Thanksgiving day this year falls on Thursday, November 23, 2017. Three hundred and ninety-six years have come and gone since the initial celebration of this day of thanksgiving as it was originally celebrated by the Pilgrims on and around the beaches of Cape Cod Massachusetts in 1621. It is a day of grateful and restful appreciation and celebration for all of the good that we have experienced throughout the entire year. Lots of feasting is enjoyed by most of the population. It is a grand time to pause and give thanks to our God for what He has allowed to occur in our lives during the current year that is quickly drawing towards an end.

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Come with me now as we skip back across the annals of time to that very first thanksgiving day celebration and join with the early American settlers in the woods and on the sandy beaches of Cape Cod. What a great point of beginning these men and women started nearly 400 years ago.

In the spring of 1621, the small band of pilgrims struggling to survive in the Massachusetts Bay wilderness on Cape Cod was totally astonished. One day they encountered an Indian named Tisquantum, whom the English settlers called Squanto, and who spoke the King’s English.

Pilgrims and a Wayfaring Indian

Seven years prior, Tisquantum had been kidnapped by a rogue seaman, a Mr. Hunt, who had been serving under the English adventurer John Smith, of Pocahontis fame. Hunt had sold Tisquantum into slavery, but the Indian had managed to make his way to England, where he had served as an interpreter for the Newfoundland Company. After returning in the year 1620 to his native land, Tisquantum was positioned as a natural mediator between the settlers and Native Americans.

The Pilgrims were practitioners of a Puritan branch of Protestantism that dissented from the official Church of England. On the ship, the “Mayflower,” these pilgrims had voyaged across the Atlantic Ocean from Plymouth, England, to America in search of religious freedom and property. They had arrived in November 1620—after the growing season, and after a nine-week voyage that had left one half of the 102 passengers dead from the cold and from other disease. More of them had died since they landed on Cape Cod. The Pilgrims shuttled back and forth from the shore to the “Mayflower” in small boats for supplies, and also to put the women on board to sleep at night while the men slept on the shore. The Pilgrims began to build rude store-houses and scrape together what provisions they could as they struggled against nature and the elements trying to survive and stay alive.

Thanksgiving in Massachusetts

However, with the help of Tisquantum and other natives, they began to adapt to the new land. The English-speaking Indian helped them make peace with the local tribesmen, including the powerful chieftain, Massasoit. The Pilgrims also learned from the Indians how to grow corn, avoid poisonous plants, and draw sap from the maple trees to be used for cooking and eating. By the fall of 1621, the Pilgrims were no longer hungry and starving as they had grown and brought in a plentiful harvest.

The devout Pilgrims were much accustomed to giving thanks to God for all of their good times, while fasting and praying for relief in hard times. So their leader, Governor William Bradford, invited everyone including the local Indians to a three-day feast of thanksgiving. One of their number, Pilgrim Edward Winslow, wrote these words regarding this feast-time: “Our wheat did prove well, and God be praised, we had a good increase in Indian corn. Our harvest being gotten in…we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors.”

In 1623, after a drought and a fast—followed by needed rains and an even better harvest—the Pilgrims hosted and even bigger thanksgiving feast. Governor Bradford also wrote of it: “For which mercy, in time convenient, they set apart of day of thanksgiving.” Scrapping communal farming for individual plots of land also immensely helped to expand the quantity of the harvest.

Along with venison (deer meat) as supplied by the Indians, the first thanksgiving dinners included as William Bradford recalled, “a great store of wild turkeys.” The Pilgrims and Indians put on true feasts. They offered waterfowl; seafood, like codfish, lobster, and clams; corn, barley, and wheat; chestnuts and walnuts; squash, fruit like gooseberries and strawberries; and vegetables like radishes carrots, leaks, and onions.

Thanksgiving in Virginia, and the Nation

Far to the south, meantime, the Colony of Virginia had already proclaimed its own thanksgiving. On December 4, 1619, thirty-eight Englishmen had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and landed on the James River near the existing settlement of Jamestown. Just as their royal charter stated: “We ordaine that the day of our [ships’] arrival at the place assigned for plantacon (plantation) in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”

As the Massachusetts Bay Colony grew, formal offering of thanks became an annual event. Other colonies, and later States, picked up on the tradition. Then in 1789, president George Washington issued a proclamation that did recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.” It’s aim was to acknowledge the establishment of peace, prosperity, and the new “constitutions of government.”

In the early nineteenth century, author Sarah Joseph Hale, known for writing “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” campaigned to make Thanksgiving a formal national holiday. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln obliged, making its date the last Thursday in November.

Thanksgiving has become a major holiday embracing all manner things, particularly football game watching, parades, and the start of a feverish Christmas shopping season. But its original spirit of gratitude for the Divine blessings given to the original settlers of the new world still lingers around the holiday celebrations.

Now You Know More of What Really Happened……..