.png)
Thanksgiving
“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever."
~1 Chronicles 16:34
Every November, with our celebration of Thanksgiving, we begin the holiday season, reflecting our national religious character. It begins a season for gathering with families and friends, reflection, prayer and gratefulness.
History
There are numerous claims to the "first" Thanksgiving. Our instinctual thoughts may first go to the Pilgrims that landed at Plymouth in 1621. But one of the earliest recorded celebrations occurred a half-century before that time. A small colony of French Huguenots established a settlement near present-day Jacksonville, Florida. On June 30, 1564, their leader, Rene de Laudonniere, recorded that, "We sang a psalm of Thanksgiving unto God, beseeching Him that it would please Him to continue His accustomed goodness towards us."
In 1610, after a hard winter called "the starving time," the colonists at Jamestown called for a time of thanksgiving. This was after the original company of 409 colonists had been reduced to 60 survivors. The colonists prayed for help that finally arrived by a ship filled with food and supplies from England. They held a prayer service to give thanks.
On December 4, 1619, 38 colonists landed at a place they called Berkeley Hundred, Virginia and proclaimed, “We ordain that the day of our ship's arrival...in the land of Virginia, shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God.”
The event that we modern Americans seem to associate our origins of Thanksgiving is the arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth in December 1620 and their subsequent meal they shared with the Indians, which was likely in October of 1621, consisting of 53 Pilgrims (only 4 of which were women) and 90 Indians. The Pilgrims endured a tough winter following their arrival in December 1620, due to lack of shelter, malnutrition, poor conditions aboard ship, and diseases such as scurvy. Their turning point began one Friday in the middle of March, 1621, when a visitor arrived.
Samoset
An Indian, wearing nothing but a leather loincloth, strode up the Pilgrim’s main street to the common house, and to their startled faces boomed in flawless English, "Welcome, Englishmen! My name is Samoset." He was a subordinate chief of the Algonquins. He had been visiting the area for the previous eight months, learning English from various fishing captains who had fished the shores of Maine over the years.
Samoset spent the night with the Pilgrims and returned the following Thursday with another Indian who also spoke English, and who was to seemingly act as a special instrument of God to aid the Pilgrims. His name was Tisquantum, also called Squanto, and he has a very rich life story.
Squanto
In 1605, Squanto and four other Indians were taken captive by George Weymouth, taken to England, and taught English in order to provide intelligence background on the most favorable places to establish colonies. After nine years in England, Squanto was able to return to Plymouth on Captain John Smith's voyage in 1614.
But just as he was returning to his village area, he was captured by Capt. Thomas Hunt, and he, with 27 others, were taken to Málaga, Spain, a major slave-trading port. Squanto, with a few others, were bought and rescued by local friars and introduced to the Christian faith. Squanto persuaded the friars to let him try to return home. He reached London, where he lived with a shipbuilder for whom he worked for a few years. In 1619, Squanto finally returned to his homeland aboard John Smith's ship, having joined an exploratory expedition along the New England coast led by Captain Dermer. He stepped ashore six months before the Pilgrims landed in 1620.
When he stepped ashore he received the most tragic blow of his life. Not a man, woman, or child of his own tribe was left alive. During the previous four years, a mysterious plague had broken out among them, killing every last one. So complete was the devastation that the neighboring tribes had shunned the area ever since. The Pilgrims had settled in a cleared area that belonged to no one. Their nearest neighbors, the Wampanoags, were about 50 miles to the southwest.
Stripped of his identity and his reason for living, Squanto wandered aimlessly until he joined the Wampanoags, having nowhere else to go. And, this is how Samoset came to know Squanto.
God's Provision
When Samoset returned to the Plymouth Pilgrims settlement with Squanto a week after his initial visit, he was also accompanied by Massasoit, the chief of the Wapanoags. Massasoit entered into a peace treaty with the Pilgrims that was to last for forty years.
