Happy Thanksgiving

Most Americans have much to be thankful for.

No other place in the world is as free, safe and plentiful as the United States of America even though the people might not be as United as they were in earlier years.

I always hear faint strains from the song, “America, the Beautiful,” in the line that goes “and crown the good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea,” thinking a little more brotherhood today might be a good idea.

Some describe my First Thanksgiving ideas as “myth.” I still like to remember relatives far and near coming to our home to enjoy mother’s “table groaning” meals as a cousin remembers them. Mother was up well before dawn on Thanksgiving Day preparing them. I never heard Mother complain about all the extra work that entailed; she loved the day, too.

Godtube provides background on the song “America, the Beautiful,” which was written by Katharine Lee Bates in 1893.

Here’s what Godtube Says

“Katharine Lee Bates was born in Falmouth, Mass., in 1859. Her father was a preacher at the Congregational Church and passed away while she was still very young. Her mother then moved the family to Wellesley. She attended Wellesley College, receiving a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree. She taught high school from 1880-1885 and then was a professor of English literature at Wellesley.

“In the summer of 1893 when she was lecturing at Colorado College she went to the top of Pike’s Peak. Inspired by the beauty of the view she wrote all four verses of ‘America the Beautiful which was immediately popular when it was published.”

America has worked for the benefit of its citizens almost 250 years although there have been some glitches along the way – like the Civil War.

The word Thanksgiving probably brings visions of sumptuous meals and families getting together for most people.

The first Thanksgiving as described in early school days provided a happy picture of Puritans, early English settlers in North America, and Indians gathering for a peaceful meal together after the Puritans had their first successful harvest. (Many Puritans died in that first year, we’re told).

First Thanksgiving Meal Described

One columnist recently cast doubt on the first Thanksgiving meal, doubting that it included turkey and dressing and the usual array of foods we enjoy today.

He figured the meal included deer the Indians brought to the feast, a kind of hard corn, which I figured must have been a type of hominy, locally available plants and lots of seafood.

Here’s how Google describes the first Thanksgiving: “The first Thanksgiving was a three-day feast in 1621 shared by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people to celebrate a successful harvest. The meal featured venison, fowl, (see, it could have been turkey), vegetables grown locally and seafood, along with native plants, and was likely prepared with both Pilgrim and Wampanoag cooking techniques. It was a community gathering with games and socialization, but it was not yet the annual national holiday it is today.”

National Archives gives this description of the ‘first” Thanksgiving: During the autumn of 1621, at least 90 Wampanoag joined 52 English people at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts, to mark a successful harvest. It is remembered today as the “First Thanksgiving,” although no one back then used that term. In fact, much of the so-called First Thanksgiving story was created decades and centuries later. As a result, many assumptions about the festival at Plymouth and its connection to Thanksgiving traditions today are based more in fiction than fact.

The National Archives ruins more of my reverie about the brotherhood shared by colonials and the tribe with this:

A Holiday is Made

Thanksgiving today may have little connection with the Plymouth harvest festival 400 years ago, but it has a long history nevertheless. Originally a regional observance in colonial New England, Thanksgiving began as a solemn affair. Rather than a day of feasting, it was a day for fasting and quiet reflection.

Eventually the states and the federal government proclaimed days of thanksgiving at irregular intervals, but it wasn’t until the mid-19th century, after decades of lobbying by magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale, that a national Thanksgiving holiday began to be established. As the holiday took root in the United States, so did the need for a distinctly American origin story, and the harvest festival two centuries earlier was remade as the “First Thanksgiving.” While Thanksgiving continues to evolve as each generation of Americans brings new meaning to the day and how it’s celebrated, the tradition of coming together to share a meal and reflect on all that we’re grateful for endures.

A Presidential Precedent

The federal Thanksgiving holiday has its roots in one of the country’s bitterest moments of division—the Civil War. On Oct. 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued (a) Thanksgiving Day proclamation to help unite a war-weary nation. Lincoln was not the first president to issue a Thanksgiving proclamation, but his order set a precedent to “observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving” every year for decades to follow...

In 1939, the last Thursday in November fell on the last day of the month. Concerned that the shortened holiday shopping season might dampen the nation’s economic recovery from the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a Presidential Proclamation moving Thanksgiving to the second to last Thursday of November. Sixteen states refused to accept the change, and for the next two years Thanksgiving was celebrated on two different days. To end the confusion, Congress passed a law in 1941 establishing the fourth Thursday in November as the federal Thanksgiving Day holiday.