History of Thanksgiving

These hundred or so men and women followed a strict and literalist interpretation of the Bible known as Puritanism. Puritan life was famously austere, and many Puritan communities would forgo traditional holidays, including, famously, Christmas, or celebrate them only as days of penance and fasting. However, days of thanksgiving were also a part of their calendar, especially during the harvest season. On these days, the usual routine of hard work, chastity and prayer would be broken up with an evening feast, where thanks would be given to God and some of the fruits of their labour, scrimped and saved, would be enjoyed.

The first Pilgrim Fathers arrived on the Mayflower in modern-day Cape Cod on November 21, 1620. They explored the coastline until they set up their first colony in a place they named Plymouth, the germ of the seed that would eventually grow into the United States of America and Canada. Life here was incredibly hard. The colonists were weak, diseased and emaciated from the trip across the Atlantic. They had arrived too late in the year to plant crops, and as they began settling their new home, one of the most brutal winters in a generation began. For their Christmas dinner, the pilgrims had only hardtack and water.

The first year was harsh, and about half of the pilgrims perished before summer. In fact, the entire colony would have starved if it weren’t for the local Wampanoag people, and especially a local leader named Tisquantum, who spoke English. They taught these new arrivals how to survive in this rich and fertile land. How to grow squash, beans, and corn together, how to catch the abundant fish in the rivers and streams, and how to tap maple trees for their sweet, sticky syrup (something to remember as you tuck into your pecan pie).

Thanks to the Wampanoag, the pilgrims scraped through. As November rolled around, marking roughly a year after their landing, the Pilgrims had managed to reap the bounty of these lands, and a harvest festival or day of thanksgiving was held. Around 50 pilgrims invited about 90 Wampanoag to the table, where a great feast was enjoyed. Roast wild fowl from the forests, grilled fish from the sea, great mountains of cranberries, and, of course, the staple three sisters - beans, squash, and corn, that would nourish both Indigenous Americans and the Pilgrim Fathers in the years to come.

This is the story of Thanksgiving, a festival celebrated in both Canada and the United States, the two nations born from the first steps of the Pilgrim Fathers. More than two centuries later, in an attempt to reunite a country divided by a bitter civil war, President Abraham Lincoln passed the Thanksgiving Proclamation, declaring Thanksgiving a national holiday in the USA. Now all Americans come together on the last Thursday of November to remember the hardships of the Pilgrim Fathers, the hospitality and wisdom of the Wampanoag, and the importance of friendship, family, and good food.