Happy Thanksgiving everybody....

Thanksgiving is a key national holiday and important moment in the year for all Americans to give thanks….a 2003 article explores the largely unknown history:
"MOST AMERICANS KNOW the story of the First Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims, who had been persecuted in England and were unhappy in Holland, sailed to the New World and established a colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts. With the assistance of local Native Americans, the Pilgrims hunted turkeys and planted corn. When their crops were harvested, they celebrated the First Thanksgiving, and Americans have been commemorating the day ever since. . . . While this may be the common understanding today, no one would be more surprised at these modern-day beliefs than the Pilgrims themselves. . . ."
Andrew F. Smith, The First Thanksgiving, 3 Gastronomica no. 3 at 79 (2003).
In this excellent article, the author shows that the Puritans had numerous days of thanksgiving and did not remember any special "First" one. The reason we have Thanksgiving today is because Sarah Josepha Hale devoted an entire chapter to a "thanksgiving feast" in her 1827 novel, Northwood: or a Tale of New England. She wrote:
"The roasted turkey took precedence on this occasion, being placed at the head of the table; and well did it become its lordly station, sending forth the rich odour of its savoury stuffing, and finely covered with the froth of the basting. At the foot of the board a sirloin of beef, flanked on either side by a leg of pork and loin of mutton, seemed placed as a bastion to defend innumerable bowls of gravy and plates of vegetables disposed in that quarter. A goose and pair of ducklings occupied side stations on the table, the middle being graced, as it always is on such occasions, by that rich burgomaster of the provisions, called a chicken pie. This pic, which is wholly formed of the choicest parts of fowls, enriched and seasoned with a profusion of butter and pepper, and covered with an excellent puff paste, is, like the celebrated pumpkin pie, an indispensable part of a good and true Yankee Thanksgiving; the size of the pie usually denoting the gratitude of the party who prepares the feast. . . . Plates of pickles, preserves, and butter, and all the necessaries for increasing the seasoning of the viands to the demand of each palate, filled the interstices on the table, leaving hardly sufficient room for the plates of the company, a wine glass and two tumblers for each, with a slice of wheat bread lying on one of the inverted tumblers. A side table was literally loaded with the preparations for the second course, placed there to obviate the necessity of leaving the apartment during the repast. Mr. Romelee keeping no domestic, the family were to wait on themselves, or each other. There was a huge plum pudding, custards and pies of every name and description ever known in Yankee land; yet the pumpkin pie occupied the most distinguished niche. There were also several kinds of rich cake, and a variety of sweetmeats and fruits. On the sideboard was ranged a goodly number of decanters and bottles; the former filled with currant wine, and the latter with excellent cider and ginger beer —a beverage Mrs. Romelee prided herself on preparing in perfection. There were no foreign wines or ardent spirits, Squire Romelee being a consistent moralist."
That sounds familiar 180 years later, doesn’t it!
After Hale became editor of the Godey's Lady Book magazine, in 1846, she launched a campaign lobbying Congress to create a Thanksgiving as a national holiday. Once the Civil War began, she urged President Lincoln directly. And after the Union victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg in 1863, Lincoln declared the third Thursday of November to be the national Thanksgiving Day.
But not until 1865 did Hale associate the Pilgrims with Thanksgiving, and when she did so, many writers of fiction picked up that notion and ran with it. Andrew Smith then tells the rest of the story:
"The reasons for the rapid adoption of the First Thanksgiving myth had less to do with historical fact and more with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the United States. Previous immigrants had come mainly from the United Kingdom and Ireland, with a smattering from other western and northern European nations. In the 1880s this immigration pattern changed as southern and eastern Europeans flooded into the United States. The pace of immigration exploded in 1990, when nine million people arrived in American cities. As these immigrants came from many lands, the American public-education system's major task was to create a common American heritage, an easily understood history of America. The mythical Pilgrims were an ideal symbol for America's beginning, and so they became embedded in the nation's schools, as did their mythical First Thanksgiving feast.
"The Pilgrims and their proverbial First Thanksgiving are origin myths, tracing America to its beginnings. That Jamestown has a better historical claim is complicated by the fact that American slavery began at Jamestown, which made it unacceptable as the starting point for the nation. Since the origin myths did not become prominent until after the Civil War, the South was in no position to challenge the primacy of the mythical Pilgrims idealized by New Englanders. As a result, many southerners refused to celebrate Thanksgiving Day until long after the Civil War had ended.
"Although historians have long since debunked the myths surrounding the Pilgrims and the First Thanksgiving, illustrators, filmmakers, and television producers continue to generate new Thanksgiving images, and immigrant groups add new ingredients to the Thanksgiving table. Advocates for the poor and homeless gain visibility by serving dinner to the needy on Thanksgiving Day. Meanwhile, Native Americans have proclaimed Thanksgiving a national day of mourning, and vegetarians campaign against the consumption of turkey and other meats at Thanksgiving dinner. Yet despite these strong and varied responses, the First Thanksgiving myth has not faded, for it remains a basic building block of America's national identity."
Enjoy Thanksgiving with family and friends! 

-Josiah