Thanksgiving Through the Years

 By Sherri Stewart

 

As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving, I thought it useful to consider how our modern-day traditions correspond to those of the first Thanksgiving and even the Thanksgivings of the first few centuries. It is easy to celebrate when everything is going well in one’s life, but if any of us have experienced losing a loved one before a major holiday, the word thanksgiving doesn’t flow so glibly off the tongue. Indeed, in that first Thanksgiving of 1621, only four women of the original eighteen who’d reached the new world survived to cook the three-day celebration for the remaining fifty men and children, and the Wampanoag. The disparity in numbers may have been due to the fact that the women had to remain on the Mayflower while the men went ashore to build shelters. Susan Hardman Moore. Yale Books. November 2014  

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While Washington and Adams (the first two presidents) were in favor of celebrating the national holiday of Thanksgiving, Thomas Jefferson was adverse to the idea of the government legislating a national holiday. In his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802, he said there should be a “Wall of Separation between the Church and State.” Note that this was in a letter, not in the Constitution, but because of a bigamy case, Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1878), the Supreme Court ruled that Jefferson’s letter should be used to interpret the First Amendment of the Constitution. For the next sixty years, Thanksgiving was relegated to the jurisdiction of the state or the colony.

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It wasn’t until 1863 that Abraham Lincoln instituted Thanksgiving as a national holiday, in part because the president wanted to unify a country that was badly broken after the Civil War. He was also moved by an impassioned letter written to him by Sarah Josepha Hale, who was editor of Godey’s Lady Book, a ladies’ magazine. She also wrote, “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Her lobbying effort to make Thanksgiving a national holiday can be traced back to a passage of her 1827 novel Northwood. “We have too few holidays,” she wrote. “Thanksgiving like the Fourth of July should be a national festival observed by all the people … as an exponent of our republican institutions.” Olivia B. Waxman. Time. Nov 2016

Although most Americans consume turkey on Thanksgiving Day, the first Thanksgiving in 1621 most likely featured deer or fowl (partridge, quail), due to the fact that chickens, turkeys, and cattle were not  slaughtered because of their ability to produce eggs and milk. Advertisements, menus, and cookbooks show that the traditional turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie meal hasn’t changed much since the early part of the twentieth century.

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Many of the origins of Thanksgiving’s modern traditions may surprise the reader. While Thanksgiving may be a huge day for food consumption, it’s also the most popular day of the year to run in a race. “Turkey trots” have been around since 1896 when the Buffalo YMCA hosted their first holiday 8K. These days, more than 14,000 runners will run in turkey trots all over America. For those Thanksgiving revelers who prefer to play “armchair quarterback,” the first official Thanksgiving NFL game took place between the Detroit Lions and the Chicago Bears in 1934, but playing football on this particular holiday can be traced back to 1869.  Although the dismal origins of Black Friday go back to 1869, only in the last decade have stores begun to open on Thanksgiving Day. Erin Johnson, MakeItGrateful.com So, what traditions do you keep with your family? Your answer, please.

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Selah Award finalist Sherri Stewart loves a clean novel, sprinkled with romance and a strong message that challenges her faith. She spends her working hours with books—either editing others’ manuscripts or writing her own. Her passions are traveling to the settings of her books and sampling the food. She traveled to Zürich for Secrets Dark and Deep. A widow, Sherri lives in Orlando with her lazy dog, Lily. She shares recipes, tidbits of the book’s locations, and other authors' books in her newsletter.

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Ella Davis’s papa always told her there’d be no class difference in Heaven, but Ella has years to live on God’s green earth until she reaches her reward. She’s content to be a maid on the Huntington Estate, as long as she has her books and her kitten. But when her ladyship, Amberly Huntington, coerces Ella to take her place on the Mauretania, the fastest ocean liner in 1910, Ella’s worst nightmare has come to pass. She must pretend to be nobility for the eight days it takes to reach New York. In other words, she must live a lie—and this just before Christmas! https://bit.ly/47MTvYX