early European settlers to the Americas brought along the tradition of thanksgiving observances from their homelands. Thus, during colonial times and the Revolutionary War, various feasts of thanksgiving were celebrated.

Once the U.S. was established as a nation, no regular, nationwide day of thanksgiving existed for some time, though presidents and state governors did proclaim Thanksgiving observances as they saw fit.

Twice, President George Washington proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving, the first on Nov. 26, 1789, and the second in February 1795. On the second occasion, he called for humility and charity in addition to gratitude. The next national day of thanksgiving, May 9, 1798, was declared by President John Adams, who urged Americans to practice humiliation, fasting and prayer (as a means of acknowledging our offenses against God) on that day.

The tradition of ad hoc presidential declarations of days of thanksgiving skipped over Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison because they considered them to be a violation of the separation of church and state.

For decades in the 1800s, writer and magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale promoted the idea of an annual national Thanksgiving holiday, approaching five successive presidents. Hale believed that such a national holiday would promote unity in the young, fragile nation. Throughout those years of persistence, Hale never cited the 1621 Pilgrim-Wampanoag feast. That origin story had not yet taken hold in the popular imagination.

In 1863, Hale convinced President Abraham Lincoln to declare a nationwide Thanksgiving Day. He did so for that year. Lincoln hoped that the holiday would serve two purposes: Help the nation recognize blessings even in the worst of circumstances, and begin to heal the divisions of a nation at war. The list of blessings in Lincoln’s proclamation included fruitful fields, healthful skies, and harmony and order outside the theater of military conflict. Lincoln’s proclamation also called for expressions of penitence, prayers for victims of the war and prayers for the restoration of peace.

While the 1863 proclamation applied only to that year, it began a tradition of annual presidential proclamations of a thanksgiving holiday. Each proclamation enumerated blessings for which the nation could be thankful. Finally, in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a law establishing an annual Thanksgiving Day on the fourth Thursday of November. The tradition of presidential proclamations listing blessings has persisted to this day.

Since 1863, the Thanksgiving holiday has evolved considerably. It is now associated with football games (origin: an 1876 game between Yale and Princeton) and the beginning of the Christmas shopping season (leading Roosevelt to take the controversial step of moving the holiday forward one week). Another development is the association of our Thanksgiving Day with the 1621 feast shared by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag.

This last development deserves special attention. From 1880 to 1920, the Pilgrims took on a central role in our nation’s stories of our origin and our Thanksgiving Day. These were years of high rates of immigration, and the newcomers made some WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants) uncomfortable.

Thus, the 1621 feast became a convenient means of emphasizing the nation’s Protestant, English heritage. It also helped to gloss over the history of fraught relationships between the colonizers and Native Americans. These considerations are probably the reason that our popular depictions are not historically accurate: They are inconsistent with our single eyewitness account of the 1621 gathering, and the clothing and culture presented in today’s images do not match the historical records.

So, how does this history speak to us today? First, let us use the long and complicated history of our nation’s Thanksgiving Day to foster humility and respect. We do well to acknowledge that setting aside special occasions to express gratitude is a widespread and ancient response to God’s blessings, not a practice that arose in 1621. Second, let us imitate the persistence of Sarah Josepha Hale, whose vision has been a great contribution to our national life together. Third, in good times and in bad, may we always center our Thanksgiving observance on gratitude for all the unearned blessings we have received from God and from each other. (The insistence of both Sarah Hale and Abraham Lincoln on the importance of gratitude is especially instructive, given that they both suffered from terrible loss and hardship.) Finally, along with Hale and Lincoln, may we use our Thanksgiving Day observances as an occasion for seeking reconciliation and unity.

Regarding reconciliation and unity, I would like to mention three opportunities for ecumenical prayer that foster the healing of divisions among Christians. First, Christians Uniting in Song and Prayer (CUSPholland.org) offers three annual community-wide worship services, including this year’s Thanksgiving service to be held on Sunday, Nov. 22, at 5:30 p.m. at Trinity Reformed Church, 712 Apple Ave., Holland. Second, First Reformed Church, 630 State St., Holland, offers a half-hour prayer service for peace on the first Monday of each month. Finally, St. Peter’s Catholic Church, 100 St. Peter Drive, Douglas, offers a half-hour Taizé prayer on the fourth Monday of each month.

— Mary Johnson is a resident of Holland. Learn more about Bread for the World at bread.org. The history in this column is largely based on the following two sources. The first is an article written by Thomas Tweed and featured in The Conversation, a nonprofit news source. The second is the fascinating book, "We Gather Together," by Denise Kiernan.

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