Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - A History of Thanksgiving (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. On the 4th Thursday, November every year, Americans celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving. It's a holiday that originated in the Americas, but as subsequently spread to many other countries around the world. It's a holiday that's actually secular, but with some religious overtones, and has a unique set of traditions that aren't really shared with any other holiday. Learn more about the history and traditions of Thanksgiving on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

Starting point is 00:00:58 And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thurline podcast from NPR. Tradition tells us that the first Thanksgiving was held in 1621, when the Pilgrims who lived in Plymouth Colony, Massage, Massachusetts held a feast of Thanksgiving with a group of local Indians. There were turkeys, and of course the pilgrims had big hats with buckles on them, and everyone lived happily ever after. As is so often the case with historical legends, there's often a kernel of truth with a whole lot of embellishment which accrued over the years. So with that, let's try to unpack the truth about the holiday we call Thanksgiving and the traditions behind it. For starters,

Starting point is 00:01:42 the first Thanksgiving probably wasn't the first Thanksgiving, as in it wasn't the first time a feast or celebration of Thanksgiving occurred in North America. There were recorded celebrations of Thanksgiving in Virginia in 1607 and the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine, Florida in 1565. There's even a story of explorer Martin Froschbier celebrating a Thanksgiving on Baffin Island in the far north of Canada in 1579. Not only that, but the 1621 feast held by the Pilgrims was never called a Thanksgiving in any of the accounts of the event. In fact, this first Thanksgiving that we've built up so much of our mythology around was barely given a mention in the written accounts of the colony. Here is one of the

Starting point is 00:02:24 only accounts of what we call the first Thanksgiving by Edward Winslow, who was one of the original Mayflower Pilgrims. Quote, Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling so that we might after a special manner rejoiced together after we had gathered the fruits of our labor. They four in one day killed as much foul as, with a little help besides, serve the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their great king Massasoit, with some 90 men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which we brought to the plantation, and bestowed upon our governor and upon the captain and others.

Starting point is 00:03:11 and although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty. It was really more of a harvest festival than it was a Thanksgiving. And those few run-on sentences I just quoted, that's basically everything we have for what we know about the first Thanksgiving. Moreover, it wasn't the love fest between pilgrims and natives which it's been made out to be. The pilgrims population was devastated by their first year in America, and the Wampanoag tribe had likewise been devastated by a plague. The people who participated in this feast were survivors. The Wampanoag were on such good terms with the English because their chief had negotiated an exclusive trade deal with them.

Starting point is 00:03:58 That gave him a ton of leverage with other tribes in the region, because he was the exclusive source of goods that the English would provide for trade. Within a generation, things between the tribe and the English went pear-shaped. Massassoit's son met a comet became chief, who the English called King Philip, and the alliance broke down into what was called King Philip's War. However, I am going to leave that topic for a future episode. While there may have been individual feasts of Thanksgiving, the creation of it as an organized holiday didn't occur until after the completion of the Revolutionary War. The First Continental Congress issued a proclamation for a national day of Thanksgiving after the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, and

Starting point is 00:04:38 and they continue to issue National Days of Prayer, Humiliation, and Thanksgiving. This trend continued through the presidencies of Washington and Adams, and then stopped under Jefferson. Jefferson believed that it was a violation of the separation of church and state, so never issued the proclamation for a day of Thanksgiving. After Jefferson, the tradition of a day of Thanksgiving was on and off for decades. In 1827, a woman by the name of Sarah Josepha Hale wrote a series of editorials trying to persuade the president to declare a national day of Thanksgiving. Sarah Hale was, coincidentally, the author of, Mary Had a Little Lamb.