When Massasoit and his entourage left, Squanto stayed. He had found his reason for living: these English were helpless in the ways of the wilderness. Squanto taught them how to catch eels, stalk deer, plant pumpkins, refine maple syrup, discern both edible herbs and those good for medicine, etc. Perhaps the most important thing he taught them was the Indian way to plant corn. They hoed six-foot squares in toward the center, putting down four or five kernels, and then fertilized the corn with fish: three fish in each square, pointing to the center, spoke-like. Guarding the field against the wolves, who would try to steal the fish, by the summer of 1621, they had 20 full acres of corn that would save every one of their lives.
Squanto also taught them to exploit the pelts of the beaver, which was in plentiful supply and in great demand throughout Europe. He even guided the trading to insure they got full prices for top-quality pelts. The corn was their physical deliverance; the beaver pelts would be their economic deliverance. According to the diary of Pilgrim Governor William Bradford, Squanto "Became a special instrument sent of God for our good. He showed us how to plant corn, where to take fish and to procure other commodities . . . and was also our pilot to bring us to unknown places for our profit, and never left us till he died."
The First Thanksgiving
The Pilgrims were a grateful people. Grateful to God, grateful to the Wampanoags, and grateful also to Squanto. Governor William Bradford declared a day of thanksgiving to be held that October.
Chief Massasoit was invited and unexpectedly arrived a day early with an additional ninety Indians. The image at left shows Chief Massasoit arriving for the feast with a large entourage. To feed such a crowd would cut deeply into their stores for the winter, but they had learned through all their travails that God could be trusted implicitly.
However, the Indians did not come empty handed. They brought five dressed deer and more than a dozen fat wild turkeys. They helped with the preparations, teaching the Pilgrim women how to make hoecakes and a tasty pudding out of cornmeal and maple syrup. The Pilgrims, in turn, provided many vegetables from their gardens; carrots, onions, turnips, parsnips, cucumbers, radishes, beets, and cabbages. Additionally, using some of their precious flour with some of the summer fruits which the Indians had dried, the Pilgrims
introduced them to blueberry, apple, and cherry pie. The meal was complimented with sweet wine made from wild grapes. What a feast!
The Pilgrims and Indians happily competed in shooting contests, foot races, and wrestling. Things went so well, and Massasoit showed no inclination to leave, that this first Thanksgiving lasted for three days. The moment that stood out the most in the Pilgrims' memories was William Brewster's prayer as they began the festival. Brewster’s prayer is thought to have begun with Psalm 100:
“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.”
They had so much for which to thank God: for providing all their needs and His provision of Squanto, their teacher, guide, and friend that was to see them through those critical early winters. In 1623, two years after that first feast, Governor William Bradford made a declaration of public thanksgiving to be held every November.
“Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as He has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience.
Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the daytime, on Thursday, November 29th, of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty three and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings."
A National Institution
While none of these Thanksgiving celebrations was an official national pronouncement, as no official nation existed at the time, they do support the claim that the celebrations were religious. Thanksgiving began as a holy day, created by a community of God-fearing Puritans sincere in their desire to set aside one day each year especially to thank the Lord for His many blessings. The day they chose, coming after the harvest at a time of year when farm work was light, fit the natural rhythm of rural life.
Continental Congress declared the first national Thanksgiving on December 18, 1777 and then in 1789, George Washington declared the last Thursday in November a national Thanksgiving as well. These were merely declarations and not official holidays. Future presidents did not always continue the Thanksgiving declaration.
By the end of the 19th century, Thanksgiving Day had become an institution throughout New England. It was officially proclaimed as a national holiday by President Abraham Lincoln on October 3, 1863:
"No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the most high God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy...I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday in November next as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens."
Traditionally celebrated on the last Thursday in November, Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the celebration in 1941, to the fourth Thursday in November "to give more shopping time between Thanksgiving and Christmas”, therein being the first nuance to the commercialization of the holiday season.
As believers, may we continue to keep our faith at the center of our holiday celebrations and always remain grateful and thankful to God for his blessings and provisions.
“Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song."
~Psalm 95:2
“Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; gie thanks to him and bless his name."
~Psalm 100:4
“Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything,
in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ."
~Ephesians 5:10-20
.png)