Dumb Question Answered… 25, November 2007

I’ve got a burning question exacerbated by use of the internet, which buns brighter every year… That is, where does Thanksgiving come from? Because I’m not American but most other internet users are, this has fascinated me for some time.

Living as I do, in Silicone Fen, home of super-geeks from around the world, there are nameless thousands of Americans right here on my doorstep to ask – not to mention the 27,000 service personnel 20 miles up the road. I have asked, copiously because I haven’t the first clue and I’d be really intrigued to know. However, so far, none of them seem to know or at least, be prepared to tell me, presumably because it’s so obvious to them that it’s like somebody asking me what Christmas is about, or maybe they think I’m taking the piss or too dumb for words but the answer is usually something non-committal like this.

“Uh… it’s a day when you celebrate your family, so all families everywhere try to get together and have a meal* together.”

Well yeh, I know that’s what people actually do but why? Thus far, my American friends have been seriously non-commital about elucidating further…

So now… for all you British people out there who, like me, wondered what an earth it was all about – other than getting all the guilt about trying to visit every member of your family (and failing) at Christmas out of the way first so you can actually enjoy it – I give you, with a lot of help from my friends here the origin of Thanksgiving.

Basically, it appears to come from a cross between a conventional harvest festival and the relief of the Pilgrim Fathers when, after serious hardship which had whittled their numbers down from 105 to 43, they finally realised their settlement was going to make it.

The first feast lasted 3 days and celebrated their first harvest – 1621 – which, thanks to a little help from their native American friends, was abundant. At this point they were on good terms with the indigenous population, 91 native Americans were invited.

Next year, no feast but things carried on ticking over nicely until year three when a grim drought looked set to put the kybosh on their harvest and therefore, by default, them. They gathered to pray for rain and when it came the next day, Governor William Bradford declared another day of thanksgiving, they invited their indian friends and once again, they had a big slap up feast to celebrate.

After this, nothing much happened until 1676 in Charleston, Mass, when the town, looking for a means to give thanks for the way their community was prospering declared June 29th was a day of thanksgiving.

Again, nothing much happened, subsequently, until one year after the war of independence, 1777, when there was another Thanksgiving day this time, in grateful acknowledgement for independence and victory in the war against those pesky limeys. Ah ha! I’m beginning to understand some of the reticence at coming forward with an explanation… that and the fact it’s even more complicated than the origins of the kilt… and we’re only half way through…

George Washington declared a thanksgiving day, to mark the deliverance of the Pilgrim Fathers in 1789 but it still didn’t really catch on, dissenters included Thomas Jefferson. So, eventually, in 1817, the state of New York, started to celebrate Thanksgiving every year and other states followed suit. This still wasn’t enough though.

It was up to a lady called Sarah Josepha Hale, a magazine editor who enjoyed the dubious notoriety of being the author of “Mary had a Little Lamb” who, using the power of PR, persuaded the nation to take it to their hearts as a national holiday. It was her life’s work and she wrote editorials promoting it in the delightfully quaintly named “Boston Ladies’ Magazine” and “Godey’s Lady’s Book”.

By 1863 President Lincoln could stand it no more and gave in, declaring the third Thursday in November as Thanksgiving day, a national holiday. After that, Franklin D Roosevelt tried to mess with it once – something about more shopping days before Christmas – but nobody was having that and the day remained fixed.

So there we have it. Hoorah! Now I know and if you’re from any other nation, so do you, too!

*Deep-fried turkey according to British TV chef, Heston Bluminthal (yikes that can’t be true).