Thanksgiving Day is a holiday that most Americans celebrate at a young age, with memories of playing a pilgrim or American Indian in a school play or gathering with their families.
The holiday is ingrained in American culture through stories and images that we hear and see at a very young age. Yet, these Thanksgiving concepts are built on myths and the meaning of the day is hidden in long shopping lines.
Recall the last time you pictured the first Thanksgiving. You may have pictured the pilgrims of 1621 celebrating, in black buckled hats, sitting at a wooden picnic table, next to Native Americans. Everyone is ready to say a prayer, pick up their silverware, slice into a turkey, fill their plates with potatoes and corn on the cob and have a family style dinner.
That image is inaccurate. This mythology surrounding Thanksgiving has become so deeply rooted in who we are as Americans that it resembles actual history. And most people don’t fully grasp the truth about the holiday.
Yes, in Plymouth in 1621, the surviving pilgrims did have a celebration. It was a time of thanks after narrowly surviving their first year in the new world. It was a time where pilgrims and American Indians shared a meal in peace with one another. But it is not as homey as the image typically portrayed to us.
Vincent Toscano, adjunct history instructor in the Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences, said, “There was a harvest festival that lasted multiple days. The Indians came and went. [The pilgrims and Indians] ate together but there was no singing of ‘Kumbaya.’ … Pilgrims didn’t dress with the black hats. No one sat down at a wooden table to eat with plates and china. It was more of them moving around, sitting on the ground eating with their hands.
There were also other Europeans who came here before them as well.”
And, actually, similar festivities preceded the Plymouth pilgrims. A day of thanksgiving ordered by a Spanish explorer after reaching water during a journey across the desert in 1598 is still celebrated in what is now El Paso, Texas. The Berkeley Plantation in Virginia celebrates the thanksgiving of 1619, commemorating Europeans who landed on the banks of the new world and celebrated with a religious ceremony of thanksgiving.
Even the food they shared has been misrepresented over the years.
Gary Gershman, history professor in Farquhar, said, “There was probably no turkey because they were fast and hard to catch. No cranberry sauce, but there may have been potatoes that took root and possibly Indian corn, squash, beans, barley and peas. The dominant food would have probably been seafood and venison, along with ducks and geese, and stews would have been prevalent. It was probably a potluck with large pots of food cooking over open fire.”
Some portrayals of the event depict it as a religious event. But, although the pilgrims and American Indians may have celebrated by giving thanks to their own gods, neither likely partook in religious celebrations with the other.
Gershman said, “The Indians would have been giving thanks to their gods through dancing and singing. The pilgrims were intensely religious people and had many thanksgiving ceremonies. They were an extreme sect of religious people. A thanksgiving for pilgrims was a devout time. From what we can see, this is not what this was.”
Gershman said that it was more of an open festival event, similar to European traditions. This event would have had a more Native American feel though, because they outnumbered the pilgrims.
These are historical facts, yet the myths surrounding Thanksgiving still exist. Toscano said myths endure because they meet basic human emotional needs.
“Myths don’t rest in the mind; they rest in the gut,” Toscano said. “The real test in the validity of a myth is in the sensation it provides. The function of the myth is to make your heart feel better and to make you feel connected to something.”
But one may wonder where and why the myths originated.
Edward Winslow, an early settler of the Plymouth colony, had written about the 1621 events in a letter to a friend. It had been sent to England and, thereafter, published multiple times. As time passed and the attendees’ memories faded, the publication was lost and that day was not celebrated until those letters were found in the 1800s.
Kathleen Waites, professor of literature in the Farquhar College, said the holiday dissipated over time because no one was writing about it and literature was the means of recording history at that time. Cultural changes also began transforming the pilgrims from an extreme religious group to a more Americanized mentality.
As America began to prosper, transform, and progress into the Industrial Revolution, the Thanksgiving Day holiday returned and evolved. With inventions like the railroad, literature became accessible to more people. As mass communication formed and developed so did many unified ideas. These common threads took away the individual’s perception, and began framing more standardized portrayals of different ideas, including Thanksgiving.
In 1841 Alexander Young, published a copy of the Winslow letter in “Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers.” Young claimed the event was the first Thanksgiving in his notes, a title that has remained since that time.
Waites said Sarah Hale, a 19th century writer who edited for “Godey’s Lady’s Book” started pressuring to the government to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. It is probable that the pressure from Hale was a major influence for President Abraham Lincoln’s declaration of Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863.
As America moved into the 20th century, Thanksgiving became custom for most Americans. Popular culture began to influence the holiday and it became part of American patriotism and cultural heritage.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt inspired the Norman Rockwell painting series, the “Four Freedoms.” The series includes “Freedom from Want,” a famous depiction of an American holiday celebration. The painting captures an elderly couple serving a sumptuous turkey to an endearing family around a dinner table. Although the painting was meant to evoke different feelings, it has become a symbol for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Waites said, “The family sitting around the table is the image that Americans see as the Thanksgiving idea. That’s how it started shifting; when it became connected with family, patriotism and an American holiday.”
Now the holiday has transformed even further. It represents the beginning of the holiday shopping season. In 1939, Roosevelt changed the date of Thanksgiving, creating the “Franksgiving” debacle, a two-year debate on the actual date of the holiday. This involved a plan to increase the amount of shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Toscano said that Thanksgiving is now a preamble to the commotion of Christmas shopping. People see it as a chance to wait in long lines to be the first into a department store.
So before sitting down to eat non-traditional turkey or flip through Black Friday ads, build a new image of what Thanksgiving is. The true stories of 1598, 1619, 1621 and others — stories of thankfulness and celebrations of the successes of our forefathers — will no longer remain blurred by myth and cultural change.
