When I was in school, granted a few years ago, each November the teachers would have our class celebrate Thanksgiving in a variety of ways, from pageants and plays to coloring pictures or reading books, or writing short essays. Whatever we did had one thing in common, namely inculcating in children the erroneous information that the Pilgrims in Massachusetts celebrated the first Thanksgiving.
In many areas this fallacy continues to be perpetuated in our own time. Ads often depict the Plymouth colonists dining with the native population celebrating the first Thanksgiving in 1621, the ad writers being oblivious to the historical fact that the First Thanksgiving took place in 1619 here in the Colony of Virginia at Berkeley Hundred on the north shore of the James River, 12 years after Captain John Smith and his band of colonists had landed at Jamestown.
Whereas the New England colonists had been motivated to come to the New World in hopes of achieving religious freedom to worship as they wished, the Virginia colonial venture was largely a commercial venture. In 1619, while the Pilgrims still were planning their flight from Britain, colonists gathered to give thanks at what is now the site of Berkeley Plantation, later to be the birthplace of the ninth President of the U.S., William Henry Harrison.
That first Thanksgiving brought together the colonists and the native tribes in the area to give thanks for the year’s bounty, thus beginning the tradition that continues again this year with tomorrow’s festivities. Significantly, President John F. Kennedy was one who learned while in office the correct origins of the feast.
During his presidency, he issued three Thanksgiving proclamations. In the first one, in 1961, he referenced the Pilgrims as having been the progenitors of the feast, only to be met with criticism for failing to recognize the Virginia precedence. In 1962, he mentioned the celebrations in Massachusetts and Virginia. Finally in 1963, shortly before his death, he correctly spoke of the Virginia and Massachusetts celebrations in their proper chronological order.
In the last century a great controversy developed when President Franklin Roosevelt by executive Order changed the date of Thanksgiving by moving it one week forward, claiming it would increase the Christmas marketing season. The opposition was vocal and forceful, the new date being termed in popular culture, “Franksgiving;” the resulting turmoil led Congress in 1941 to pass legislation denoting the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving; Roosevelt signed the bill, and thus it has remained. Our friends to the north in Canada celebrate Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October.
The two staples of Thanksgiving dinner are turkey and cranberries. Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be declared the American symbol, rather than the eagle. Apparently, he might have been motivated by his culinary tastebuds in that effort. As to cranberries, in various species the fruit can be found growing from the polar region southward in the Northern Hemisphere and from the same extreme northward in the Southern Hemisphere.
Having cranberries at Thanksgiving probably is a Massachusetts contribution to the lore of the feast, as the fruit does not seem to abound in Virginia. Among the myths associated with cranberries is that they grow in water, whereas they prefer well-drained soils. Whatever the controversies have been associated with the celebration, as to its origin, its date, or its commercialization heralding the onset of the Christmas chopping season, Thanksgiving remains a seminal moment for us all to reflect and be grateful for the blessings of living free in a land graced by abundance and beauty.
Happy Thanksgiving!