Starting point is 00:05:14 After appealing to 13 different presidential administrations, she failed to get any president to act. Finally, 36 years after she started, Abraham Lincoln agreed, and on the last Thursday in November 1863, he declared Thanksgiving, and we've been celebrating it ever since. In 1939, Franklin Roosevelt tried to move Thanksgiving up a week, and it was met with great opposition. In 1941, the holiday was permanently set on the 4th Thursday of November. Thanksgiving has a lot of traditions and things associated with it. Where did they come from? Well, for starters, what's the deal with turkey? There's probably nothing which is so identified with the holiday as turkey. The pilgrims most certainly did eat turkey, but there was nothing special about it. It wasn't the center of a meal. The journal entries from the Plymouth Colony show them eating pretty much everything,

Starting point is 00:06:07 including geese, ducks, swans, lobster, deer, fish, oysters, eels, and turkey. One thing which was probably a staple food that no one serves today is passenger pigeon, because they're extinct. The vast majority of turkeys consumed in the U.S. are consumed around Thanksgiving, although that number has gone down as more people are eating turkey slices or ground turkey all year round. Why did turkeys become so popular and associated with Thanksgiving then? It really has to do with the fact that they're native to North America and they're large. If you're going to have a big feast, a turkey is large enough to feed all of your guests.

Starting point is 00:06:43 Moreover, because Thanksgiving is held in the fall, it's easier to eat them at that time of year rather than feed the birds through the winter. The first frozen TV dinner was designed to be a Thanksgiving turkey dinner. It was created by the Swanson Company in 1954 after they massively overest, the demand for turkey in 1953. The vegetables the Pilgrims ate would most likely have been root vegetables like turnips and onions. There may have been some squash and corn as well. There wouldn't have been any potatoes because they hadn't been brought up from South America yet, and they wouldn't have had cranberry sauce because that wouldn't be invented for another 50 years. Did pilgrims really have giant hats with buckles on them? The answer is no, simply because those hats didn't

Starting point is 00:07:26 come into fashion until several decades later. When they came into fashion, Some were certainly brought over to America from England, but it was well after the events of the supposed first Thanksgiving. Football is a tradition on Thanksgiving Day. It used to be played at all levels, including high school and college. But now it's only played on Thanksgiving by the NFL. They played their first Thanksgiving game in 1920. The Detroit Lions have played every Thanksgiving since 34, and the Dallas Cowboys have been playing on Thanksgiving since 1966. Parades have been a tradition for over 100 years. Many cities have them. including Detroit, Philadelphia, and most famously New York. Most of them were originally sponsored by department stores as a promotion going into the Christmas season.

Starting point is 00:08:08 Today, Macy's in New York is one of the last stores which still sponsors a parade. The Macy's parade balloons were introduced in 1928 to replace zoo animals, which were the original parade attraction. Since 1947, the National Turkey Federation has given turkeys to the White House. John F. Kennedy was the first president to spare the turkey, and Ronald Reagan, was the first to actually issue a pardon to the turkey in 1987. Pardon turkeys have gone on to petting zoos, Mount Vernon, and even Disney World. As much as Thanksgiving is associated with the United States, it's not an exclusively American holiday. Canadian celebrate Thanksgiving in October. Many of their traditions came from loyalist Americans who left for Canada after the revolution.

Starting point is 00:08:53 In Norfolk Island, Australia, it celebrated, and it was brought there by American whaling ships in the 19th century. Japan has a Thanksgiving, which was adopted during the American occupation after World War II. I was in Tokyo during Thanksgiving, where I couldn't find a hotel room in the entire city one weekend. It's also celebrated in Liberia, particularly by the Amero-Liberian population, who are the descendants of freed slaves who migrated there. Thanksgiving really is a unique holiday. It isn't an explicitly Christian religious holiday like Christmas or Easter, nor is it explicitly a nationalistic holiday like Independence Day or Memorial Day. And it also isn't tied to a single person like President's Day or Martin Luther King Day.

Starting point is 00:09:34 So even if many of the traditions may not be rooted in fact, Thanksgiving is still a uniquely American holiday. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiever. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports the show on Patreon. Your support helps me put out a new show every day. And if you're interested in everything everywhere daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only place where it's available.

Starting point is 00:10:03 And if you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and get notified to future episodes and projects, please join my Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - A History of Thanksgiving (Encore)

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