As children, we were treated to special fun in November and December. I don’t know what Freud would say about Sugar Plums dancing in my head, but I remember the build up of excitement starting at Thanksgiving. Family traditions and the anticipation of Christmas foods, decorations and toys are a good thing for everyone. Traditions are the glue that hold families and cultures together. They are important to us. Just like babies, we thrive on routines, and we are unhappy when that routine is broken.
Thanksgiving as a holiday in America has its roots in colonial New England. The celebrated First Thanksgiving in the Plymouth Colony in 1621 didn’t have a name. It was a communal feast attended by the colonists, Chief/King Massasoit and 90 Native Americans. It was to celebrate a bountiful harvest, enough to carry them through the winter. It was also an acknowledgement of the help from the Natives from the prior year. Massasoit contributed five deer and many fowl to the three-day feast. Other New Englanders later had impromptu harvest feasts. They were not called Thanksgiving feasts for a long time.
To the pious Pilgrims, a day of thanksgiving was nothing like what we celebrate today. It was a day called by the religious leaders for a day of thanking God in prayer. It was often prompted by a time of crises or need. Pilgrims would gather for quiet prayer, praising God and humbly asking Him for intervention. Fasting for the whole day was not uncommon. They would be horrified today to see games, drinking and gluttony. The early Pilgrims didn’t believe in set holidays, not even Christmas or Easter. They aren’t in the Bible.
The New England tradition spread slowly. In 1789 President George Washington, by declaration, asked for a National Day of Thanksgiving to be held Thursday, Nov. 11. President Abe Lincoln declared a day of Thanksgiving the last Thursday in November 1863. Every year after 1863, each President would declare a Thanksgiving Day, usually in late November. I am convinced that it was in gratitude to God that the political commercials were over at last. Yale and Princeton played an 1876 Thanksgiving Day football game. Clydesdales and beer commercials during time-outs soon followed. In 1920, the first Thanksgiving Day parade was organized by a Philadelphia department store. NYC’s Macy’s parade soon followed. I wonder, did they have hot air balloons instead of helium? In 1939, during the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared a National Day of Thanksgiving to be on the last Thursday of November. Retail business leaders of the day convinced the president that it would be in country’s best interest (and their own pockets) to give shoppers an extra week before Christmas. So, FDR moved it up one week. This was before Walmart invented Black Friday. In 1941, Congress made Thanksgiving a permanent holiday. Walmart is still lobbying for a National Black Friday.
By ED PECK – Special to the Herald times
