November 2010 - Newsletter Website
November 2010 - Newsletter Website
November 2010 - Newsletter Website
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9 1 Page 9<br />
Giving Thanks<br />
by: David Grinnell<br />
Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving Day, currently celebrated on the fourth Thursday in<br />
<strong>November</strong>, has been an annual tradition in the United States since 1863. Thanksgiving<br />
was historically a religious observation to give thanks to God.<br />
It is thought that the first Thanksgiving was celebrated to give thanks to God for<br />
helping the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony survive their first brutal winter in New England.<br />
The first Thanksgiving feast lasted three days providing enough food for 53 pilgrims<br />
and 90 Native Americans. The feast consisted of fowl, venison, fish, lobster,<br />
clams, berries, fruit, pumpkin, and squash. William Bradford's note that, "besides waterfowl, there was great<br />
store of wild turkeys, of which they took many," probably gave rise to the American tradition of eating turkey at<br />
Thanksgiving.<br />
The modern Thanksgiving holiday traces its origins from this 1621 celebration at the Plymouth Plantation.<br />
This was continued in later years, first as an impromptu religious observance, and later as a civil tradition.<br />
Squanto, a Patuxet Native American who resided with the Wampanoag tribe, taught the Pilgrims how to<br />
catch eel and grow corn and served as an interpreter for them (Squanto had learned English while enslaved in<br />
Europe and during travels in England). Additionally the Wampanoag leader Massasoit had caused food stores to<br />
be donated to the fledgling colony during the first winter when supplies brought from England were insufficient.<br />
The Pilgrims set apart a day to celebrate at Plymouth immediately after their first harvest, in 1621. At the<br />
time, this was not regarded as a Thanksgiving observance; harvest festivals existed in English and Wampanoag<br />
tradition alike. Several colonists gave personal accounts of the 1621 feast in Plymouth, Massachusetts.<br />
As President, on October 3, 1789, George Washington made the following proclamation and created the first<br />
Thanksgiving Day designated by the national government of the United States of America: (continued next page)
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