The American tradition of Thanksgiving dates back to 1621 when the pilgrims gave thanks for their first bountiful harvest in Plymouth Rock. The settlers had arrived in November 1620, founding the first permanent English settlement in the New England region.
After barely surviving their first winter, the pilgrims encountered Squanto, who taught them to grow corn, identify poisonous plants, and catch fish.
November of 1621 was the pilgrims’ first successful harvest, and Governor William Bradford invited nearby Native American allies for a feast. This first Thanksgiving was celebrated for three days, with the settlers feasting with the natives on dried fruits, boiled pumpkin, turkey, venison and much more.
The celebration, however, was not repeated until many years later, when in 1789 George Washington proclaimed Thanksgiving to be a national holiday on Thursday November 26th that year – setting the precedent of the last Thursday in November. Despite this, the holiday was celebrated on different days from state to state and Thomas Jefferson later did away with the holiday.
New York was the first state to officially adopt an annual Thanksgiving holiday, in 1817.
Thanksgiving didn’t become a nationwide holiday until President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November a national day of Thanksgiving in 1863. Every year following, the President proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving was switched from the final Thursday in November to the next-to-last Thursday in November by President Roosevelt in 1939 as he wanted to create a longer Christmas shopping period to simulate the economy which was still recovering after the Great Depression.
This decision was heavily opposed, and was termed “Franksgiving”. It caused widespread confusion with many states ignoring the change until Congress sanctioned the fourth Thursday in November as a legal holiday in 1941.
Sarah Josepha Hale, writer of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’, led a 17 year campaign to get Thanksgiving declared a national holiday. Many letters she sent in that time were ignored, but a letter to Abraham Lincoln finally convinced him to declare Thanksgiving as a holiday in 1863.
The Plymouth settlers did not refer to themselves as ‘Pilgrims’. The majority of the settlers were dissidents who had broken away from the Church of England. They would have called themselves ‘separatists’ or ‘puritans’. It was not until about 100 years later that the term ‘Pilgrims’ started to be commonly used to refer to the settlers.